What Happened When a Washington County Tried a 32-Hour Workweek? (cnn.com) 123
On a small network of islands north of Seattle, Washington, San Juan County just completed its first full year of 32-hour workweeks, reports CNN.
And Tuesday the county released a report touting "a host of positive outcomes — from recruiting to retention to employee happiness — and a cost savings of more than $975,000 compared to what the county would have paid if it met the union's pay increase demands." The county said the 32-hour workweek has attracted a host of new talent: Applications have spiked 85.5% and open positions are being filled 23.75% faster, while more employees are staying in their jobs — separation (employees quitting or retiring) dropped by 48%. And 84% of employees said their work-life balance was better. "This is meeting many of the goals that we set out to do when we implemented it," County Manager Jessica Hudson said. said, noting the county is looking for opportunities to expand the initiative...
Departments across San Juan County have implemented the 32-hour workweek differently, some staggering staffing to maintain their previous availability to the public while others have shortened schedules to be open just four days a week... "I tell people, you're not going to see things change from your perspective," said Joe Ingman, a park manager in the county. "Offices are going to stay open, bathrooms are going to get cleaned, grass is going to get mowed." His department adjusted schedules to stay staffed seven days a week, and while communication across shifts was an initial hurdle, issues were quickly ironed out. "It was probably the smoothest summer I've had, and I've been working in parks for over a decade," he said, crediting the new schedule as a boon for recruiting. While job postings used to languish unfilled for months, last summer the applicant pool was not only bigger but more qualified, and the two staffers he hired both cited coming to the county because of the 32-hour workweek.
"It's no more cost to the public to work 32 hours — but we have better applicants," he said. Ingman also said the four-day workweek has done wonders for his job satisfaction; he'd watched colleagues burn out for years, but now sees a path for his own future in the department... County employees have used their extra time off to spend less money on childcare, volunteer in their kids' schools, and contribute to the community... While San Juan County's motivation in adopting a shortened workweek was financial, the benefits its employees cite speak to a larger trend, as workplaces around the country increasingly explore flexible schedules to combat burnout and attract and retain talent.
A survey of CEOs this spring found nearly one third of large US companies were looking into solutions like four-day or four-and-a-half-day workweeks... Even without a reduction in total hours, a Gallup poll last year found a third day off would be widely embraced: 77% of US workers said a 4-day, 40-hour workweek would have a positive impact on their wellbeing.
One worker shared their thoughts with CNN. "Life shouldn't be about just working yourself into the ground..." And they added that "So far, I feel happy; I feel seen as an employee and as a human, and I feel like it could be a beautiful step forward for other people if we just trust it and try it."
They even had some advice for other employers. "Change happens by somebody actually doing the change. The only way we're going to find out if it works is by doing."
And Tuesday the county released a report touting "a host of positive outcomes — from recruiting to retention to employee happiness — and a cost savings of more than $975,000 compared to what the county would have paid if it met the union's pay increase demands." The county said the 32-hour workweek has attracted a host of new talent: Applications have spiked 85.5% and open positions are being filled 23.75% faster, while more employees are staying in their jobs — separation (employees quitting or retiring) dropped by 48%. And 84% of employees said their work-life balance was better. "This is meeting many of the goals that we set out to do when we implemented it," County Manager Jessica Hudson said. said, noting the county is looking for opportunities to expand the initiative...
Departments across San Juan County have implemented the 32-hour workweek differently, some staggering staffing to maintain their previous availability to the public while others have shortened schedules to be open just four days a week... "I tell people, you're not going to see things change from your perspective," said Joe Ingman, a park manager in the county. "Offices are going to stay open, bathrooms are going to get cleaned, grass is going to get mowed." His department adjusted schedules to stay staffed seven days a week, and while communication across shifts was an initial hurdle, issues were quickly ironed out. "It was probably the smoothest summer I've had, and I've been working in parks for over a decade," he said, crediting the new schedule as a boon for recruiting. While job postings used to languish unfilled for months, last summer the applicant pool was not only bigger but more qualified, and the two staffers he hired both cited coming to the county because of the 32-hour workweek.
"It's no more cost to the public to work 32 hours — but we have better applicants," he said. Ingman also said the four-day workweek has done wonders for his job satisfaction; he'd watched colleagues burn out for years, but now sees a path for his own future in the department... County employees have used their extra time off to spend less money on childcare, volunteer in their kids' schools, and contribute to the community... While San Juan County's motivation in adopting a shortened workweek was financial, the benefits its employees cite speak to a larger trend, as workplaces around the country increasingly explore flexible schedules to combat burnout and attract and retain talent.
A survey of CEOs this spring found nearly one third of large US companies were looking into solutions like four-day or four-and-a-half-day workweeks... Even without a reduction in total hours, a Gallup poll last year found a third day off would be widely embraced: 77% of US workers said a 4-day, 40-hour workweek would have a positive impact on their wellbeing.
One worker shared their thoughts with CNN. "Life shouldn't be about just working yourself into the ground..." And they added that "So far, I feel happy; I feel seen as an employee and as a human, and I feel like it could be a beautiful step forward for other people if we just trust it and try it."
They even had some advice for other employers. "Change happens by somebody actually doing the change. The only way we're going to find out if it works is by doing."
Cue up (Score:4, Insightful)
The stories of how elderly slashdotters worked 80 hour weeks and were thankful for it.
Re: Cue up (Score:3)
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I like my job as well. No scratch that, I LOVE my job. I find it incredibly fulfilling and there's a reason I've buckled the trend and stayed at the same company for over 15 years now.
But I love my life more. Even though my job is incredibly closely aligned with my hobby I do a hobby for me not for someone else. It doesn't matter how much you love your job, if you're voluntarily overworking it then you're running away from something else in your life, or you're worried about the optics of it (like those peo
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I was SO happy when I got into 1099 contracting.
No matter if I liked it or not...I got paid for every hour of work.
I don't ever WANT to work....I'm pretty much a mercenary when it comes to work. I mean, if I won the Powerball tomorrow, I'd never set foot in a place of work again. I dunno if I'd even tell them I wasn't coming back.
(joke I'd give notice....).
I don't mind hard work...long hours when needed, BUT, I expect to be paid well for every hour and minute I do toll
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I don't think anybody ever meant ÃoequeueÃ.
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As an old Slashdoter I did frequently work more than 40 hours per week although rarely close to 80 hours. The difference might be I liked my job mostly and liked to work. And I believe you meant "queue."
Working unhealthily long hours is only OK when it's a personal choice with no coercion. Most people just want to work healthy hours so they can spend the precious hours of their lives with the people they really care about.
BTW, is a "slashdoter" someone who dotes on slashdot?
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No. By your standards, everybody takes advantage of everybody else. By normal standards, a voluntary trade makes both parties better off.
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Though I like your handle, you're just feeding a troll and the problem with your response is the information imbalance. I'd repost my mnemonic for freedom again but never detected any interest or comprehension.
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The point in responding is that not all trolls are created equally. It's easy to dismiss the one-word, obscene, or spam rolls, but too many naive and gullible people treat plausible trolls as wise and true because no one counters them. They need a counter-argument now, not years later after they've wised up on their own.
Re: Cue up [the disinformation?] (Score:3)
Disagree to agree? But I think the bad information is going to win because the production of good information is much more expensive. Any time (or anything else) you invest in countering a lie will be lost under a flood of 10 (or 100 or 1,000) fresh lies.
And I think a lot of voters apparently vote on some kind of theory that the solution for too much complexity in their lives is to vote for infinite stupidity. But "That trick never works."
F-IW? (Score:2)
Was it F-IW? That was the slogan for freedom used by the Ghands of (IIRC) "...And Then There Were None".
The idea was that freedom was the right to refuse to act.
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Okay, I'll repost it as modified for the legal characters on Slashdot.
#1 Freedom == (Meaningful + Truthful - Coercion^2) Choice{~5} != (Beer^4+ | Speech | Trade)
Freedom not to act is one half of the coercion term. The other side of that term is not forcing other people to act.
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How is your mom's basement these days?
Re: Cue up (Score:5, Insightful)
What if... just what if... you were again 30 hrs a week as productive as you were back in the days, but the other 20-30 hours, you were at your workplace, you could spend wherever you want doing whatever you want together with whoever you chose?
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I don't mind hard work and doing what it takes...BUT, I expect to be fully compensated for said work.
And working hard and long hours CAN make you a good bit of money for retirement and hey, you can have fun with some extra disposable income too.
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If the research about productivity on the job is true, of the 50-60 hrs you were at your workplace, you were productive about 30 hrs.
If you failed any other courses as bad as you failed statistics, I'm not sure there's any reason for this conversation to continue.
But tell me, how are your 1.94 children doing?
Rule #1 of statistics.
You can never apply population statistics to an individual.
No matter what the average person does with their day, there are the other sides of the bell curve. If I were doing what the average were doing, I'd be making average dollars.
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You got paid overtime?
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Who gives a shit about overtime if you're being paid an amount that you feel is worth the 60 hours you work?
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Yes, I'm paid the same whether I work 40 or 80 hours.
By working 60-70, I doubled my income twice in 10 years, and am now a 95th percentile wage earner.
Now I'm making that whether I work 0 or 1,000.
People really are getting dumber.
Re:Cue up (Score:5, Insightful)
An officially 32 hour workweek is beneficial even to workers who enjoy working more. A 32 hour workweek means 1 extra day off, e.g. Fridays are off at the company. Not only you can work if you wish (from home), but as most others won't be working, you don't have to suffer interruptions (whether it's emails, support tickets, or remote meetings). When working on paperwork or coding, holidays are a blessing. Finally time to do some actual work.
Re:Cue up (Score:5, Interesting)
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The research on work has stated this for about 100 years now. Hence there is zero reason to be surprised. It is just the virtue-signalling assholes with no life that desperately want 40h or more.
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Boomer here*, over 30 years in one job because (for the most part) I love what I do and I really hate job interviews. Or at least I think I do. How the hell can I remember a job interview I did in the last century?
I did, and do, work 50-60 hour weeks on a regular basis. I'm actually working more hours and taking less vacation now than I did before I started working from home. Why? Because management thinks we owe them the time no longer spent on commuting, so they schedule meetings before the official start
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I've done 120 hour weeks, on a farm. I was burnt out and it sucked, but you do what you have to do. I would hope we can evolve beyond that for newer generations, but there's a lot of incentive coming top-down to work ourselves to the utter bone before we burn out and "retire" as broken husks that have dedicated so much of ourselves to work that we can't imagine having a life outside of it.
DO EET (Score:5, Insightful)
With improvements in productivity over the last 50 years, we should be down to a 24-hour work week right now. The time we've been working beyond that has contributed to nothing but worsening inequality. Facts.
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True, I didn't say we should have both at the same time though.
Housing costs (Score:2)
Sadly the actual cost of building a new house has rise so much - for reasons possibly to do with the Baumol effect, but also due to the failure to achieve significant improvements in productivity in the construction sector - that 'obvious' logic doesn't apply.
Wikipedia on the baumol effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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With improvements in productivity over the last 50 years, we should be down to a 24-hour work week right now. The time we've been working beyond that has contributed to nothing but worsening inequality. Facts.
Be careful when you start throwing around “inequality” when talking about level of effort. I sure as hell don’t want to punish the young go-getter working 60 hours a week on their own business because others feel scales of efficiency equate to a 24-hour workweek in 2024 for anyone and everyone.
I’m also not going to punish the 50-year old retired millionaire who busted their ass working 60-hour weeks to achieve that early retirement. You think they did that to be equal to the one pu
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People do put in different amounts of effort, but the level of inequality we have now is far more insane than perfect equality. Elon is not working hundreds or thousands of times harder half-listening to calls while playing Diablo vs. the person busting their ass to start a small business, or some Amazon warehouse worker or driver dashing around at full speed all day long. Even the millionaire who worked 60-hour weeks probably didn't work 5x as hard as that Amazon warehouse worker by any metric.
These levels
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I personally know one retired millionaire who made every penny by waking up at 4am and working until 6pm doing whatever he had to do to build his business. He did this 6 days a week; whether it was repairing the vehicles, driving them, prospecting customers, or managing employees. For the math impaired, that's 80+ hours a week. As he continued to provide excellent service to his customers and demand excellence from his employees, his business grew and began taking customers away from the larger companies competing in the area, until one of them made him an offer for his business. He then took that money and started another business and repeated the process (and I can guarantee you he worked 5x harder every day than that Amazon worker).
I'd say it's mathematically impossible that he was working 5x harder per day than that Amazon worker. He was working flat-out 80hrs a week, an Amazon warehouse worker is working flat-out maybe 40-50hrs a week, so he was working maybe twice as hard as an Amazon worker at most. If an Amazon worker could work that many hours for the same period, they would have doubled to tripled their income over that time (assuming access to such hours and the overtime pay that comes with it) and have nothing else to show fo
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Oh yes, please do bring quality into it. Why does the most stellar Amazon warehouse worker make orders of magnitude less than Steve Elop did doing an incredibly shitty job?
We have had 45 years of non-stop automation (Score:5, Insightful)
If you stop and think about it even for a moment it makes sense. We've all watched a video about a modern factory and how little human interaction there is at most of them. There's an applesauce factory where you literally pour apples in one end and packaged applesauce comes out the other. And I remember a sleeping bag factory with 130 employees for the entire company that supplied enough bags for half of America.
And we are just getting started. Machine learning and LLMS means that we are about to have a huge automation boom.
In short we are running out of work. That was supposed to be a good thing but we are not socially ready for it. We are not ready to have 30 or 40 or 50 million people at the country just doesn't have any use for.
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In short we are running out of work.
No we're not. Just because we automate something away doesn't mean we cease working. Human time is a limited resource. When it gets freed up we use it somewhere else. Automation drives efficiency and improvement in efficiency drives growth. You can see that reflected in the underlying GDP figures. If GDP were stagnant (or at least limited only to a rise in population) then you may have an argument that we have run out of work to do.
Re:We have had 45 years of non-stop automation (Score:5, Insightful)
Manufacturing is about to go down shortly after the Whiner in Chief-Elect takes office. If you check, you'll find that manufacturing started to go down in 2019 when that idiot put in his tariffs. And since he'll have control over government data, expect any valid government reporting about it happening again to be squashed. Only the little people taking it in the neck will realize what's happening. And the Maggots will be extolling the virtues of his "manufacturing renaissance" shouting to drown out the little people complaining about their manufacturing jobs going bye-bye.
And the fun won't stop there. A lot of work in the U.S. is done by migrants, the very migrants that dolt wants to deport. Guess what happens to the companies using those migrants? They won't be doing so well. The obvious retort is that those companies can employ Americans. But Americans don't want to work at the wages the migrants work. So companies will have to increase their wage offers. And their prices to cover the shortfall. That will hit the food sector hard, the very same sector the Maggots are complaining about now.
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You mean like the Haitians that Trump complained about have?
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We are not ready to have 30 or 40 or 50 million people at the country just doesn't have any use for.
Don't worry. Look at the amount of regulation: It has grown exponentially, and will continue to do so. Half of the 30 or 40 or 50 million people will be writing ever more regulations and the other half will enforce them.
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We can't automate everything, and the cheap labour people are crying about are not the ones that are automated away.
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Automating everything is exactly what every boss wants. If it is possible then it will eventually happen.
Re:We have had 45 years of non-stop automation (Score:5, Informative)
Yet everyone is crying that we're about to deport all of our cheap labor. smh
When the crops aren't being picked, when homes and other buildings can't be built, when golf courses don't get groomed, lawns aren't mowed, sheets aren't changed at hotels, and restaurants don't have enough people to run their business, you'll really hear people whining. Of course in Texas, the biggest whiners, have said it's legal hire illegals to keep your house clean because that keeps the economic engine running [texastribune.org].
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Trump isn't going to deport anyone (Score:2)
Now what he might do is arrest all the illegals and toss them in work camps and lease them out as slaves like Alabama does with their prisoners.
If you think your cousin is having a hard time finding work because of illegals now wait until they are literal slaves.
Re:We have had 45 years of non-stop automation (Score:5, Insightful)
Awhile back here in Florida there were some MAGA folks flipping their shit over migrant workers who were here legally to harvest crops. The farm owners literally went on the news and explained that they tried posting the job openings for Americans to fill, but got few takers. They also said that the few American workers they could hire were soon to quit or get fired because harvesting crops by hand is neither pleasant nor well-paid.
Now you might get the wrong impression that some of us "leftists" are condoning the aforementioned worker exploitation, but we're not - we're just pointing out that if your endgame is cheaper groceries, getting rid of the cheap labor is going to have the opposite effect. The idea that a large segment of our economy relies on a whole bunch of people being paid poverty wages is a whole 'nother can of worms.
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>"few American workers they could hire were soon to quit or get fired because harvesting crops by hand is neither pleasant nor well-paid."
The cost/price of the labor will increase based on the supply. If they can't recruit with what they can afford to pay, and/or can't survive due to the necessary price increases to pay more to satisfy their need for the labor, that business will go out of business.
>"they tried posting the job openings for Americans to fill, but got few takers."
And when the total cos
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It is not really exploitation if it is legal and the transactions are voluntary.
Boy, the billionaires are really, really glad that you feel this way.
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>"Boy, the billionaires are really, really glad that you feel this way."
So are the consumers and employees. A capitalistic free market is a pretty amazing thing, as long as it has some effective controls to maintain competition. It isn't perfect, nothing is, but it is far better than anything else ever tried.
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The cost of labor is about 10% of the cost of produce. Most of the cost is in storage and transportation. Even if the cost of labor doubled, the effect on retail prices would be negligible.
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The supply chain problems during the pandemic proved that's bullshit.
Prices went up, but corporations raised them higher than they needed to cover the increased costs. The result was a lot of companies making record profits and the prices mostly haven't gone back down despite the supply chain issues being largely resolved.
For corporations, anything that increases the cost of a product is also an excuse to add an extra charge on top to pad out the company's profit margin.
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Almost as if it was never about jobs at all.
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They also said that the few American workers they could hire were soon to quit or get fired because harvesting crops by hand is neither pleasant nor well-paid.
Translation: Legal citizens used to earning a legal income, were surprised to find harvest employers accustomed to paying illegal wages under the table, were STILL being cheap and wanting to offer a shitty (illegal?) wage.
Gee, I wonder where the REAL problem is here..
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If republicans really wanted to stop people from crossing the border illegally then they would remove the incentive. Start jailing all these CEOs of meat processing plants and other shit companies who exploit illegal labor.
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How about we start just above jail....make first and 2nd offenses HIGHLY fineable....I mean BIG time money penalties, that could almost drive one out of business, for hiring non-citizens that are here illegally.
If someone continued to be a chronic employer of illegals...then sure, let's
Compared to what (Score:5, Insightful)
>"the county released a report touting "a host of positive outcomes"
And almost everything listed is just supply and demand effects. Of course it is a boon to recruitment, retention, competition for spots, etc. But if ALL employment everywhere was also doing 32 hours, then none of those "positive outcomes" would apply.
The main question would be if productivity were the same before as after. And in many jobs that is hard to measure. Plus, one could equally conclude that if most people were as productive, then it isn't necessarily because they are less stressed/etc, but maybe because they were just goofing off before.
>"It's no more cost to the public to work 32 hours"
But it also doesn't cost LESS either. So why not 24 hours? 16 hours? At what point should you keep paying the same for fewer worked hours?
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A lot of my job is demand-based, and that demand is usually at the front half of my day. Afternoons are variable. Not quite enough work to go around, but a bit too much to just work mornings only and too much to switch to projects due to likely interruptions.
Me? I'm crazy. I'd let half the staff take short Fridays, and split the afternoons for the other four work days so half the people are pure project Mon/Tue and the other half are pure project Wed/Thu.
And I'd definitely have far more WfH. In my opin
Re:Compared to what (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing about a 32 hour week is that it enables more people to work. It allows more time for other activities, eg childcare, salsa lessons, exercise classes, caring for elderly relatives, etc. This would actually expand the economy.
It's true of course that if everyone offered this, it would not be a competitive advantage. But it would create a slightly wider pool of possible workers.
And, I must say, a race to the bottom for least hours in the workweek sounds quite appealing!
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Maybe, maybe not. If you consider a 32 hour workweek as a day less of a 48 hour workweek, sure it's a day. But there are many workplaces where the workweek is 37.5 hours (7.5 hours/day) or 35 hours (7 hours/day), 32 hours isn't all that much shorter (just under 6.5 hrs/day).
If
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If you consider a 32 hour workweek as a day less of a 48 hour workweek
Uh, I think your math is off... I assume you meant 40 and not 48!
If your workweek is already 35 hours, offering 32 isn't that much of a stretch.
Depends how it's partitioned. I'd definitely do 8h x 4d to cover the 32 if that was on offer, but that might not suit everyone.
Re: Compared to what (Score:2)
But only because not as much work is getting done.
Was that mentioned in the article? I thought they found the work was getting done just fine.
Re:Compared to what (Score:5, Interesting)
You completely missed every point being made here.
This is obvious to most people, but not all, so getting this out of the way first. Some jobs are all about having a body covering specific hours. We're not talking about those jobs.
We're talking about the type of jobs that are about getting the work done. The exact hours worked are irrelevant in these jobs, as long as the work is done on time. Most office jobs fall into this category. A large portion of these jobs are salary, not hourly, specifically because we acknowledge that the job is based around getting the tasks done, not around the hours worked.
Most people don't have 40 hours of productivity in them in a week. Those that do generally don't pull it off in the long run, just in ideal scenarios or crunch bursts. There's a ton of wasted time in the work day for most people.
There's been a ton of studies that show reducing hours makes people more productive and happier. It's really, really easy to measure if it's working or not. These jobs were always evaluated in terms of "Is the work getting done correctly and on time?" Your metrics don't change at all if your reduce the hours. If things are still getting done, it's a success. If they're not, it's a failure.
As to your concept of fairness - why is it fair that the salaried workers are generally expected to stay past 40 hours when necessary, but aren't allowed to leave early when 40 hours aren't necessary?
And if you paid any attention to the article posted, you'd notice cutting hours *saved* taxpayer money. The workers accepted a reduction in hours instead of a raise. The work still got done on time. Workers were happier. It cost less than keeping the workers at 40 hours. Everyone won.
All of this is really, really obvious to basically anyone that's ever worked an office job.
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Plus, one could equally conclude that if most people were as productive, then it isn't necessarily because they are less stressed/etc, but maybe because they were just goofing off before.
There's a wealth of research that shows this isn't true. The brain burn-out factor is far more prevalent than any goofing off. But then I also question your premise. If I am a goofing slacker at 40 hours, why would I not be a goofing slacker at 32 hours? The simple answer is I still would be, and there would be no change in underlying performance.
But it also doesn't cost LESS either. So why not 24 hours? 16 hours?
Because the brain doesn't work like that. The brain doesn't get exponentially more efficient when less overworked when reducing 24 hours to 16 hours as it does whe
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Plus, one could equally conclude that if most people were as productive, then it isn't necessarily because they are less stressed/etc, but maybe because they were just goofing off before.
If they were goofing off then they clearly had time to goof off while still fulfilling their roles, which means resources (time) were being inefficiently used, likely by workers dragging tasks out to simply fill the time they were required to be at work. You can keep cleaning the same bathroom over and over but it's not going to get any cleaner; at a certain point there just isn't more work to be done. Giving people back that time to spend with their families, hobbies, a side-hustle or maybe even work towar
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...but maybe because they were just goofing off before.
If they were goofing off, it was probably because they were burned out from overwork; or they were expecting the regular burnout to occur, and were just pacing themselves.
When we got sent home for the pandemic, my productivity skyrocketed (the higher-ups noted the "miracles" I pulled off then). But even that tamed a bit after a couple years, as overwork is overwork. However, it never dropped as low as it was working in the office. After my regular 2-week vacations, my productivity was back up to record-set
Rather than read CNN's paywalled rehash... (Score:5, Informative)
Why not just read San Juan County's report directly [sanjuancountywa.gov]?
Apples, Oranges, and the civil service (Score:3, Insightful)
We're talking government workers in the smallest county in the state. Yeah, they do clean bathrooms and mow the lawn. Some of them even do essential work, like first responders. We need them. Somebody has to collect the taxes! But one thing they NEVER worry about is making a profit. They don't have to because if you don't pay your taxes, you lose your house. If they work 32 hours a week, you still owe your full taxes. If they work 24 hours a week, you still pay your full taxes. And if they do this for 30 years, they get a pension that is 60% of their salary, plus social security. For the math inclined, this means thay take home more money retired than they did working. So yeah, you won't get rich on stock options, but it's a nice gig if you can get it.
Lazy editor (Score:5, Insightful)
One worker shared their thoughts with CNN
No, one worker shared her thoughts with CNN. The person is a woman, as clearly mentioned in the article.
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Thank you. I noticed that as well. This distracting and confusing obsession with singular "they/their" is very annoying, doubly-so when it is completely unneeded.
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Government bureaucrats are not a good standard (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering how malleable bureaucrats' work load is in every company, and how much more so in government, I don't think I'll put much credence in government bureaucrats bragging about their own analysis of their own experiment.
On the other hand, everyone would probably be better off if more government workers worked less, even if they got paid for 40 hours.
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Seems like they were over staffed (Score:2)
20% less hours getting the same work done.
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Pay? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't find any reference to the applicants being paid the same as a 40 hour week. Are they getting an hourly increase to match their previous rate or are they effectively losing a day's pay every week?
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The same pay is implied in the summary where they are comparing this 32hour work week in response to an (unmet) union demand for a pay increase.
But in any case that is sort of beside the point. It seems to be that people are attracted to the concept of working less, not just the concept of getting money. Some people think that life is more important than riches. You can find a good example of that in places like The Netherlands. Not only does their pay pale in comparison to that of the USA (for middle class
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And if you need municipal services on the one (Score:2)
day the required person is taking a siesta?
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If there's only one person at the office who could do the job, the same thing could happen if that person fell ill. Who knows what would happen if they took a vacation or got hit by a bus!
Ferry Schedule Disruptions (Score:3)
I'm not sure if these rules cover ferry workers (run by Washington State). But they are having problems with canceled sailing due to a lack of available crew. You can have one critical position on the boats not staffed and you can't go. There are also Coast Guard regulations about hours worked and rest time between shifts. So overtime doesn't work.
Enjoy your 32 hour work weeks. Because you're not leaving on the weekends.
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I'm not sure if these rules cover ferry workers (run by Washington State). But they are having problems with canceled sailing due to a lack of available crew. You can have one critical position on the boats not staffed and you can't go. There are also Coast Guard regulations about hours worked and rest time between shifts. So overtime doesn't work.
Enjoy your 32 hour work weeks. Because you're not leaving on the weekends.
Sounds like they don't pay enough for people to bother showing up.
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So you want the state to take its fixed budget and buy fewer hours of attendance by workers. Which is sort of what a 32 hour week is doing already. 40 hours of pay for 32 hours of work. This isn't an issue of productivity: getting the same amount of work done in fewer hours. These people just have to be there.
But not to worry. We can just jack up the ticket fees. And then see how long the 32 hour work week and the county councils' jobs last.
Threshold... (Score:2)
Able to do their jobs? (Score:2)
"Hi, the park is getting overgrown."
"We have a 3 week backlog..."
Don't most countries already have a 35 hour week? (Score:2)
If you think about the "classic" weekday 9-to-5 job with an hour for lunch, doesn't that already total 35 hours work a week? Or is the US not following this model at all (probably not, if a drop of 3 hours makes headlines)?
There are quite a few other factors to consider other than total working hours of course: flexibility when they can be taken (start/lunch/end times, even skipping a day and working longer on other days), working from home/hybrid options, sick pay, maternity/paternity pay and number of hol
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If you think about the "classic" weekday 9-to-5 job with an hour for lunch, doesn't that already total 35 hours work a week? Or is the US not following this model at all (probably not, if a drop of 3 hours makes headlines)?
To clarify, a lot of places in America consider an 8-5 workday as standard. You’re paid for 8 and are there for 9, including the unpaid hour for lunch.
To further clarify, most people would love to be at or around 40 hours a week. Instead, it’s often one extreme or another. The hourly worker who dreams of getting up to 40 hours a week to earn a salary with benefits, or the salaried slave working 60-hour weeks with zero overtime benefit who dreams of getting down to what was advertised in the j
So they only got paid for 32 hours of work ? (Score:2)
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Better applicants (Score:2)
Setting aside everything else in the story, I’d like to talk about the better applicants bit.
Assuming that’s true, it’s not a systemic advantage of a 32 hour work week. Might be good for them as first-movers, but if everybody were on 32 hour weeks, it should be clear that something less than 100% of the organizations in the world can have “better” applicants. All that really says is the best people have more optionality, but when discussing the merits of the shorter week at lar
honeymoon effect. (Score:2)
Re: "The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:2)
waste branch (Score:2)
Please don't feed trolls and propagate their vacuous or vicious subjects.
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Again??? This is the fourth time i have seen your same post.
Got any original ideas?
Re:"The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:5, Funny)