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For those arguing against it, I imagine that, generally, the same arguments were waged when the 40-hour standard work week was proposed in the early 1900s. But it passed, and everything worked itself out. I think if a 32-hour work week is passed, companies will figure it out and everything will work itself out.
And it goes without saying that there are some industries and jobs that can't be done within 32 hours but they are very likely unable to be done within 40 hour standard week as well. But perhaps that can be improved upon as well.
I haven't read the specific legislation, but even under the current 40-hour work week rubric, an employer can make an hourly employee work more than 40 hours, it's just that the employer has to pay him 50% more for each hour he works over that limit (time-and-a-half). So is this proposal really just an adjustment to the overtime pay rules? A 40-hour or a 32-hour work week means nothing to salaried worker who gets paid the same regardless of how many, or how few, hours he works. Of course, the 40-hour work week has become so ingrained in our culture that we still apply it (to an extent) to how much time a salaried worker should be spending at the worksite.
Every time I read these threads I'm always struck by the number of people who claim to be able to finish their tasks in a couple hours and then spend the rest of the day doing whatever.
In fifty years plus of working I never, not once ever, had a job (either labor, management, military, or teaching) where there wasn't something else to do.
Welcome to modern day Corporate America!
The one thing I learned long ago is that, generally speaking, the lower down the totem poll you are, the more rote daily tasks you'll be assigned to complete. The lower the wage I was paid, the more granular work I had to do. Low end accounting, operations, customer service, and admin jobs were specifically time intensive and exhausting.
If you're in a project oriented techie role, it can be fairly easy to automate your work with today's tools. When I compile a complex spreadsheet or dashboard, I'm not adding millions of lines of data row by row or filtering it manually when I can write a simple nested function to do the complex task in an instant. A lot of people who don't understand my role might assume what I do is highly complicated and time consuming. With my experience, it's really not. If given a flat raw data file, I can develop a super gratifying and nifty dashboard in a matter of 30-60 minutes. It's usually so immersive and detailed that leadership thinks it took days to develop.
At my last job, at a highly visible F100, the manager who sat next to me would hop on calls from time to time, say a few words, then spent the rest of the day browsing news sites and shopping sites. I'd catch Amazon and Zillow on her screen quite a bit.
Last edited by digitalUID; 03-22-2024 at 02:45 PM..
In these scenarios, you wouldn't only get 32 hours of work from an employee. In most theoretical situations, the 32-hour per week employee would be supplemented with a part time worker for the hours they aren't working. So, maybe you have a scenario with two full-time workers with staggered schedules.
EE 1 (M-Th) - 32 hours per week
EE 2 (Tu-F) - 32 hours per week
EE 3 (M&F) - 16 hours per week
yields the same 80 hours of output as
EE 1 (M-F) - 40 hours per week
EE 2 (M-F) - 40 hours per week
May work in an office environment, but any critical product or service environment... no way.
The one thing I learned long ago is that, generally speaking, the lower down the totem poll you are, the more rote daily tasks you'll be assigned to complete. The lower the wage I was paid, the more granular work I had to do. Low end accounting, operations, customer service, and admin jobs were specifically time intensive and exhausting.
If you're in a project oriented techie role, it can be fairly easy to automate your work with today's tools. When I compile a complex spreadsheet or dashboard, I'm not adding millions of lines of data row by row or filtering it manually when I can write a simple nested function to do the complex task in an instant. A lot of people who don't understand my role might assume what I do is highly complicated and time consuming. With my experience, it's really not. If given a flat raw data file, I can develop a super gratifying and nifty dashboard in a matter of 30-60 minutes. It's usually so immersive and detailed that leadership thinks it took days to develop.
At my last job, at a highly visible F100, the manager who sat next to me would hop on calls from time to time, say a few words, then spent the rest of the day browsing news sites and shopping sites. I'd catch Amazon and Zillow on her screen quite a bit.
Putting on my manager hat that sounds almost like a lack of supervision or deficit of knowledge on the part of management.
My bosses, all the way up the chain, knew about how long something should take. Even when I was negotiating contracts they all had a grasp of the process and what should be happening.
Putting on my manager hat that sounds almost like a lack of supervision or deficit of knowledge on the part of management.
My bosses, all the way up the chain, knew about how long something should take. Even when I was negotiating contracts they all had a grasp of the process and what should be happening.
Maybe. However, that only becomes a problem when work isn't getting done. Nobody cares when things are moving forward as they are expected. At least that's been my experience. But I generally don't work for bean counters and micro managers either.
One thing I also learned long ago is that you don't go around volunteering yourself for a ton of other "made up" work either. You get your job done as prescribed, you shut up, you keep your head down, and everything is rosy.
Funny story. I actually quit my last job because there wasn't enough work and when I attempted to seek it out from other managers and try to create value, I got my hand slapped and was told to fall in line. Welcome to modern day Corporate America!
That 3rd guy really throws your operations through a loop, eh? What happens when someone quits and you have to hire and train a new one?
Do you think that has never happened?
Yes we have minimum staffing requirements. We NEVER did minimum. Our greatest loss for hourly employees was retirement or promotion. We also maintained a training/preparatory environment at multiple community colleges, as well as employing the apprentice programs the Union offered. We always had multiple candidates for positions. I can't say that is still true today.
However if there was a problem meeting my goals because of staffing, I contracted the work out. Contractors were always begging for work.
Every sup was cross trained, came from multiple disciplines, so no issue.
Yes we have minimum staffing requirements. We NEVER did minimum. Our greatest loss for hourly employees was retirement or promotion. We also maintained a training/preparatory environment at multiple community colleges, as well as employing the apprentice programs the Union offered. We always had multiple candidates for positions. I can't say that is still true today.
However if there was a problem meeting my goals because of staffing, I contracted the work out. Contractors were always begging for work.
Every sup was cross trained, came from multiple disciplines, so no issue.
You're diving back into why this isn't good for your operation when the discussion is a general discussion about a 4-day work week. I provided examples of how it could theoretically work out for a company. If it doesn't work for you, that's no skin of my back.
You're diving back into why this isn't good for your operation when the discussion is a general discussion about a 4-day work week. I provided examples of how it could theoretically work out for a company. If it doesn't work for you, that's no skin of my back.
I never had problems getting employees. It worked out quite well for nearly everyone. We called that a win. When someone left voluntarily it was a surprise. Like I said, promotion or retirement was the most common/likely loss of employees.
The proof was in the pudding.
If customer service (referred to as the insane asylum) wanted to do different hours... then like you said, that was no skin off my back. If the work is critical, requires a presence, needs highly skilled people then when they were hired they knew EXACTLY what team they were joining. However if their personal circumstances changed, lets say a divorce or having children and they required more work life balance, the had options.
It sometimes comes across that some people take these new, progressive approaches as an affront on the way they always did business. This isn't a criticism on you or your operation, my man. It's a discussion about a potentially new way of structuring the labor force and work week (for those that it works for).
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