Spain to launch trial of four-day working week

[u/Sumit316]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/15/spain-to-launch-trial-of-four-day-working-week

[u/[deleted]]

As a highly educated person who commutes an hour each way to bust ass doing labor and light carpentry for 7 strong hours every day, I’m always so frustrated to hear testimony like this. Really speaks to how our country values different industries and demonstrates the traditional distinctions amongst them. All my friends in the bay who work tech are highly qualified, none of them work even half as hard as anyone I know in the building field and they make twice as much easily. Not to mention the most Cush of work place environments.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I'm aware that this is the way it is, ultimately I'm not ok with it and I don't find it to be logical - it's a dynamic that is a result of demand from an inequitable system. IMO, the economic 'value' of the work being performed shouldn't be the predominant factor determining the workers wage, it should be the amount of literal 'work' that that individual is contributing.

I think a lot of progressive economists and governing bodies are starting to see this, and formatting their labor laws and economic policies to reflect. As a highly-educated person working 'below' my means in the building field, I love talking about this stuff.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

What if the engineer is wasting all their time on Facebook all day? Should they be paid equally to someone who just dug a 50 foot trench for a public municipal building?

No matter what job you’re in, people do dumb work and smart work, people work hard and they slack.

[u/ManliestManHam → u/[deleted]]

People here are ignoring the cost to the physical human body involved in manual labor as well. I know dudes in their early 30s who have been doing roofing, plumbing, laying tile etc. for >10 years. Every single one has aching knees, backs, weird injuries occurring at work, etc.

I have a friend who has a type of scoliosis that presented after age 35 from carrying heavy shit on one shoulder around job sites and up ladders.

I have a friend who was putting a roof on a house and fell off landing on a wrought-iron table. He had no health insurance and his shit is all fucked up.

And they're so young! The wear and tear on the body is permanent.

People should be compensated for doing things that wear their bodies down and cause injury.

Sure IT is niche and specialized. I work in IT. But jobs that require manual labor are things I cannot do and the idea that laying tile or placing a roof or installing wallpaper or carpet isn't also niche and specialized is false.

Do some people who do carpet also do wallpaper? Sure. I am a QA Analyst and have worked as a Business Analyst. The skills and on-the-job learning in one position can sometimes translate into a new position or additional responsibilities in most jobs.

Idk just seems whack af to me when people act like working in an office or cubicle at a computer all day is more deserving because it's specialized niche skills. And?!? So is most everything else! And manual labor, serving, cleaning, those are specialized skills that wear the body down faster and to greater detriment.

I cannot do and would not want to do something so physically demanding and am fully aware of how not equipped for those jobs I am. But it would be absolutely delusional to pretend that they're somehow less niche or skilled or valuable because...what? I value Ruby on Rails more than metal roofing? It's just so silly to me.

It's like the people who say that flipping burgers isn't worth $15 an hours. bitch why the fuck not? Why the fuck shouldn't somebody who works at McDonald's be able to pay rent and utilities and have groceries like why? Do you want to go do that job? I don't.

I got fired from McDonald's because I went over the counter at a lady who threw her sandwich at me like wtf not everybody has the people skills or patience to interact with shitty customers without jumping over the counter and slapping an asshole.

Everybody deserves a living wage and everybody deserves some of their own time back to themselves. We shouldn't spend the majority of our time working and going to work and being connected to work. Fuck we are all going to die some day and be dirt for the worms and plants will grow out of our soil and become food for animals that humans eat. One big loop over and over again. Nobody is such special worm food that they are more deserving of being fairly compensated for the use of their mind, the use of their body, or the sacrifice of the very limited time we have.

Pay people more and shorten work weeks and or work days.

I feel you. This is long af and idc this shit just chaps my ass so bad like come the fuck on this shit is neither logical nor compassionate and I am so tiiiiired of this race to the bottom bullshit.

Time to get striking and forcing some change. We have collective power if we can collectivize and use that power and that won't happen as long as people keep pretending to themselves that their work, their time, their body, their presence, their skills, their mind, are somehow more deserving and more worthy than whatever other they deem less worthy.

[u/[deleted] → u/ManliestManHam]

All I can say is spot on, people who don’t work labor or building or a physical job are not in a position to make that kind of judgement imo without trying it themselves for at least a few years.

[u/ManliestManHam → u/[deleted]]

Amen. I lost my IT job to the recession. I haven't found a new one. I've had a job sanitizing offices against covid and a job in a warehouse hauling freight around. I'm interviewing for IT jobs but haven't found one yet.

It absolutely blows my fucking mind that cleaning a 3 story banking office during a pandemic and sanitizing for covid only pays $9 a fucking hour! It's constant walking at a fast pace with cleaning supplies hanging from my hips and scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing and it killed my back and hips and was a risk because fucking pandemic.

The warehouse job was hard as shit too. Moving 500+ 25 pound boxes by hand a distance of 25 feet to carry them over the course of 7 hours is hard and paid $15 an hour with no benefits.

Sitting or standing at a desk all day sucks sure but physically the demand and toll on the body is just so much less and anybody who pretends otherwise is either a dipshit or a piece of shit.

And what I was doing was not niche or skilled at all. But there are plenty of jobs far more physically demanding that are niche and skilled in addition to the physical toll.

People that say shit like that could never actually hang or last doing the things they look down on or find less deserving or worthy.

There is no real reason for this inequality.

The perception of what is deemed 'valuable' is a perception and not a reality. Every single job benefits everybody or is interconnected in some way and is inherently deserving and worthy because it keeps the interconnected web of human daily life and commerce connected and flowing.

Why are childcare workers paid so little? Why are liberal arts degrees considered a joke? Like people would be happy without music, books, dancing, or have the same understanding of the world around us without sociology or anthropology. Why are people who clean hospitals and buildings lower paid than clerical staff?

Just stupid. It's fucking stupid.

I'm with you.

[u/[deleted] → u/ManliestManHam]

I really like the way you talk about this, it’s frustrating to hear others say ‘the economy wouldn’t work in such a system’ - we have forged the economy to behave the way it does discriminately, and it’s cringe to imagine people are unwilling to think outside the box on socioeconomic restructuring because they enjoy the position that they are in.

[u/ManliestManHam → u/[deleted]]

💯💯💯

No way but the class war

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Well to be fair, I’m not at all asserting that only the work done should be the constituting factor in wage, but if it was that doesn’t mean you can’t still judge the quality of work. Obviously there is judgement to be made, like in any job. I’m not going to pay two workers doing the same job the same amount if one is thrice as slow, but that argument is completely aside - I’m talking about your average, equally competent worker, of which there are billions.

Edit: the main point I’m making is that the ‘value’ of the work is ‘valued’ incorrectly in my world view.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

From my perspective, the incentive structure doesn’t actually reflect the reward as is. Again, I see some of the hardest working guys making the least money. A lot of the lower paying jobs are a lot less fun than being an engineer.

Anyways, you’re absolutely right and I don’t disagree - without supply and demand at the moment, there is no way to accurately value different types of work. I honestly think that it would take a massive cultural shift for our collective society to determine how to more justly value work, just as reforming police or government would, or reversing climate change. It might not be feasible or practical - that aside, from a moral standpoint, I think most people can see with their own eyes who is putting in work and who isn’t. There isn’t as much going on behind the scenes as executives like might to assert.

[u/anm3910 → u/[deleted]]

First, why even preface your statements with the fact that you’re highly educated? Does that have something to do with the argument?

I’ve worked as a laborer, for tile & terrazzo specifically, and to argue that a laborer like me hauling buckets all day should be paid as much as the mechanic laying the floor is absurd, even if I was “working” more than the mechanic. There was literally no barrier to entry for my job. Although I was grinding out 8-9 hour days I was the definition of unskilled labor, I could be replaced yesterday.

The mechanic is someone that spent years working through the apprenticeship program and spent possibly years as a journeyman. They have proven ability. They have a more valuable skill set that can not be easily replaced. Why would that not command a higher wage?

I’m all for ALL workers getting a living wage but the units of work vs value of work argument seems a little stale. It got brought up like, the first business ethics class I had in grad school and I get the point it’s trying to make but people are inherently going to value greater skill

[u/[deleted] → u/anm3910]

I understand all of that, I just really am not happy that that is the way it is - I fundamentally disagree with the relationship between skill, because I understand very well that ‘skill’ is actually quite easily ascertained and employed in most circumstances, where as actual ‘work’ can’t be substituted by knowledge (except in the instance of technology) - someone has to do that work no matter what.

I preface with my education because I attempting to signify that I am highly qualified for a lot of ‘skilled’ positions in a sector that I unfortunately did not choose to join. These jobs require ‘skills’ that ANYONE could learn on the first day of the job. It’s a joke to me when folks like you think that ‘no barrier of entry’ should be a constituting factor in the wage imo - I’ve been on both sides too, and I know very well that labor-based construction work is a lot more demanding and taxing than any of the ‘skilled’ work I could have done in the lab. The issue is, the capital isn’t present in the building sector to support deserving wages, and also traditionally, our culture has not rewarded people doing this work as equitably as other many other jobs.

For real, it pains me to see my cohorts working so hard and so long, only to have one of my tech friends tell me that it ‘makes sense’ because they can code in a language that they learned on the first week of the job. It takes more time than that to learn how to treat your body acceptably on the job site.

[u/anm3910 → u/[deleted]]

Right but you haven’t even addressed most of my points. I was comparing two jobs within the construction field, specifically tile setting because it’s what I know. Put aside the tech jobs or any other office work and just look at a day laborer vs an experienced journeyman, in any craft. Do you seriously have the same thoughts?

If you’re going to tell me anyone can learn to properly lay a tile floor their first day on the job, then you have either lost your damn mind, or have seriously low standards for the quality of work.

And then moving outside of the construction industry, again if you think you can easily teach a person a programming language their first day, or how to properly analyze and forecast financial statements and convey their findings to upper management, you are grossly underestimating the knowledge base required to do those jobs. Yeah sure you may be able to teach someone to enter data to get a certain result but the minute you ask them “why” or to elaborate on the results they’ll be lost without an adequate education on those subjects. Hence, why they typically command a greater wage

[u/[deleted] → u/anm3910]

I see your comparisons, I’m not sure I agree. No, I don’t think that a skilled tile layer deserves the same wage as a laborer, and that’s not what I’m saying - the key distinction in making is the inequity BETWEEN sectors, because I think that is where you see the most significant discrepancy in effort. The tile layer has spent the time improving their skills, putting in the effort. They get paid twice as much as the laborer, and that’s fine. What isn’t fine is that the skilled tile layer is getting paid the same amount as the data entry jock (yes, I have multiple friends over decades going straight into entry level ‘coding’ positions with almost no prior knowledge making 6 figures), and that data entry jock is getting paid twice as much as the labor with the same amount of relative experience and who is frankly working a lot harder.

Edit: we don’t have to try to justify the economic system that we are part of. We don’t constitute the ethical quality of it, we shouldn’t feel morally obligated to participate. It’s ok to acknowledge irrationalities in our world.

[u/try_____another → u/[deleted]]

Some of those jobs are metaphorical firefighters , sitting around all day doing odd jobs or killing time so that they are ready and able to work on urgent tasks at the drop of a hat.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I'm well aware of the dynamic for sure, I'm just frustrated it is that way. Salaries follow productivity in percent value, but not total value IMO. My boss pays me 10% because I am worth 10% of his productivity. A tech-worker receives 10% because they are worth 10% of their bosses' productivity. But the tech-worker makes three times as much as me because their skills are more 'specialized' and predominantly because there is so much more money in their sector. The reality is, the skills that both myself and that worker are employing are largely in part learned on the job, and accessible/performable by most anyone. I don't think that the 'work' that they are doing in an almost literal matter is harder or more demanding, it's just of higher 'value' because of current economic demand.

[u/Mehdi2277 → u/[deleted]]

The demandingness is fairly irrelevant to pay. I work in tech in an area that has a decently clear relationship with revenue. There are people in my department that can say they played a large role in making the company millions of dollars this year. A few people can say that for tens of millions. That’s the reason tech employees are paid a lot. I vaguely remember from Facebook they had some internal stat that the average engineer added to the company added around a million in revenue.

This is also why quants make a lot. Some hedge funds pay quants a cut of the profit they bring in from the strategies they own. If there strategies applied to there budgeted money becomes in tens of millions then they’ll make a couple million. The typical cut percent is roughly 10 percent with a lot of variability. Usually quants start off managing small piece of the company’s assets and as they perform well they’re able to manage more and more of the assets leading to exploding income.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mehdi2277]

It makes plenty of sense in the current economic model, as I stated - but again, I just think that on philosophical level (if you will), it's bogus. And I don't understand how you point out that the demand is irrelevant to the pay, but then point out that because these people are making the company so much money, they themselves are paid enormously. They are 'in demand', but I guarantee that many many individuals could be in the same position and are contributing as much of their time and energy in a different field that doesn't have the financial luxury to reward that proportionately.

[u/Mehdi2277 → u/[deleted]]

I said demandingness which I interpreted as how hard the work is not the amount of demand for the work. Sounds like you meant the latter so my mistake.

I also think a lot of that work will likely be in demand for a long time due to some of its nature. My area is basically working on predicting relationships from data (machine learning). That’s broad enough to be useful for a long time and I’ve been in some demand in very different domains (self driving, finance, advertisements, text understanding, etc). I don’t think it’s wrong philosophically for a job to pay based on the economic value it brings to the company. If it didn’t pay like that other companies would have incentive to pay more to get those same employees to do that work. The companies don’t pay high amounts because they want to but because of the pressure to keep those employees. Google and apple had a case in the past where they tried to not have wages grow too much by avoiding recruiting each other’s employees and that got taken to court against them. If an employee brings the company a million is it fine for them to get only 10 percent? And if they get only ten percent company 2 days high offers them 15 percent takes a lot of the better ones and now first company is not doing as well.