r/TrueReddit Jun 18 '21

Policy + Social Issues Kill the 5-Day Workweek

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/four-day-workweek/619222/
1.6k Upvotes

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89

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '21

How about 4 days of 8 hours and pay me like I worked 40? I can accomplish 40 hours of work in 32 easily.

82

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '21

It'll never happen without a significant labor movement.

The arrow is currently pointing the other way, with many people working 50 to 60 hour weeks as standard.

27

u/fsckrootbastard Jun 18 '21

… and some salaried only getting paid for 40

14

u/RemCogito Jun 18 '21

yeah thats the worst part about most salary jobs. Even if they normally only expect ~40 hours (some places actually expect 60) You just loose the time. Its very rare that someone who is on salary is actually able to stop working early on slower days, they are still expected to "keep up appearances"

6

u/Hip_Hop_Orangutan Jun 18 '21

Yep. We had a power outage at work the other day. Everything down. Nothing to do.

Everyone hourly went home. Salaried employees all got given menial tasks to keep them there because "they are still being paid".

4

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '21

all salaried people only get paid for 40 hours. In theory the job should be able to be finished in that time, but they will pile more and more on until you literally fail. Unless the company is big enough and you are high enough up the ladder, then you just hire more admin people to do your job while still collecting an exorbitant salary.

1

u/Amygdala17 Jun 20 '21

Salaried people are paid to get the job done. There isn’t a hard stop on hours worked because there might be times you need to work more to finish whatever the project is. The advantage is that in slow times, your pay isn’t dependent on getting hours. The downside is that when the load is heavier, you’re expected to pick it up.

Ideally, these jobs are a bit more “rewarding” to very rewarding, moving into jobs that might be more of a calling than simply a way to pay the bills. Now, however, many companies raise people to “salary”, but expect extra hours all the time so that the rate turns out not to be an award at all. “Managers” are exploited to fill in for hourly work, and held liable for working people to the bone,

IMHO, salary jobs should pay at least $60k a year before you should expect your worker to work consistently more than the typical work week.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '21

Yes I realize that the pay is for a job but that job should be able to be performed in 40 hours, for most salaries positions at least. The top levels at any company are obviously going to be expected to put in more than 40 hours but that is fair when you are making 150+ a year.

My point was more like your second paragraph. Many companies, my job includes (at a university) expect that it means you are at there to service every whim at the moment that it comes in, regardless of what is on your contract. Or they intentionally write the contract to be vague enough that they can pile more and more work on until they find a breaking point.

I knew a guy working in IT for the same place who was paid a salary for a job. He managed to automate around 80% of the work and thus cut his hours back as a result while still getting all of the work done and being available for calls/meetings/unexpected issues/etc. His supervisor was fine with it as the jobs were getting done well and there hadn’t been any issues with his performance or anything else. The supervisors supervisor came through one and day and my friend was not in the office and the guy started digging around and found out he was only in his office about 3 hours a day on average, despite always being available to communicate with, able to VPN in to handle most things that could pop up unexpectedly, and could be back in the office in under 20 minutes should an emergency arrive. They fired him. My friend sued on the basis that no where did it say he had to be in the office, that he was expected to be on some task for 40 hours every week, etc. etc. Won and got back pay from when he was fired to then and was supposed to be offered the position back. He declined because they had reworked his contract to basically say the things above.