
Could the U.S. Ever Adopt a Six-Hour Workday? - spking
http://m.fastcompany.com/3051366/the-future-of-work/could-the-us-ever-adopt-a-six-hour-workday?utm_source=cb+insights+newsletter&utm_campaign=bcb70a26a8-driverlesscars_09_27_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9dc0513989-bcb70a26a8-86332341
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GigabyteCoin
My father relayed a story to me about a factory in Toronto that he used to buy
supplies from for over 40 years.

It was a small, tightly knit workforce of about 50 people. Mostly immigrants
with woodworking skills. When hard times hit North America in the early 1970s,
the owner lowered everybody's hours to equate to 6 hours of work per day
instead of laying anybody off.

The owner wasn't being altruistic. He was worried that if he laid off anybody
that they would go to his competitors when the economy turned around. Taking
with them valuable skills and insider knowledge of how his factory operated.

The workers were happy to be getting 75% of their pay instead of 0%, and the
company lasted another 30 years after that with much of the same workforce.

~~~
crpatino
The key is in "tightly knit workforce".

Back during the Big Recession of 2008, my then-bosses announced that they were
going to require mandatory unpaid timeoff* from every employee in order to
minimize the number of positions being eliminated. That meeting had not even
ended, and people was already bitching about how they were not going to be
able to keep afloat their over-leveraged lifestyles, and how unfair it was for
them to subsidize the non-unemployment of a bunch of losers. Apparently none
of the complainers though they would end up on the loser side of things.

*Nothing devastating, lit. one or two days per month.

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verylong
We seem to be moving the opposite direction: fewer people working longer
hours. It is part a consequence of the fact that there are fixed costs per
employee which make it more cost effective to have one employee work 80 hours
a week than have 2 employees work 40 hours a week each. It is also the case
that more jobs require extensive training, skills and experience that are
scarce. I don't society should encourage anyone who spent 20 years learning
something useful in school (e.g., surgeons) to work only 6 hours a day ...

~~~
1971genocide
I had this conversation with a person who is studying medicine.

There is obviously a limit to human mental cognition.

The idea that More years studying = better Doctor, has anyone done any
conclusive study on this ?

Most doctors will tell you that it would be madness to try to cut the time
doctors spend in training - and that we should be extending it. But I fail to
see how a single profession could be so much more complex then say quantum
physicist.

I think doctors and society would be better off if we reduced the learning
curve and figured out how to more effectively distribute the workload among
more doctors.

Doctors already have high sucide rates and very low job satisfaction. And I
bet its because of how long they work and the stress that comes from taking so
much debt throughout one's life. Also the fact that doctors marry latter.

We should try to build work around life rather than the other way round.

It seems absurd to me that doctors need to choose between living their lives
and their proffesional career.

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gregmac
> But I fail to see how a single profession could be so much more complex then
> say quantum physicist.

I am neither a doctor nor a quantum physicist, however, I suspect that having
minutes or seconds to make a literal life or death decision does, in fact,
require a bit more training than the days or months a physicist could be
afforded while designing an experiment or writing a paper.

~~~
cpitman
Except that the vast majority of doctors are not working in an ER. They are
running through the flow chart for "how should I treat this child's ear ache".
The way medical school works now is like saying that every programmer must
understand circuitry in order to write websites.

~~~
rjaco31
I don't know if the dire state of your average computer program should be
taken as an example for how healthcare could be improved.

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ADent
Our department was mandating 20% OT for the last 6 months. I switched to a new
program and the management really would like about 10% OT (8%-12% band).

Oh we used to get some pay for OT, but they took that away.

6 hour workday - how do I get to 8 hours?

This is a Fortune 100 company.

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vijayr
It will be very difficult to do this in the U.S mainly because of cultural
reasons. I've a colleague who works 10-12 hour days routinely, for absolutely
no reason. He could achieve his goals by simply planning better and working
less. Working long hours is part of the culture here.

When I first started working in the U.S I heard this (rather poor) joke many
times when someone was going home at 5.30 pm - "half day today?".

If the U.S wants to do it, it can be done fairly easily - same thing goes for
remote working. The amount of resistance to remote working from middle/upper
management boggles my mind.

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jonsen
The whole idea of a standard work time is ridiculous. We only have it because
for many jobs it is hard to measure actual productivity. This also leads to
the destructive phenomenon of secrecy in compensation where some are heavily
over compensated and many under compensated.

~~~
wtracy
Not so ridiculous when you consider retail or call center jobs that require
_someone_ to be present during business hours.

~~~
mentat
There are certainly more important metrics than mere presence though, aren't
there?

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Mikeb85
No, because the workplace in the US is too focused on competition. Workers try
to put in more face time than the other guy, to climb the ladder and out-do
their neighbours and co-workers. If everyone is forced to work the same amount
of hours, how are they going to out-do others? BTW, the average workday in the
US is currently over 9 hours.

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siquick
As someone who works in the Australian office of a US company with offices in
SA, Europe and Asia Pacific, I am always amazed when US-based colleagues reply
to emails or Skype chat after midnight.

This just does not happen in any other of our regional offices.

~~~
alukima
I worked in a US based office for a global company. The benefits were pretty
awesome- down to them paying for my home internet, but our US based benefits
were still quite weak when compared to our counterparts around the globe. The
US working hours were longer and when I went on overseas assignments I found
that their quality of life was higher than ours overall. It's quite
depressing.

When I started looking for a job last March I realized that the monetary
compensation from the offers I had were within a few thousand of each other
but on only one of the interviews did multiple employees bring up that they
were a true 9-5 and people actually get mad if you reply to emails after hours
or do work during your off time. Their offer was $4000 less than the others
and they didn't seem like they wanted to negotiate. I took it anyway and I now
work 40 hours or less per week, I leave my computer at the office and I don't
feel guilty for not having access to work when I am not at work. So even
though I make a little less yearly, I am making quite a bit more per hour.

I wish more people in positions of choice would prioritize a true work life
balance. Not only has it been great for my physical and mental health, non-
developer employees get the same treatment as it sets a company standard.

I can't believe how long I bought into the culture of giving up a personal
life to get a head at work. I used to put in 60-80 hour weeks and still feel
like I wasn't contributing as much as I should. Now I have hobbies(!) and I
think I solve more programming problems working in my garden than I ever did
sitting in front of a computer.

~~~
icanhackit
_Their offer was $4000 less than the others and they didn 't seem like they
wanted to negotiate. I took it anyway and I now work 40 hours or less per
week_

You made the right decision. Until time can be purchased, let alone at a
decent price, time is the most valuable thing you have. You only have so much
of it and we're giving it away to poorly managed companies like it grows on
trees.

~~~
fsloth
"Until time can be purchased, let alone at a decent price, time is the most
valuable thing you have. "

This is so critical. It is sad people realize how much precious time they have
only when it is running out. Yes, one needs to work but unless the work is
also a healthy passion one should have time for other things in life.

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thescribe
Could the U.S. adopt an eight-hour workday? In my experience no.

~~~
jinushaun
Seriously.

But I'd rather formalize the 10 hr workday and switch to 4x10s. I think it's
superior to 5x8s because you can get longer continuous periods of work and an
extra day to actually rest/recover.

I don't really see 6 hr days working in office jobs. With emails, meetings and
lunch, I feel like I don't really get going until 3pm.

~~~
1971genocide
To each his own. I prefer working a little each day and not stress myself too
much.

I think what needs to happen is an increased in flexibility. To me it seems
that society has done a piss poor job in figuring out how to accommodate to
women and new types of knowledge work - which requires a lot of flexibility.

~~~
Apocryphon
Agreed. Wouldn't having some people on five-day workweeks of 5x6, and others
four-day workweeks of 4x10, and still others doing whatever lead to companies
having to hire more people to fill in the blanks? Wouldn't that help lower
unemployment?

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imh
How about, "Could the U.S. Ever Adopt an Eight-Hour Workday?"

I'm not talking about including off-hour emailing and such. I'm talking about
a plain old 9-5. I'm probably biased by living in SF, but I don't know anyone
who works such short hours. Did salaried people ever get to do eight hour days
like wage workers did?

~~~
marvin
Norwegian here. 7.5 hour work day, lunch included. We don't get paid as much
as US software engineers, though. We are "salaried" in the sense that we have
a fixed salary, but we also have strong protections in law that require
companies to pay if they require more than 8 hours per day from an individual
employee.

I think your question is pretty obvious; as long as salaried means "fixed
price to squeeze out as much effort as possible" then obviously a large
portion of profit-focused companies will do just (misguided or not;
organizations are rarely super insightful in aggregate) that in the absence of
legislation that discourages it.

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hugh4
Would you personally adopt a six-hour workday? Assuming you got paid 25% less?
(Also assuming you currently only work eight hours, which may be a stretch.)

I wouldn't, not at this stage in my life anyway. I'm all for flexibility, but
that goes both ways.

~~~
femto
The proposal is for a six hour day with no change in pay. Quoting one of the
articles referred to on the article: "The 1990s saw several experiments with
the six-hour day for a full wage in Sweden."[1]

The theory is that people should be based on work output, rather than hours
input, and the six hour day typically sees an increase in productivity, so the
output is maintained and the pay is maintained.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-
up-t...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-turnover-
down-sweden-experiments-with-six-hour-working-day)

~~~
mc32
I'd love to see tho applied to low level (maybe even high level -though don't
interact with them to know) government workers. They are totally about hours
put in and very little about work achieved, few, few exceptions of course.

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meesterdude
Can you have a team of people, working less than 40 hours a week, and still
pumping out something profitable? I don't that thats too crazy an idea,
especially in this industry. But I think if the company answers to
stockholders, the underlying purpose of the company leans naturally towards
making someone else money, so you'd be less likely to see that kind of thing.

TL;DR: Yes, but not as long as profits and money are in charge.

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SixSigma
You might want to start gently with a 48 week working year, that seems to work
OK in Europe too.

