
In Sweden, Happiness in a Shorter Workday Can’t Overcome the Cost - slizard
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/business/sweden-work-employment-productivity-happiness.html
======
sctb
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13318990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13318990)

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raesene9
For me, an important takeaway from reading this article was to consider the
type of employment they trialled it on.

The trial was in a retirement home, which is by design somewhere that needs
24x7 cover. This means that any reduction in hours needs to be covered by more
staff, obviously necessitating more expense.

What would be far more interesting to me, is a trial on an industry like
software development where output isn't measured in number of hours but more
in the product created. It would be interesting to see if a reduction in hours
negatively or positively affected the quality/quantity of code produced.

~~~
dogma1138
Software industry is driven by plenty of workers where work hours equal to
output, maybe not development but then in the software industry in many cases
development isn't the bulk of the workforce.

Sure everyone can be an engineer, I've seen companies that give a title of
"customer services engineer" to their phone banks, but at the end support
staff which unless you work at a startup can be as high as 80% of the work
force does need to be present for as many hours as possible, even 24/7 in many
cases.

~~~
raesene9
sure but I specifically said I was interested in seeing a trial where hours
worked doesn't equal output, because that would be an interesting comparison
to this trial, didn't make any comment about "the software industry"

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beerbajay
This headline is terrible. The issue is not the cost; it's political will even
by the social democratic party. As it says in the caption of the main image:

> Toyota has been using the shorter workday there for more than a decade.

This is typically lazy American reporting when considering different political
systems/paradigms.

~~~
ThomPete
No no no. Its not just a matter of political will. Its a question of the type
of busuinees and its individual situation. the whole idea that this can be
applied generally is whats wrong. Productivity simply doesent work like that.

If anything is lazy its the idea that poltical view is all that matter.

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ascorbic
It seems a particularly poor choice of workplace to try this. Care homes need
to maintain certain staffing levels, 24 hours a day, so there is a hard limit
to the benefits that can be gained from improved productivity.

~~~
hanspragt
I don't think you will shake out the issues if you try it in the easiest place
possible.

~~~
ascorbic
It's not that it's not the easiest place. It's that it's impossible. If you
have a minimum required staffing level, there is no scope for savings from
increased productivity. They might be able to accomplish all their tasks
better in half the time, but they'd still need to pay someone else to be on
site for the rest of the time.

~~~
hanspragt
If impossibility was a foregone conclusion, why try it in the first place? I
appluad them for doing the study in this place.

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slizard
Even if it is not found to be acceptable now (which might sadly turn out to be
the case even in Sweden), at least when jobs start to dry out, people will
realize that an intermediate solution to increasing unemployment is letting
people work less -- hopefully for similar pay.

~~~
Eridrus
I don't understand why we expect people to be paid the same for less work.

Given the benefits of a shorter work week accrue primarily to workers, why do
we not advocate for giving them the flexibility to work fewer hours if they
want to?

It's harder to make this argument in software, but in shift-based employment
this should almost be a no brainer.

~~~
tomatopotato
I think it's important to note that full employment is a thing of the past and
ultimately I would expect humanity to leave behind this idea that everyone
needs to work. What did we come up with all this automation for? To enrich the
few? Or to make work less and less of an issue for everyone? We are entering
an age where more and more work is being done by robots. We either punish
those who get replaced by machines or we craft a community in which people are
empowered to enjoy life.

~~~
treehau5
What about the people who enjoy working? The dignity of receiving an honest
wage for an honest day's work? The satisfaction for providing for their
family? For some people, their work is the only thing that keeps them in
shape. My father, when he was no longer able to find work, and now after
looking for 10 years is too old, literally sits on the couch for 16 hours a
day watching television and smoking cigarettes. He would do _anything_ to
work.

This thinking on here that we are doing humanity this huge service by
automating all their pesky little maniacal jobs away is insane, and it needs
to stop. There is more than one world view out there.

~~~
slizard
The concept that a job gives meaning and structure to life, builds character,
etc." is not sustainable in the future.

Related, interesting read: [https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-
solution-but...](https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-
the-problem)

~~~
treehau5
Something about when Professors feel the need to curse to look cool throws me
off the wrong way, dunno, call me old fashioned.

I am making myself familiar with Mr. James Livingston -- it's an argument that
has been made many times before -- that there aren't enough jobs to go around,
that the private sector doesn't really create all the jobs, and ends with some
form of UBI. I have heard it a thousand times. I still remain unconvinced.

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godzillabrennus
I like how they reference Japan and Qatar. Japan has a pretty overworked
populace and a culture that is toxic to the health of the worker.

Qatar has literally brought in masses under indentured servitude to build
their workforce.

Not exactly countries with workforce practices that I'd like to see emulated
in the USA.

------
ptaipale
Some former threads in HN:

2014-06-03 Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday (washingtonpost.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7838459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7838459)

2014-07-14 Sweden's Six-Hour Workday Experiment Officially Kicks Off Tomorrow
(entrepreneur.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8029162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8029162)

2015-10-01 Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day
(fastcoexist.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10306635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10306635)

2016-04-22 Gothenburg's six-hour work day experiment hangs in the balance
(thelocal.se)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11543538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11543538)

All in all, the HN posts were not that bad, but in social media - Facebook and
Twitter - I saw plenty of overly optimistic, baseless junk spouting the
magnificence of how Sweden just went to 6-hour workweek for the nation and
productivity gains were so huge. It was actually depressing...

Well, obviously people are happier if they work a shorter day and get the same
salary, and the productivity per hour may actually increase somewhat. But it
won't reach the productivity of 8 (or 7.5) hours.

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gremlinsinc
I think the way forward is some sort of basic income, even if that's just 25%
of average salaries across the country, so that then the company can employ
MORE people, but make them work 25% less, and pay them 25% less making them
happier, healthier, and the gov't picks up the bill for the lost 25% income to
the worker... It'd also be a good experiment for gbi in general.

~~~
sethammons
How does the government pick up the bill? They get their money from us via
taxes...

~~~
gremlinsinc
They're going to tax us no matter what, why not put it to good use instead of
spend 50 million on a better toilet, or a pork project in their home district?

~~~
luck_fenovo
Let's talk USA. About 320,000,000 citizens (presumably basic income is for
everyone). Let's assume $150 a week (it being $15/hr for 1/4 of an optimistic
work week). That gives us 48 billion dollars that have to come from cutting
existing spending in your scenario.

Cutting your better toilet gets us about a tenth of a percent to this week's
goal!

You're not going to have basic income without raising taxes a huge amount.
Current tax revenue per year is about $2 trillion, which covers about 2/3 of
the current federal budget. If you decided to cut all that spending and spread
it equally among the population would be like 6 grand a year, not nearly
enough to live on.

~~~
chinathrow
> That gives us 48 billion dollars that have to come from cutting existing
> spending in your scenario.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)

US: 596.0B

Target easily reachable.

~~~
luck_fenovo
48 billion dollars. Per week. So, yes, if we decided not to have a military at
all, we could meet the basic income requirements for about 3 months.

------
inputcoffee
The first question we should ask is where does the extra value come from (not
money, but value, and you'll see why in a moment).

One answer may be automation, and typically, the excess value is passed on to
the customer in the form of lower cost. (That's why we ought to talk about
value, even if we can't easily measure it).

One alternative is not to pass on the value to the customer, but to give it to
the workers. You could do this by reducing hours, increasing pay, or some
combination.

There are two problems with this:

1\. You can't do this in an open, market economy. The government could do this
with government jobs where they have a monopoly.

2\. It is kind of arbitrary that you decide to value this particular worker
over this particular consumer.

Another solution is to give everyone a basic income with all the extra value
(collected as taxes, roughly equally) that automation generates. So the seller
might give a discount to the customer but the rest of the value would go to
the state.

Then people can decide how they want to spend it.

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robbrown451
This is what I'd like to see:

Companies be required to offer various plans, at the employees discretion,
that have different pay rates. For instance, working 75% of 40 hours might get
you 80% of the salary. (with the hope that you are at least a bit more
productive during your more limited hours than you would be if doing 40 hours)

Employees shouldn't be discriminated based on which plan they take. They just
have to give a couple months notice if they change plans, especially if it is
a small company where the impact might be greater.

Benefits is a complication, but personally I'd prefer health insurance etc was
just separated from employment. Regardless, if you work less hours, you'd
probably have to chip in more toward insurance.

This may still be costly to employers, but if all companies have to do it, it
should work out. (sure, there are foreign competitors, but that is a different
issue) And this can potentially help with unemployment.

~~~
RestlessMind
Google offers this today - you can go on part time schedule if you want, and
your salary / vacation days / RSU vesting is adjusted accordingly. You get
benefits if you are at least 50%.

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vlasev
If we twist things the other way - this shows that you can buy happiness...

------
unabridged
Instead of mandating specific amount of hours per day or week, I'd like to see
something like:

1.5x pay at 30 hours

2x pay at 40 hours

