Are you self-employed? If not, how did you negotiate 3:7 work week? Any tips to someone who values work-life balance and want to try negotiate 4:7 instead of the current 5:7 standard?
There is a legal limit to the number of night shifts. Employers may chose either to have employees work a maximum of 140 night shifts per year or a maximum of 38 hours of labor between 0:00 and 6:00 every 2 weeks. (the mandatory 30 min lunch break is not labor)
But I do have an idea for your negotiations. I notice that people who also work day shifts and work 5:7 are tired all the time. If they push themselves either at work or in their private lives the weekend is to short to recover. They just gradually burn up over the year, go on vacation and look 10 years younger when they return.
I can push myself to [measurably] be more than twice as productive during my shifts for 2 reasons: 1) I don't have to worry about wearing myself out, on the contrary, I make an effort to wear myself out completely for the sports of it. If I don't recover in this weeks 4 day weekend I certainly will in the next.
And 2) Because I'm pushing myself and I take time to recover I'm building up endurance rather than slowly decaying. Working as hard as I can is actually beneficial.
Consider what it means: I do 6 days of work and they do 5.
During my 4 day vacation I'm available for messages and phone calls and they call me to fill holes in the schedule. If they call the full time employee he is very unhappy with the request (to put it mildly) and he is only "available" for 2 days.
It doesn't happen very often but if they have to work 2 weekends in a row their productivity gradually drops to something like 40%.
At that point I'm doing 5 times as much work as my coworker. That difference is so ridiculous I think it makes for a fine argument.
I failed to mention I do physical work because writing software wears me out much faster. I see no reason why it wouldn't work the same way. Brain/Desk work (at least in my experience) is not limited by Newtonian mechanics.
It would depend on the kind of job but I imagine it is worth testing if you are more productive working 4 days, or 3. Perhaps one can just be there for meetings? Maybe you can do some stuff to build up the goodwill, from what I've seen there are companies that actually care about the end result and praise employees willing to run the extra mile to make it all work. An overworked managers should be able to understand that you suspect to be more productive working fewer hours? Could ask him on Friday and point out some examples on the work floor.
I can sleep when I want and as long as I want. 14 hours is not a problem. It's required for recovery. The day before a shift I stay awake till 3:00 am-ish and sleep at least 7 hours. Its great for me.
