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[[In the immortal words of philosopher Tom DeLonge, “work sucks, I know.”
So what if we worked less?]]
You know that feeling when you get to work on Wednesday morning and you’re like, man,
I’ve still got half a week to go.
It’s awful, and people have been experiencing that same feeling for like a hundred years
now.
Though admittedly back then, most workers were just glad they weren’t working hundred
hour weeks like their parents had.
All the way back in 1926, the Ford Motor Company decided to implement a five day, 40 hour work
week.
This was due to a number of factors - primarily pressure from militant labor, but also the
fact that Henry Ford thought that by offering pretty solid employment perks for the time
- comparatively good work/life balance and a wage well above the average, he could grow
his customer base, which would increase brand recognition and drive further sales.
A little over a decade later, the Fair Labor Standards act codified a 44-hour work week
in federal law, and that was adjusted to 40 hours per week two years later.
This meant that if bosses wanted their employees to work longer hours, they’d have to pay
overtime.
[[There were, and still are, plenty of exceptions to this rule, but that’s a topic for another
video.
The point is, there haven’t been any meaningful changes to the federally recognized workweek
since the world war 2 era.
Why is that?
Let’s look at some historical context.]]
The period leading up to the recognition of the five day, 40 hour workweek was incredibly
tumultuous.
You had the first world war, intense labor and union activity pushing for better conditions,
the great depression, and then the second world war.
Americans were fed up with being treated like dirt and used as cannon fodder for the benefit
of society’s upper crust.
In addition to these factors, the industrial revolution shifted the way we looked at work
- it drew hundreds of thousands of people into new, developing cities to work in factories,
and productivity went through the roof with the implementation of new machinery.
The combination of these technological, economic, and social factors made it possible for workers
to secure some important victories for labor, including the modern workweek as we know it.
If you’d like to learn a bit more about the importance and power of militant labor,
check out the recent video we did on unions.
[[Now, if productivity gains were a major factor in winning the five day workweek, why
haven’t we seen something similar in more recent years?
Since 1979,]]
breakthroughs in computing and other modern technologies have allowed a sort of second
industrial revolution.
Productivity has once again swiftly increased, and has vastly outpaced worker compensation.
We’re getting more done today in a single afternoon than our grandparents could have
done in a week, and we’re getting paid less for it when adjusted for inflation.
[[We don’t need to work as many hours as we do to accomplish our tasks.
So, why haven’t we shortened the workweek accordingly?
Well, as with most things starting around the 70s and 80s, we can thank everyone’s
favorite president, Ronald Reagan.]]
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the goal of delinking productivity gains from worker
compensation was intentional - policy makers in the Reagan era, and in the Extended Reagan
Universe since then, have tried their best to decouple economic growth from employee
compensation, meaning that as companies reap larger profits, they don’t also have to
raise employee pay, which means more of that money goes into the pockets of executives
and shareholders.
This more conservative economic worldview, part of Reagan’s famous Trickle Down Economics,
which, mind you, has been thoroughly debunked in recent years, also explains the reason
we haven’t heard much talk of shortening the workweek.
Why give workers more time off when you can just keep squeezing more value out of them?
[[But here’s the thing.
We have the data to show that a shorter workweek not only improves workers’ lives, but positively
impacts the company they work for too.
Let me explain.]]
It’s no secret that humans aren’t productive the entire 8 or so hours they’re at work.
There’s just not enough to keep us busy for that long.
The exact figures vary by industry, but on average, workers are only engaged in productive,
business-related activities for less than 60% of the day.
The stats for office workers are particularly striking - assuming an eight-hour day, the
average office worker is only productive for 2 hours and 23 minutes.
[[That’s a huge amount of time where there’s just nothing to do.
There are only so many emails you can respond to, after all.
Now, we’ve got a couple of options here]]
- the first is for the boss to find a way to force workers to be productive for the
entire 8 hours, or at least closer to it.
Usually this takes the form of enforcing busywork.
[[For me, when I worked at Best Buy selling cameras, that meant polishing the lens cases
any time I wasn’t actively talking to a customer.
Let me tell you, those were the cleanest panes of glass in all of Texas.
After a certain point, it’s just ridiculous to try to keep workers working for the sake
of not being “unproductive.”]]
Obviously this has overwhelmingly negative effects - it’s mind-numbing, pointless,
and makes you hate your job and your boss just a little bit more.
Even from a capitalist perspective, it’s pretty clear that enforcing maximum productivity
is a net negative.
That’s where shortening the workweek comes in.
There have been a number of 4-day workweek trials in different countries over the last
few years.
Let’s take a look at some of the conclusions from the most recent experiments, which were
conducted in the US and Ireland in 2022.
The two trials, which began in February and March, consisted of 33 companies and over
900 employees.
The premise was simple - companies that were interested in trying out a reduced workweek
received training, tools, and prep to make sure the transition from five days to four
went smoothly.
The goals were to maintain productivity and revenue while increasing employee morale and
improving work/life balance.
But the actual results blew those goals out of the water.
Not only did revenue not decrease, it actually rose by 8%.
Employee retention rose, absenteeism dropped, two thirds of workers reported lower levels
of burnout, ratings for mental and physical health improved as workers could get more
sleep and had more time to exercise, and they were less bored at work since there was less
pointless downtime and busywork.
[[Across the board, in every aspect of work, ratings improved - for both the employees
and the companies.
These pilot programs were so successful that 97% of involved workers responded in favor
of continuing the 4-day workweek.
Presumably those last three percent just really like water cooler smalltalk about the weather
or something.]]
Very few things in life return results as clearly positive as these four-day workweek
trials.
This is clearly the way forward, and it’s essentially unanimous among workers, with
some of them even reporting that no amount of money could convince them to return to
a five-day workweek.
And this is just considering the immediate effects on companies and their workers, the
subsequent social and environmental effects would also be significant.
Take commuting, for example.
If a four-day workweek were implemented at the federal level, that’s a 20 percent reduction
in commuting overnight.
Roughly 130 million Americans drive to work everyday.
Think of the reduction in emissions from car exhaust from this one change alone.
That is a staggering improvement, and one with essentially zero drawbacks, except presumably
more intense propaganda from the fossil fuel industry as their profits shink.
Then as far as societal changes go, just think about what you would do with an extra weekend
day every week.
Think how many more meaningful things we could do with family and friends, or heck, by ourselves
- just getting to decompress and take an extra day for ourselves would dramatically improve
the mental health of the entire workforce.
[[You’d end up with a country of happier, healthier, less stressed, more rested workers.
This, by every possible measure, is a no-brainer.
So what’s the catch?
This sounds a little too good to be true.]]
Well, for one thing, we have to consider where exactly this push is coming from.
This guy, Andrew Barnes, is the one more or less responsible for popularizing the notion
of the four-day workweek.
He’s a CEO himself, a position antagonistic to labor.
Even if he has the best of intentions, the inherent contradiction between capital and
labor makes his advocacy for a four-day workweek tenuous at best.
Regardless of how nice a guy he seems, look at how he talks about the initiative.
Barnes sees the 4-day week as a gift to his workers, not as a right based simply on the
fact that productivity has increased so dramatically in the last hundred years.
That perspective is obviously flawed, and should serve as a useful reminder and a warning
that the capitalist class is always willing to rescind these privileges in order to increase
their profits.
Indeed, if you listen to most of the executives who praise the initiative, it’s less about
the fact that a four-day workweek is just common sense and more humane, and more about
the fact that it yields more efficient and compliant cogs in their machine.
[[This is not to say that these executives are bad people, necessarily, just that the
goals of capital and labor are in direct conflict - the goal of capital is to increase profits
and decrease costs, and the goal of labor is to get as much money as possible for their
time and labor power.
These two things will never be in alignment.
But in the case of the four-day workweek, it’s about as close as it gets.]]
The trials we’ve seen so far have followed the 100-80-100 model, a proposition that guarantees
100% of the worker’s normal pay, in 80% of the time, with a commitment to deliver
100% of their work in that time.
Workers get time off and keep their pay, businesses reduce costs in the form of electricity, turnover,
and inefficiency.
There are benefits to both parties, and that is the only reason we might see this actually
come to pass.
[[But here’s the thing.
While we absolutely should push for the federal implementation of a four-day workweek, we
also have to be cognizant of the fact that until that time, this initiative is entirely
dependent on the willingness of the capitalist class.]]
We only won the five day workweek thanks to a tremendously powerful militant labor movement.
Same with all the other things we take for granted today - child labor laws, workplace
safety laws, social security, vacation time, and so much more.
As we’ve explored in past videos, we are at the beginning of a new labor movement,
but it’s nowhere near as strong as it was a hundred years ago.
I’m not saying that to discourage anyone, but rather to remind you that without the
strength of militant labor behind the movement for a four-day workweek, the capitalist class
will not feel any pressure to actually go through with it, especially in industries
where reducing working hours would cut into profits.
So yes, while it is obvious that it’s high time to bring our conception of work into
the 21st century, we also need to continue building the labor movement so that we can
demand these changes, not depend on the unreliable and self-serving “generosity” of the capitalist
class.
[[There was a time when workers had real say in their working conditions, and we can have
that again.
If you’d like to be a part of that, look into unionizing your workplace or joining
a socialist organization.
I’ve left links to the IWW and some of the bigger orgs in the description.
Every one of us has a role to play, it’s only together that we can force the change
we want to see.
Why not start with the four-day workweek?]]
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