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So, should America reduce by 1 hour per year each year for the next decade the 40 hour work, in order to reduce the work week to 30 hours, but companies would need to increase pay proportionally to maintain the standard of living in the country?
This can only happen if we massively strengthen the labor union movement, sadly. We are eons behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to labor rights. We dont even require employers to provide paid vacation and paid overtime for all their employees. Thats a result of destroyed labor unions. Rebuild the unions and workers will not get so easily riled up and vote for crazy people for Congress. Unions have a civilizing effect on society like nothing else has.
We would have to start moving our labor laws to be more like that of most European and Scandinavian countries. Unfortunately we currently are somewhere in the middle and seem to steadily be moving to be closer like the Middle East and Northern Africa.
I remember being in high school, 50 years ago, and a couple teachers saying that by the year 2000 a 30 hour, or less, work week would be the norm. Mostly due to automation and robotics.
What wasn't taken into account, and what I learned a few years later working in manufacturing, is the point of automation is to increase per worker productivity (fewer workers making more widgets) so you need fewer workers each producing more product.
In the mid-1970s I worked for a company in two different divisions, one making plastic bottle caps and the other making glass bottles.
The cap plant had about 300 production employees making about 3 million bottle caps a day. By 2000 it still had about 300 production employees who made 21 million bottle caps a day. That's automation, or a form of it. Just like cars the injection machines transitioned from mechanical controls to computer controlled electronic controls, making the manufacturing process more precise and the controlling of the various temperatures and injections rates more precise with fewer culls or other mistakes.
This can only happen if we massively strengthen the labor union movement, sadly. We are eons behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to labor rights. We dont even require employers to provide paid vacation and paid overtime for all their employees. Thats a result of destroyed labor unions. Rebuild the unions and workers will not get so easily riled up and vote for crazy people for Congress. Unions have a civilizing effect on society like nothing else has.
The US labor movement decided in the 1920’s to give up leisure time in favor of higher wages. Europe went the other way.
I have no issue with private sector unions but am not a fan of public sector ones at all.
...but companies would need to increase pay proportionally
to maintain the standard of living in the country?
And there's the rub. Who pays.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NBP
What wasn't taken into account... is the point of automation is to increase per worker
productivity (fewer workers making more widgets) so you need fewer workers ...
The idea of a shorter work week has merits, but...
but being used as a solution for producing an excess of likely workers isn't one of them.
At least not without a concurrent and real scheme to reduce those raw numbers.
Last edited by MrRational; 09-20-2018 at 05:55 AM..
There's a presumption here, it should be drug out into the light.
You don't HAVE to work 40+ hours a week. For most on C-D, it's a conscious decision to do so in order to buy a more expensive home (or second home), always have new cars, and basically play the game "Keeping up with the Jones's"
My wife had no issues being hired on at her most current position at 32 hours a week (minimum that comes with health insurance, which is the only reason she works so much in the first place), when it was advertised as a 40hr position. Prior to this position she worked contracts and part time, but healthcare was affordable for individuals then too.
You don't Have to work 40 hours a week. But you DO have to live more modestly if you want to work less.... so, what's important to you. Money status or free time?
Most of the above will do little. WE need to declare a moratorium on illegal immigration for the next 45 years, as we did in the 1920's, instead of bankrupting our social safety net to appease racists and right wing labor racketeers, and do away with the green card scam, since there has never been a labor shortage in the U.S. in its entire history.
As for robots, and off-shoring as well, we need to tax them as if they were human employees and/or as if those jobs are still in the U.S.,to make up the revenue shortfalls to the various programs financed through payroll taxes. We can tax the companies themselves or set a tariff to cover it, both will work.
I like the idea of 30 hours becoming the norm, but only if we greatly reduce the welfare rolls by putting the recipients to work. That ten-hour slack should provide jobs for all the able-bodied. Don't wanna work? No check for you. Period.
But it's not enough to shorten the work week. We also must close our borders and arrest those who hire cheap illegal laborers. If we stop the incentive to come here we won't need to build an expensive wall.
And considering how our technology is exploding faster than we can comprehend it, we might also consider putting limits on the use of robotics.
We decide this, through market forces. If businesses and workers naturally agree, it will happen. That is the debating and voting mechanism.
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