We should gradually reduce the 40 hour week to 30 hours (generation, state, support)
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No, it is not the governments business to determine hours or wages. It’s duty is to regulate a fair free market. It’s past and current intrusions have caused massive distortions in housing, higher ed and healthcare costs.
Salaried jobs aren't 40 hours so IMO a person working 40 hours isn't really overworked. Most of my salaried jobs required 50-60 hours a week. A job or company may allow part time hours (30 hours) such as clerical work or nursing but a person working only 30 hours WILL NEVER make the same salary as someone willing to work 50-60 hours for a company. This is one reason why women routinely don't make as much money as men. Most of the part timers I've known were women, never men. One of my friends worked only 20 hours a week during her entire adult career.
If a certain job requires 50-60 hours of work, who is going to cover the remaining 20-30 hours that someone isn't there?
The nursing field came up with the 12 hour work day so people only had to work 3 days a week to get 36 hours but it's severely taxing to put in 13-14 hours a day (when you add in commuting time etc.) on your feet. No one can do it for too long.
I think this is also a way the US population is controlled...its the norm to work crazy long hours, being up to your eyeballs in debt...this keeps people 'BUSY', preoccupied, but paying taxes at the same time, its no surprise that many people today simply do not have time for other more important things, their debt, workload is always the priority and anything that may be a risk to their jobs, they avoid.
It seems that power, raw political power, would be an obvious aspect of anything we may think of as being a tool utilized in the pursuit of our best interest, and on that note it should go without saying that workers have had little power as opposed to the power of corporations. As an adjunct to that, it should also be obvious that knowing how the forty hour week came about would be of interest to those contemplating a lesser requirement of time on the job. The bitter battles fought with regard to how long a worker must work before they have some time off, is our first clue that upsetting the apple cart of the forty hour week would be no cake walk.
The struggle for American labor rights, in many cases, initiated a bloodier battle than many of the short lived foreign skirmishes where US troops were utilized. That part of our history is concealed, and for obvious reasons, the decades long battle of labor and management was one of the longest wars fought by the American wealthy against the poor. Most of the workforce around the globe knows of this terribly one sided war on workers, we see it manifested in the conscription of cheap foreign labor, the winking at the border to all of those who come here to undermine the American worker, basically welcomed by the upper class as an opposing counter to the notion of fair wages compensation..
Worker against worker, this quintessential Marxist mantra is the one outstanding aspects of modern capitalistic labor relations. In other words, going to a "labor friendly" state or country can substantially change the entire labor dynamic of any corporation's bottom line, we see this every day, where nations such as India export more labor than they themselves have an internal need for. People are being trained in these third world nations to act as an opposing force to any and all US labor demands. So, where does the notion of reducing the forty hour week stand in the larger picture? Ask any educated person living in Bangladesh...
Just be glad to have a job, IMO. 40 hours isn't really that bad when you come down to it. Life is about working. It's not about laying your butt on the beach all day.
Just be glad to have a job, IMO. 40 hours isn't really that bad when you come down to it. Life is about working. It's not about laying your butt on the beach all day.
We should gradually reduce the 40 hour week to 30 hours
Thoughts?
Not as long as workers are paid hourly wages.
I don't mind working 40 hours a week, in fact I usually work more than that. And I love getting OT pay too.
IMO what we need is to stop overbuilding the major cities so that so many aren't stuck for so many hours in rush hour traffic. And dumping billions into public transportation isn't the answer.
Salaried jobs aren't 40 hours so IMO a person working 40 hours isn't really overworked. Most of my salaried jobs required 50-60 hours a week. A job or company may allow part time hours (30 hours) such as clerical work or nursing but a person working only 30 hours WILL NEVER make the same salary as someone willing to work 50-60 hours for a company. This is one reason why women routinely don't make as much money as men. Most of the part timers I've known were women, never men. One of my friends worked only 20 hours a week during her entire adult career.
I worked lots of 50 to 60 hour weeks in the early part of my career and spurts of it in my 40s and 50s. It's not long-term sustainable. You burn out if you have that kind of skew in your work-life balance.
I know lots of people who work a massively efficient 35 to 40 hours per week. They're 100% focused when they're working. They get all the hard problems to solve. They get big compensation, promotions, bonus, and stock. It's not the hours, it's how productive you are. I can also think of lots of people who spend 50+ hours per week sitting in a chair who don't get much useful done.
Personally, I think the thing that's broken in the US is vacation time, not the work week.
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