The Five-Day Office Week Is Dead(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
The Five-Day Office Week Is Dead
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/opinion/office-work-home-remote.html
16 comments
What will it take to kill the 5-day week next?
I noticed some of the union strikes are asking for a 4 day work week. I hope this can start to change the cultural mindset on this issue. Once almost everyone knows someone working 32 hours a week, people will start to question their assumptions about the 40 hour work week and will want 32 hours for themselves as well.
I think the UAW is pushing for it. Like the 40 hour work week i expect unions to be the ones leading the way on it.
Every worker saying "Friday is off".
My company dropped down to a 4-day week with everyone getting to choose their day off - I went for Wednesday because it gives a nice mid-week break. And Monday and Friday are great for focussed work because the majority of people picked those two days.
What's the company?
Giant Swarm, we've published a few blog articles on the decision (such as this one https://www.giantswarm.io/blog/nouveau-travail-project-32) if you're interested.
A society that puts ordinary people's interest ahead of capital's?
Would be good if homeoffice will be more standard. It is the future of work and saves a lot of CO2 (I think the IPCC goals will not be able if we do not roll out homeoffice broadly). It is also a good was to combine work and family for women and also men.
How do these attitudes towards work ensure productive output, which is related to economic activity and thus national security. Is the idea that some modern work is more mentally tasking, and so 4-day work week prevents burnout?
In my European country there is a somewhat common view that there are other kinds of work that also need doing. For instance, taking care of the young and elderly is often done by women in their ‘own’ time. When paid, this is considered work. When unpaid, it is not. However the net benefits to the community are more or less the same and the work needs doing.
It may be that society is actually better off when people are wealthy enough to allocate resources to unpaid labor as needs demand.
So much specious reasoning here. Is there even a correlation between economic output and national security across large numbers of countries? If there is, how do we know the relationship is causal? How do you quantify better or worse national security?
This is a well-studied field, but you're right to question the underlying assumptions. This paper models human capital, future investment and national security [1], this paper [2] talks about the complementarity of consumption and national defense. This book starts out with the same assumptions I am making, but I can't speak to its overall conclusions bc I haven't read it [3]. More accessible article https://www.industryweek.com/finance/software-systems/articl...
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242694.2018.14...
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242694.2014.89...
[3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26268663?seq=1
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242694.2018.14...
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242694.2014.89...
[3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26268663?seq=1
Nurses and er doctors have been on a 4 or 3 day work week for a long time. But they have to work nights and weekends.
Maybe when chic fil a moves to serving chicken only 4 days a week.
Maybe when chic fil a moves to serving chicken only 4 days a week.
Shift work isn’t really a fair comparison. They’re generally still putting in full time hours. Just grouped differently.