This is only for white collar work. Every time I see this there is never any consideration for blue collar work. Factories would benefit from seven day work weeks, more time producing not less.
Not that I want it at all… We tried to argue for just 4 days weeks in the summer when it gets to be 95° and like 75° dew point and they still said “absolutely not, we need to ship 5 days a week. We have guys doing overtime why would we do less?”
I mean, a four day work week still benefits blue collar jobs, though it’s understandably more difficult to implement this in a some blue collar workspaces, and I dont claim to have the answer for how to do it by any means.
Factories would benefit from seven day work weeks, more time producing not less.
Factories benefit from higher efficiency, and less downtime, which can be achieved with more employees, working less, being less tired, more satisfied with their pay and benefits, and having fewer accidents which interrupt production.
It can be done, but other systems also need changing to help it along.
I think the problem there is that there’s a lot of workplaces looking for extra people. Losing 1/5th of your workforce, but not financially is how I assume employers look at it.
The fact people are more efficient probably doesn’t mean more efficient than working 8 extra hours to them.
I could really do with a 4day workweek. And I don’t mean working 40h in 4 days.
I absolute agree with you that that is how employers are viewing it and I agree with your disagreement with people in the industry that suggest the solution is ten hour days for blue collar workers.
(One of) The problem(s) behind this is that the capital class seemingly does not care what the evidence shows, and are only interested in what feels more productive. To them, it feels more productive to have fewer workers, for longer hours, with less safety measures, and because they feel it’s more efficient, that means it must be (because it costs more “less”). Until we change that, or sufficiently collectivize to force them to change, it’s gonna be hard to move the needle.
100% this right here. The owner-class have been deluding themselves for damn near 100 years at this point that we’re not working long enough or hard enough. Henry Ford figured out exactly how much work he could squeeze out of an assembly line peon, set the requirement at exactly that point, and structured the entire operation around that 8 hours a day, five days per week quotient.
The modern CEO runs on feelings of “Well I work 12 hours per day 7 days per week, so it’s not much to ask that my rank-and-file workers put in an extra hour or two per day for the sake of the company!” while discounting or ignoring the fact that there’s a compensation gap of approximately 100x or more. Not everybody is CEO-brained enough to pull a 12 hour day every day and still have energy left over to perform basic functions in what little free time they have remaining that isn’t dedicated to sleeping.
In reality, we need to be organizing to force companies to start paying us what they owe, and if they don’t want to match our salaries with the astronomical increase in production that has taken place over the years thanks to computerization and automation, then they need to let us have more time off from work without a reduction in pay. It’s only fair.
On top of the issue you mentioned, and along with another comment referring to machine operators, the capital class sees us as meat machines, not people. Especially machine operators, even in my own job some people refer to them as button pressers… I’m in a psudo-supervisor type position but I’m not viewed as any more than a meat machine either… We’re “undeserving” of any proper treatment because we “don’t create value” we’re just “necessary” like power is necessary.
The fact people are more efficient probably doesn’t mean more efficient than working 8 extra hours to them.
Exactly, for a lot of manufacturing the bottleneck is how quickly machines run. For example right now I work in an electronics plant and our surface mount lines are limited solely by machine runtime. The operator is only there to swap out empty component reels as needed, load stacks of bare boards in ocasionally, and place the rare hand placed component. An especially slow operator can of course slow things down a bit if they can’t do those tasks quickly enough, but it is very rare for the operator to be the bottleneck. There is a direct linear relationship between hours run and quantity of product produced usually regardless of operator efficiency.
There is no way my employer would ever pay the machine operators the same amount to work less. It is actually in my employers financial best interests to have the machine operators work as much overtime as possible because the amount they pay for benefits is not based on hours worked so even with overtime pay included, the amount they pay per manhour is actually slightly reduced past a certain overtime threshhold.
What about rotating 3 and 4 day shifts for twice as many employees? Then you get 7 days of productivity and nobody is getting burned out/making an unsafe work environment?
That would cost them more so it’s a non-starter. In manufacturing you’re not a human, you’re another tool. You don’t consider the wellbeing or happiness of your tools. :(
This is only for white collar work. Every time I see this there is never any consideration for blue collar work. Factories would benefit from seven day work weeks, more time producing not less.
Not that I want it at all… We tried to argue for just 4 days weeks in the summer when it gets to be 95° and like 75° dew point and they still said “absolutely not, we need to ship 5 days a week. We have guys doing overtime why would we do less?”
Factories suck…
I mean, a four day work week still benefits blue collar jobs, though it’s understandably more difficult to implement this in a some blue collar workspaces, and I dont claim to have the answer for how to do it by any means.
Factories benefit from higher efficiency, and less downtime, which can be achieved with more employees, working less, being less tired, more satisfied with their pay and benefits, and having fewer accidents which interrupt production.
It can be done, but other systems also need changing to help it along.
I think the problem there is that there’s a lot of workplaces looking for extra people. Losing 1/5th of your workforce, but not financially is how I assume employers look at it.
The fact people are more efficient probably doesn’t mean more efficient than working 8 extra hours to them.
I could really do with a 4day workweek. And I don’t mean working 40h in 4 days.
I absolute agree with you that that is how employers are viewing it and I agree with your disagreement with people in the industry that suggest the solution is ten hour days for blue collar workers.
(One of) The problem(s) behind this is that the capital class seemingly does not care what the evidence shows, and are only interested in what feels more productive. To them, it feels more productive to have fewer workers, for longer hours, with less safety measures, and because they feel it’s more efficient, that means it must be (because it costs
more“less”). Until we change that, or sufficiently collectivize to force them to change, it’s gonna be hard to move the needle.100% this right here. The owner-class have been deluding themselves for damn near 100 years at this point that we’re not working long enough or hard enough. Henry Ford figured out exactly how much work he could squeeze out of an assembly line peon, set the requirement at exactly that point, and structured the entire operation around that 8 hours a day, five days per week quotient.
The modern CEO runs on feelings of “Well I work 12 hours per day 7 days per week, so it’s not much to ask that my rank-and-file workers put in an extra hour or two per day for the sake of the company!” while discounting or ignoring the fact that there’s a compensation gap of approximately 100x or more. Not everybody is CEO-brained enough to pull a 12 hour day every day and still have energy left over to perform basic functions in what little free time they have remaining that isn’t dedicated to sleeping.
In reality, we need to be organizing to force companies to start paying us what they owe, and if they don’t want to match our salaries with the astronomical increase in production that has taken place over the years thanks to computerization and automation, then they need to let us have more time off from work without a reduction in pay. It’s only fair.
On top of the issue you mentioned, and along with another comment referring to machine operators, the capital class sees us as meat machines, not people. Especially machine operators, even in my own job some people refer to them as button pressers… I’m in a psudo-supervisor type position but I’m not viewed as any more than a meat machine either… We’re “undeserving” of any proper treatment because we “don’t create value” we’re just “necessary” like power is necessary.
Exactly, for a lot of manufacturing the bottleneck is how quickly machines run. For example right now I work in an electronics plant and our surface mount lines are limited solely by machine runtime. The operator is only there to swap out empty component reels as needed, load stacks of bare boards in ocasionally, and place the rare hand placed component. An especially slow operator can of course slow things down a bit if they can’t do those tasks quickly enough, but it is very rare for the operator to be the bottleneck. There is a direct linear relationship between hours run and quantity of product produced usually regardless of operator efficiency.
There is no way my employer would ever pay the machine operators the same amount to work less. It is actually in my employers financial best interests to have the machine operators work as much overtime as possible because the amount they pay for benefits is not based on hours worked so even with overtime pay included, the amount they pay per manhour is actually slightly reduced past a certain overtime threshhold.
What about rotating 3 and 4 day shifts for twice as many employees? Then you get 7 days of productivity and nobody is getting burned out/making an unsafe work environment?
Maybe they should hire more people to fill in the gaps to those who leave for the week after 4 days. Everyone deserves 4 day work weeks at minimum.
That would cost them more so it’s a non-starter. In manufacturing you’re not a human, you’re another tool. You don’t consider the wellbeing or happiness of your tools. :(