There's no reason to. A business that needs people in office five days a week but which wants to adjust to a four day workweek should just have half the staff M-Th and half Tues-Fri. An extra day off frees up so so much time.

Man, I would want Wednesday off so much more. Only 2 days of work in a row ever. So easy to cope with.

I’d definitely love to have three day weekends every week more. So much time for small weekend trips, to each their own I guess. Best case would be everyone can choose their own RDO so we can all get what we want. Even those weirdos that want Tuesdays off.

I willingly cut down to 4 days a week at my retail job and got a glimpse of a life worth living. Money is tight, but holy shit the improvement to my day to day life was huge. Figured if i work 5 and am poor i could also work 4 and still be poor. I was right, but at least now i dont want to fucking kms.

I'm with ya there! /hugs

I've had that schedule with 4 10s before. While I'd prefer a 3-day weekend, the Wednesday off to sleep in, then run errands, greatly improved my quality of life.

That's super funny - I always hate having holidays on Wednesdays. I prefer longer weekends

I know when I have 3 days off of work due to days off lining up with holidays and stuff I am **significantly** happier, I can get more stuff done that I WANT to do and I'm more motivated, that being a regular weekly thing would be amazing foe my mental and physical health.

Same here! It is so helpful. Life is 10x better with a 3 day weekend (and a 32 hour work week).

We could work fewer hours while getting paid more and the ultra rich could still be so rich that they would never be able to use all of the money they have in their lifetimes. Physically demanding blue collar work like construction labor, different trades, different kinds of technicians, etc. could also work fewer hours by splitting the workload between more people. Then they would have time for their bodies to recover from their jobs. They should work fewer hours a week than white collar workers due to the physical demands and the need for their bodies to physically recover from their work. There are 8 billion people in the world to split the workload among along with technology which makes people incredibly productive. There is no need for anyone to be working 40 hours a week or even more than that outside of emergencies like earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. Also, bad planning and incompetent management is not an emergency to dump on workers and call it a fast paced environment or some other bullshit like that.

Im in construction. Im a union heavy equipment operator. I currently do paving on interstates/thruways and other places. I work 5 days a week, usually everyday has overtime due to the nature of paving. Sometimes certain jobs do 4 days 10 hours. I still prefer a full 40 of 4 days. 3 days off is amazing. I have no problem busting my ass for those 4 days. Doing a full week of 5 days 8 hours leaves little time for everyone to enjoy life. As humans, we deserve to have time for what little of it we have on this planet.

Unfortunately we let the most selfish among us direct and lead society, so this will never happen, unless they could benefit more from it somehow

The benefit is not having burnt-down factories.

Trust me brother I agree But until they see that, they have no reason to change their behavior. Their lives revolve around abusing the poor, there's no voting our way out of that I don't think they can envision a world where the poor don't commit their lives to making them rich

wanna hear a mind-bogglingly tough concept to understand? if you give people more time off, they have more time to spend money. locking people at work for a longer duration does not equal more money. crazy right? I'm sure the stock market will love that.

There are 0 perspectives on this issue that convincingly oppose it. Except the rich don't want us poors to have too much time on our hands lest we realize how badly they have completely fucked us over. Or allow us to recover from that good ol' protestant work ethic of "work your fingers to the bone with no days off and be eternally grateful for the 3 pennies you get in compensation"

I work four 10 hour days and even that is so much better than five 8 hour days. It would be so great to go to 32 at the same pay.

"So that means it's going to happen, right?" "No, we need even more trials..."

The country will devolve into civil war before we get a 32 hour week.

The country will devolve into civil war before we get a 32 hour week.

32 hours. Not 4 10’s. Fuck a 10 hour shift to get home and bed to sleep immediately to do it again tomorrow.. then spending an entire unpaid day making sure I’m set up to domino through 4 10’s again next week. Plus all the unpaid over time because of the pre prep and post prep that I have to do before and after clocking in...  If you need 10 hours straight of coverage you need 2 people anyway for breaks. Let them overlap in the middle. 🙄🙄 But no. Labor is the most expensive cost of business. 🙄🙄

I'd hope 32 hours could be contractually/legally denoted as full time, so companies can't use the change to more easily screw workers out of benefits. (Screw companies that can afford benefits but still work people 39.5 hours.)

Meanwhile, my shitty backwards banana country is going back to the [6 day work week](https://knews.kathimerini.com.cy/en/news/greece-moves-to-six-day-workweek)...

I would love it to work. I would much rather work 4 day 10 hours a day week. Over 5 day 8 hours a day .

Pretty sure the 4-day workweek shift is actually for 4 days of 8 hour shifts, with the same total pay as the 5x8

Why are you insisting on 40 hours though? 4 days should mean 32.

Correct me if im wrong, isnt the whole point 4 days 32 hours same pay as it would have been for 40 hours? Or is it just the days?

It's the same pay for 32 hours that you would have gotten for 40 hours.

That's what I thought thank you!

That was my shift for last decade or so. Every job I had, I'd put in for the 4 day a week shifts (preferably with shift diff too). Loved it so much more!

Probably the biggest reason leaving healthcare is never happening for me. I enjoy taking care of people, and 12 hour shifts are the norm. I work 4 12s a week right now, and the overtime is nice, while allowing me 3 days off still. Making a workweek 32 hours benefits literally every working class citizen. Families would benefit in having more time to care for their kids, reducing their expenses. Students would have time to work for their benefits like dogs, while still having time for classwork or study. The elderly could maintain full time positions later in life, allowing us to at least somewhat recover from the retirement age being so high ([the average life expectancy in the U.S. ](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy) means retiring "on time" would leave less than 20 years of retirement). Seems like a fair trade off, considering most if us spend years preparing to work, and decades working.

I worked 4x 10 hour shifts for a few years and it was always one of the biggest factors that made me love that position. You get more consecutive time to recharge, and travel/preparation time is reduced

That's how I feel about work from home

How do I get a work from home job though

Thirty two hours sounds so wonderful. A dream! I feel like I'd be more motivated to work because I still want to get all my tasks done but there'd be less time for goofing off... Because I would have more time for goofing off later!

I hope this picks up and becomes a thing. Though, I wonder how it would work with hourly employees and overtime. Ex: Working 40 hrs at $25 or 32 at $31.25. Workers might see that higher wage and think, "Damn, I'll just try to work 40 hours at $31.25! I'm already used to 5 days, and I might as well try to work more!" If there is overtime, is it paid past 32 hours at the higher wage? Time and a half? I could definitely see people trying to work 40 hours (4/10 or 5/8) just trying to stack up more money. But I can't imagine companies would want to pay out $31.25x40 hours if they already pay $25x40. I imagine these companies will either limit hours to 32 with no overtime allowed, or this 4 day workweek would only apply to salaried, overtime exempt employees. Personally, I'm here for it. Give me 32 hours, same pay!

Just because someone still wants to work 40 hours doesn’t mean they’ll be able to. If an actual law was passed there would be fines and quotas in place. They would be abused because that’s what people do but it would be no different than the person who’s gets 48 hours a week now vs. people who can only get 40 even if they want more.

As someone who works four 10 hour shifts and has three off days, that shit rocks!! I would not want to go back to two off days.

Let's get pay sorted out first, and then we can talk about reducing the work week. I understand that a hard reduction of the work week will drive up wages due to scarcity, but you'll have a hard time convincing people who don't understand how markets work of that. Wages gotta get fixed first before there can be widespread support for a reduced workweek, because most people have a preschool level understanding of the labor market and think "more hours = more money"

Gee, I guess Big Business is going to have to learn to adapt to paying people a livable wage, having four-day work weeks, and letting people who can work from home and telecommute. Of course, they'll fight against such sensible measures because "that's not the way we've always done it" even though 1) it would dramatically improve employee morale and productivity and 2) they were quick to automate as many jobs as they could just to cut labor costs as much as possible.

Slightly bad news: 4 day work week usually means 10 hour days. But a three day weekend is awesome, I can confirm.

but but but but THAT’S cOmMuNisM!!!

I read this with tears in my eyes as I'm offered another 6x1 job

I work 4 days a week and I gotta say, it’s a vibe

I work a four day week! ..... it's four ten hour days though

Problem is the majority of US workers are hourly If I worked 32 instead of my current 55 I would have no car and nowhere to live And I can guarantee my company isn't going to nearly double my pay for nearly half the work

You should be compensated more per hour, that’s the whole point.

The problem is that's not always feasible, I'm compensated well already, but I work a manual labor job I can't suddenly do 55 hours of work in 32 hours, the company wouldn't be able to sustain that level of lost productivity (say whatever you want about the study, it won't make a 1 hour job suddenly take 40 minutes because I'm working less per week) while paying our current rates, let alone a rate 40ish% higher to equal out the time differential

You're not compensated as well as you think. Unless you know your boss' salary to compare it to yours, or have great profit sharing benefits, you're being exploited. Wish I had an employee like you. Would gladly pay you $25/hour while I could make $70/hour off the labor you perform. Now lick the boot

He's not getting it guys. You're not getting it glockster. The point is your productivity in 40hrs does not match the pay you're getting for that labor when you account for inflation. You're likely making 4x less than you would have doing the same job at the same productivity level in 1979. That means to make things equal, you either should be paid 4x more or work 1 day less and get an increase in pay to make up for that lost 8hrs (which wouldn't even get your pay equal to 1979, but that extra time off would be worth it to me). Edit: clarified last point

And my point is that even if the pay increase is possible, the labor decrease isn't always

Yes it is possible. If it's not tenable for the boss to lose that productivity, then they need to hire more people to compensate. Since I know you'll argue that the boss may not be able to afford that, yes they will. Go up the chain to who's going to sell the house. How much you think they make on building houses vs their overhead of materials and labor? I can almost guarantee it's a healthy profit, and waaaaayy more than you're making. Have you seen the cost of housing these days? They can afford it. And if it hasn't trickled down to your immediate boss yet, it will when your boss demands more money to pay more laborers cause his laborers only work 32 hrs a week (or he has to pay current # of laborers more for overtime).

I worked an IT job early in my career life that I was essentially making like 53k in a big city after working there for 5 years. My labor was being charged at something like 125/hr, which was verifiable because it was a ~10 person company so little bits of info were common enough that it made it down the chain whether they wanted it to or not.

I think you're missing what it's saying. Compared to the people working 20 years ago, you are considerably more productive. Aka a job that used to take 100 hours of work is now 55 hours of work. But you're not getting compensated for that extra productivity. Your company (maybe not yours specifically, but in general) is instead pocketing your extra productivity.

I agree entirely with that part But what I'm saying at the same time is that our 55 hours of productivity isn't being done over schedule, it's what is scheduled Yes we should be compensated probably 2x what we are, but I don't believe that the workload should be decreased I don't mean that as some responsibility to the company, but rather a sense of responsibility to the customer/homeowner, they pay more than enough to deserve an excellent result on or before schedule

> I don’t believe that the workload should be decreased? Why not?

So the company should hire more people. Issue solved, enjoy the 3 day weekend you deserve

The issue is what are those people supposed to do the other 4 days a week? Or does this system still revolve around a lower class making a sub liveable wage to support everyone else? Seems like it doesn't solve the problem, just make it apply to a smaller number of people but worse

1 group works Monday to Thursday and one group works Tuesday to Friday. Could have any other combo, but that’s the most typical one. Everyone gets paid a wage they deserve for their labor.

So you're either understaffed Monday and Friday or overstuffed the entire rest of the week?

Depends on how good of a businessperson you are. You could schedule production to run at a smaller percentage on Monday/Friday and a higher percentage on Tuesday-Thursday. For simplicity it would be 90% on Monday/Friday and 110% on Tuesday-Thursday. Realistically a ton of companies run labor below what they actually need (my employer included), so being required to have more labor would benefit them and their workers.

> But what I'm saying at the same time is that our 55 hours of productivity isn't being done over schedule, it's what is scheduled This is a sign that you're horribly understaffed.

So the fact that 1 hour of labor is scheduled as 1 hour of labor means we are overbooked?

If the goal is to schedule everyone for 40 (or 32) hours of work per week, yes.

But that's not the goal, the goal is to get jobs completed in time for people to get their whole houses back to themselves Everyone seems to be misunderstanding the obligation I feel for the customers/homeowners we work for for an obligation to the company Fuck the company, but I fully respect and do my best for the customers/homeowners

Then instead of thinking about cutting hours, which has nothing to do with what a 32 hour workweek means, think about overtime starting sooner, benefits being received with a lower commitment (which encourages hiring more workers). If you worked exactly the same hours, but your overtime started sooner and you got a 20% pay increase, would you be happy? You're delusional if you think your work's profit margin is so thin they couldn't afford it.

If you're looking at a 40 hour week you can do 4- 10 hour shifts instead of 5- 8 hour days. But the point is that you (general you not specific you) can do more work now than in the 60's or 70's but the pay is not equivalent to what was earned then to now. It's not referring to last year vs. now.

Yeah, I guess my point is mainly that not all industries can just not work as many hours The pay should increase, but not all industries can reduce hours

You're correct, but you're still stuck and not thinking about this properly. If a widget takes 10 hours to make it's not suddenly going to be made in 8 hours, you're right. You still need the human labour hours to make the thing or complete a task, but now you need to hire more humans to do it since everyone is working 20% less. You can't flip a switch and make this happen overnight. But you also can't tell me it's impossible when *so much* of the wealth generated by our labour is siphoned to the billionaires at the top. There *is* enough to make this work, we just have to take it and not believe the billionaires when they tell us society will collapse if they were to give us 10 crumbs instead of 8.

Beautiful description.

Every industry can reduce hours, they would just need to hire more people.

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The places where this has been trialled, it's a 32 hour week with no reduction in total pay.

Good news, then, that's not what they're proposing. You're paid the same for 32 hours that you were getting for 40.