I need to know if you'd work longer hours to have more time off

[andrewducker]

Poll

Context: Amazon is apparently doing this for all permanent staff.

Personally, I'm torn. Part of me would love this, but I also find it hard to juggle things as it is, particularly around Julie and her chemo-drugs/fasting. I can see it making life harder for some people with kids (or other caring needs) too.

Comments

[kashandara]

This is often more or less what I did when I had flexible working hours!

[bracknellexile]

It's an odd one cos, working from home, I can easily do 9am-7:30pm but then I have no commute. If I had an hour or so's travel either way on both ends of that, I'm not sure I'd be quite so keen.

[ggreig]

I said No, for similar reasons. If it weren't for my commute I might well say Yes.

[momentsmusicaux]

Fuck no. I find even a 7 hour day totally exhausting. With a 10 hour day, what time do you get home at? When do you eat? How much wind-down time do you have before you have to be trying to get to sleep?

[quirkytizzy]

This. Most of my jobs have been manual labor. I could only take so many hours before I literally fell down. And I tried four ten hour days at a call center once. Too much. I spent way more recuperating in those three days than I would have otherwise.

[a_pawson]

A couple of our US-based suppliers have done this in the past couple of years. Personally I would jump at the chance, to have another full day off each week.

[kerrypolka]

We have the wealth and efficiency to be able to work four-day weeks period.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely, if we didn't mind being 80% as productive as we currently are.

The problem is that people expect more than they did 30 years ago (as we discussed a few days ago), and some resources are in the kind of rivalrous demand that means that their prices rise fairly constantly with our wealth.

[kerrypolka]

Right, but efficiency is also increasing, so it's not like we're going to stop being more productive, we'll just be increasing productivity slightly less quickly. Which I think most people would be fine with, especially if it means we start focusing on efficiency as a way of increasing leisure time instead of something that makes shareholders wealthier and employees poorer (due to being made redundant or compensation being tied to hours worked).

[andrewducker]

I can't see any reason why you wouldn't tie compensation to hours worked.

Well, to some measure of productivity.

The whole point is that you exchange productivity for cash. If you suddenly produce 20% less than you were last week then why would you get as much in exchange for that?