<story><title>Moving the World to a 4 Day Workweek – An Interview with Aidan Harper</title><url>https://blog.30hourjobs.com/an-interview-with-aidan-harper-of-the-4-day-week-campaign/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>otoburb</author><text>To be really clear, Aidan Harper is campaigning for the following:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;We make the case for a general reduction in working hours __without__ a reduction in pay. We also make the case for a steady managed transition to shorter hours with a bolstered welfare state in such a way that the most vulnerable and underpaid in society are protected.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard enough to ask companies to shift to a 4-day workweek for the various reasons outlined in the article and sibling comments, but usually this is accompanied by a corresponding cut in compensation. Adding the &amp;quot;without a reduction in pay&amp;quot; condition makes the proposition much more difficult for small-to-medium sized businesses.&lt;p&gt;In fairness to the article, there is the possibility of asking employees to work 10hr workdays for 4 days to accommodate the 40-hr work week model (or 8.75hrs&amp;#x2F;day in France to accommodate their 35-hr work week). Since (most of us?) are already overworked, maybe this then just boils down to a scheduling and staff coverage problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>baron_harkonnen</author><text>Anyone who does knowledge work in a large company knows a huge amount of the &amp;quot;work&amp;quot; is just a weird game we all agreed to play. Sure everyone is busy, but surprisingly little is really getting done.  We agree to work 40 hours because that model worked for people making widgets in factories. People work extra hours to demonstrate socially that they&amp;#x27;re hard workers, but again, nothing is really getting done.&lt;p&gt;There is no reason at all you could not reduce all of this to 30 hours a week and get the same amount of productivity accomplished. Why shouldn&amp;#x27;t people be compensated the same if the end result is the same? For labor intensive job where a human is working as a type of robot then hours of labour is directly correlated with hours of product (with some point of diminishing returns as you overwork people).</text></comment>
<story><title>Moving the World to a 4 Day Workweek – An Interview with Aidan Harper</title><url>https://blog.30hourjobs.com/an-interview-with-aidan-harper-of-the-4-day-week-campaign/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>otoburb</author><text>To be really clear, Aidan Harper is campaigning for the following:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;We make the case for a general reduction in working hours __without__ a reduction in pay. We also make the case for a steady managed transition to shorter hours with a bolstered welfare state in such a way that the most vulnerable and underpaid in society are protected.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard enough to ask companies to shift to a 4-day workweek for the various reasons outlined in the article and sibling comments, but usually this is accompanied by a corresponding cut in compensation. Adding the &amp;quot;without a reduction in pay&amp;quot; condition makes the proposition much more difficult for small-to-medium sized businesses.&lt;p&gt;In fairness to the article, there is the possibility of asking employees to work 10hr workdays for 4 days to accommodate the 40-hr work week model (or 8.75hrs&amp;#x2F;day in France to accommodate their 35-hr work week). Since (most of us?) are already overworked, maybe this then just boils down to a scheduling and staff coverage problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gdubs</author><text>It’s entirely plausible that employees at small companies aren’t generating value for all the extra time they’re at work. You could make the argument that with a four day work week they’d accomplish the same amount of value generation, and that in the current situation there’s a lot of waste.&lt;p&gt;People balked when the 40hr workweek was introduced but it ended up lowering injuries and illness and had a net increase effect in productivity.</text></comment>