this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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I don't know if that's necessarily wrong of them. There isn't any precedent for hourly workers to be paid when they're not working. The "four day workweek" as described simply means that any time over 32 hours a week is overtime. Hourly workers in general don't really have a "workweek" anyway because they will often have multiple jobs or will work whatever shift they can pick up that works with their schedule.
They understood how the 4-day workweek works based on how the 5-day workweek works. I think maybe you need to listen more to them and try to understand your own proposition better.
When companies voluntarily implement 4-day workweeks, they are literally either cutting 8 hours or doing 10-hour shifts. They do not pay for hours not worked.
If you can't understand that 40 hours a week can be accomplished in 4 days instead of 5 days, than you are an idiot. It has nothing to do with your life experience. Its simple math.
So here's what I'm talking about, we have a legally mandated 8-hour workday. It's not implied that you're changing that to a 10-hour workday.
Also, if you've never worked a 10-hour day, maybe you don't quite understand how much harder than 8 hours it is for most people- because fatigue compounds faster than a linear rate.
So someone who is paid hourly and assumes you're retaining the 8-hour workday isn't likely to understand how they're getting paid for 40 hours while working 32.
And literally everything has to do with lived experience. Listen to people and try to understand their position. Being educated isn't the same thing as being intelligent and knowing how to understand different perspectives.
One of the main ideas behind the 4 day work week is that workers have become much more efficient, but with no compensation for that increase in efficiency. A worker in 2023 is going to get a lot more work done in the sane 8 hours than someone in the 70s/80s due to increases in technology, automation, software, etc.
Pair that with the fact that the lions share of profits head upwards in business (ie, CEO/management compensation has increase way more than hourly workers), then it stands to reason that we can afford to pay those workers that extra day if we equalize the pay increases across the board instead of concentrating it in the ownership.
That doesn't explain at all how a waiter who is being told to work 32 hours instead of 40, or 10 hour shifts instead of 8, is making more money or is otherwise better off.
If there's another policy like raising the minimum wage or UBI that's required to make this work, it should be stated.