The Thirty-Hour Week (1936)

https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1936011700

by perfunctory • 7 years ago

103 76 7 years ago

library.cqpress.com

sgt101• 7 years ago

In the context of sharing jobs in the great depression.

There was a shanty town in central park.

Bit like now, in SF?

bdcravens3• 7 years ago

To be fair, even though HN would have you believe SF is the center of the universe, it's an edge case, in many ways. The Great Depression had a far greater impact than just NYC.

bdcravens3• 7 years ago

What % of the US work force owned personal transportation in 1936?

SketchySeaBeast2• 7 years ago

I'm a bit confused - are you saying the debt load has increased because of that transportation? Because I'll be honest with you, next to my mortgage I don't even think about my 10 year old, completely paid off, car.

bdcravens3• 7 years ago

Not addressing debt. Addressing the fact that the work day is far longer when it takes longer to get to work, so a six hour workday comparison from 1936 isn't an apples-to-apples comparison.

warp_factor4• 7 years ago

My theory is that 90% of people don't do more than 20 hours worth of work per week anyways. We just all got used to be very inefficient at what we do.

lawn2• 7 years ago

I have recently gone down to work 60%.

Yet my output isn't very different from what I used to produce, so your theory seems to match my experience.

marvin• 7 years ago

How did you manage this? I currently work 80%, but I don't see a super-viable pathway to go down to 60%. You work three days a week or what? (Mostly four days a week in my case, with some additional days taken as holiday).

ChuckNorris89• 7 years ago

I wish we could concentrate our effort at work and be allowed to work less hours for the same pay and output but companies pay for your availability not for your output so never gonna happen.

warp_factor4• 7 years ago

you are exactly right. Fortunately in Tech that seems to change somewhat with homeworking and other "remote" style of working.

felipelemos• 7 years ago

If so, we are just collectively wasting everybody's time.

Ocerge• 7 years ago

Well, yeah. Most white-collar jobs are adult daycares (including my own + many others in software).

warp_factor4• 7 years ago

Yes I believe we are all partially wasting our time. Unfortunately it is one of the pillars of our societies and it would be extremely or almost impossible to change. People expect to be busy at work 5 days a week for 8 hours.

notfromhere• 7 years ago

This has been a longstanding theory of mine. The brain is lazy and doesn't like to think - people sometimes miss manual labor because you don't have to spend too much time thinking since at some point it becomes rote.

ryanmcbride2• 7 years ago

Every once in a while I pine for jobs I had before I was an engineer because the stakes were low and I never had to give work a single thought while I was off the clock. Ultimately I think I'm happier as an engineer (at least at my current job) but I still miss it sometimes.

zzbzq• 7 years ago

That was one of the central theses of David Graeber's famous "bullshit jobs" essay, which is now a book (haven't read yet.) Keynes et al. predicted declining work hours. Graeber says not only do most people barely work during their 40 hours, many entire jobs or entire departments are basically... well, bullshit.

MaxBarraclough2• 7 years ago

Sounds like just the sort of thing that 'lean startups' push back against.

k__• 7 years ago

You're right, but capitalism will simply use this to pay people 50% and starve them.

jswizzy2• 7 years ago

I guess you never heard of the time Boris Yelsin though a grocery store was myth because he had never seen so much food in one place.

moorhosj• 7 years ago

But everyone that I talk to is "slammed". It's interesting how the perception of working more hours is so powerful.

hannasanarion• 7 years ago

Regardless of how much you get done, you're still at work for those hours. It's not like people who work inefficiently have more free time.

dcolkitt2• 7 years ago

Right. But the tough part is most of the workers have internalized that low level of cadence and focus. For that archetypical person, if you cut their work week from 40 hours to 20 hours, their actual output would probably fall to the equivalent of 10 hours.

JamesBarney• 7 years ago

I you're right that it would fall. But I think that would be temporary until they got used to the 20 hr week.

Animats• 7 years ago

We just need to get back down to the 40 hour week. With time and a half for overtime.

harlanji• 7 years ago

My angle is that software developers do not meet the requirements for exempt workers in spirit; namely, creative and self-directed solutions (perhaps distinct from software engineers). Work for a new/rebooted development org could be structured this way. It’d probably look like a deplorable plan on paper to money people.

YjSe2GMQ• 7 years ago

I'm confused. I simply don't work over 40 hours a week (average), don't want to lower my per-hour salary. Increased compensation for overtime would be the only thing to make me work over 40 hours, I think that's fair. Genuine question: why can't you go home early?

ralph842• 7 years ago

Not only do they not meet the requirements in spirit, an argument can made that developers don't meet the requirements in the letter of the law in places like California. But they've been conditioned to take their stock options and shut up about it so it hasn't been litigated much.

desireco42• 7 years ago

I think this, with ability to not commute to work would be ideal work time for knowledge workers.

Circuits2• 7 years ago

Honestly... my company is wasting a lot of money renting out this building for our offices. We could all EASILY be working from home and while I can't say for certain I am fairly confident all of us could get the same amount of work done in half the time. I get 90% of my work done before lunch and the other 10% done the first hour after getting back from lunch...

Personally, if they allowed me to work from home, I believe I would get a heck of a lot more done. Currently I know I have to work roughly 40 hours then as soon as the day is over I forget about work. However, if I was simply expected to get the same work done regardless of my hours I would work a few hours every weekend. I would stay up late when a problem interests me... concepts like this seem to evade employers. If I wasn't more productive (pretty sure I would be) I would at least be just as productive and a heck of a lot more comfortable in life.

dcolkitt2• 7 years ago

Personally, if they allowed me to work from home, I would get a heck of a lot more done.

I pretty much felt the way you did, until I had kids. Now the problem if I work at home is a toddler who constantly visits the home office with the goal in mind of sitting on dad's lap and watching Peppa Pig on his computer.

I know also a lot of people also psychologically feel more motivated and disciplined having a separate place for work outside the home. (Just look at how many college kids go to the library to study.)

So, I think even in the fully remote world, you'd still have to have an office like solution for a not insignificant percentage of workers.

Circuits2• 7 years ago

I totally agree. I guess I am just speaking for myself. I can't say the same for the rest of my workmates. However, I always took my college hw straight to my room. Perhaps I am just an edge case... perhaps I should just discuss it with my boss... lol maybe next year.

kirrent• 7 years ago

You're absolutely right about needing an office like solution for a lot of people, but that doesn't necessarily mean your organisation's office. Co-working spaces allow you to have an office closer to you, often allow fairly flexible pricing based on your specific needs, and you have choice on which office environment you want. I only hope that it becomes more normal for companies to shrink their central offices and subsidise remote employees using those spaces instead.

maerF0x0• 7 years ago

30 hrs a week was a way to deal with mass unemployment, which the US is not currently facing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130327020843/http://eh.net/enc...

tty2300• 7 years ago

Only if you get less done. I feel that for a lot of jobs we could work 30 hours and get no less done.

Jedd• 7 years ago

I'd argue that:

o it is

o it's going to get a lot worse faster than many expect (and most are prepared for)

o we need to consider / encourage social rearchitecting globally, not just within each country's borders

sunshinelackof• 7 years ago

I won't speak for other countries, but in The US leisure and general livability are commodities now, not a part of life. The talk about shorter work weeks feel to me like they're rooted in growing fears that these commodities are pricing out many in the "professionals class." This isn't meant with snark, but it's an uncomfortable conversation for everyone. As we stand today there are plenty of people, fully employed, who don't even have a savings let alone time for leisure. I don't think we working professionals will ever see anything meaningful change in working time until we can have the larger conversation about why we work, why we value it, and who should benefit from it.

ianai• 7 years ago

It’s just another signal about how far the laws and norms have been bent towards business against individuals. Companies are able to pay people with gift cards - that charge fees per transaction and age of balance.

kaffeeringe• 7 years ago

Nothing will simply come. It will come, when you try and get it. Are you in a union?

himeexcelanta2• 7 years ago

I’d offer a (friendly) counter point. Trusting in the benevolence of a union is very similar to trusting in the benevolence of your employer to watch your back. Both employers and unions ultimately devolve into parochialism. Both ultimately are interested in preserving their existing power structures and NOT in helping the worker. I’d say that the best way to “try and get it” is to make your skills valuable enough where you have more work offered than you you have time for in the day. At that point, raise prices!

nbrempel2• 7 years ago

I love that this topic has been getting attention lately. I’m a huge proponent of the 30 hour week/4 day week.

I’ve been working on a job board just for this: https://jobs.30hourjobs.com

Please let me know what you think!

souprock2• 7 years ago

I have verified that yes, 30 hours is acceptable where I work. It's been done, along with 32, and possibly shorter. Most of the benefits are pro-rated, but we'd still cover the health insurance fully. You could still work more and get paid for those extra hours, but the benefits would be according to how many hours you signed up to work.

Examples: If you sign up for 30 hours but work 50 hours, you get 75% benefits and 125% pay. If you sign up for 32 hours but work 38 hours, you get 80% benefits and 95% pay.

The job post in the "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2019)" item today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20088647

nbrempel2• 7 years ago

Hey souprock, thanks for sharing!

Please do post that job on the above linked job board (it's free)! It should get you at least a few good eyeballs and the community of people who care about the thirty hour week will appreciate it as well.

zw123456• 7 years ago

Where I work I get 6 weeks of vacation and 10 floating holidays. It's actually pretty difficult to use up that much vacation if you try to take it in big chunks, and I am sort of averse to travel (because a former job I had required so much that now I am sick of it even for personal "fun"). So now I take almost every Friday off or Monday. If you work it out with holidays you basically work 4 days a week. Since I have been doing this for several years now I have found that I am actually a lot more productive than when I work 5 days a week and take several weeks in a row off. For me, the 4 day work week makes me happier and I get more done.

YUMad• 7 years ago

Why did you go with Mon/Fri instead of Wednesday?

hnzix• 7 years ago

Everyone goes on about Wednesdays but I honestly find Monday the absolute best day to take off. If you are working on personal projects, it gives you three full days to spin up to top speed.

Fridays just feel like the weekend started a bit early (due to the rhythm of office life I think), and Wednesdays doesn't give you the same runway for personal projects.

bitcoinmoney• 7 years ago

Can you give idea hwere this is? And salary range?

1PlayerOne• 7 years ago

Let me guess, you travelled for a management consulting job? Or something similar... I work for a big 4 MC corp and now prefer to stay home. Plane travel makes me ill at ease.

RaceWon• 7 years ago

A lifetime ago (1978) when I got into the Plumbers Union, (as I was teaching myself to be a racer, and future world champion; before I realized I could not learn a new racetrack, and get into a rhythm in 8 laps like say a Senna could--which really was why I walked away from that), we worked 35 Hour weeks. 8am-3:30pm: Plus we had two breaks; morning coffee and a soda at 2pm, and we also usually took 45 minutes for lunch, instead of the unpaid 30 minutes the contract stipulated.

Oh and the Electricians--shit they really lived large: they would barbeque every Friday... and Inside the building in the winter. They could give a fuck less if the job super didn't want then too.

The work got done, and I have to tell you there was no substitute for Union Trades; the apprenticeship programs were second to none and guys gave a shit about the product they produced.

westmeal• 7 years ago

I don't think anybody can drive like Senna could. Do you still race from time to time?

The Thirty-Hour Week (1936)

Related Stories