Japan wants its hardworking citizens to try a 4-day workweek

https://apnews.com/article/japan-4day-work-week-campaign-f78a95a89d99e7b323f7554721088d66

by rntn • 2 years ago

69 28 2 years ago

apnews.com

Ancalagon• 2 years ago

Interesting to see Greece taking population decline one way - more work days, and Japan the opposite.

Hopefully Japan is right.

voidbert• 2 years ago

From what I read, Greece's policy was (partially) due to labour shortages during the tourism season, while Japan has lots of workers who work many unproductive hours (some just go to the office for the sake of going). I'd say they're different policies for quite different contexts.

drak0n1c• 2 years ago

They're starting from different baselines. Japan has a widespread culture of overwork, and Greece is notorious for the extreme opposite.

maeil• 2 years ago

Greece is always on top of those "hours worked per month" statistic for Europe. So at least the data strongly contradicts that notion.

petre2• 2 years ago

Ah, the lazy Greeks stereotype at it again. A myth spread by the creditor states' governments, namely Germany's Angela Merkel, when in fact the Eurozone is broken by design.

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/design-failures-eurozone

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

All 4 day week pilots to date have been overwhelmingly successful [1]. This should be a no brainer considering existing productivity levels combined with Parkinson’s Law (“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion“). With process improvements and scheduling, the biggest hurdle is ideology around work. You see this emphasized in the US with people bragging how hard they work themselves, in Japan it’s not leaving until the boss leaves and similar [2].

Tangentially, as the working age cohort shrinks, labor has more power in this regard, and Japan’s labor force continues to shrink due to structural demographics decline [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39992783 (citations)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment (“Wikipedia: Japanese work environment“)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_market_of_Japan (“Wikipedia: Labor market of Japan“)

thegrim33• 2 years ago

For anyone swayed by the level of citations, I'd advise you to spend the time to actually, legitimately, research into them for yourself.

In my experience once you investigate down into them they're always unconvincing. They either have an abysmal sample size, or are opinion pieces with no data behind them, or are multiple presses releases which all link to the same one single horrible study as their proof, or they have non-sensible methodology performed by the most biased group imaginable, etc.

cedws• 2 years ago

Is it that work expands to fill the time allocated, or is it that the time allocated isn’t enough for completion because it was decided by people who have no idea what they’re talking about?

JoeAltmaier• 2 years ago

Strange - some years ago a visiting Japanese Engineer was asked "What do you do on the weekend?" and answered with an eye-roll "In Japan, week is Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Friday-Friday".

What matter if they make it four 'Fridays'?

killingtime74• 2 years ago

They can't even do a 9 to 5 day and we are to believe that they can go to a 4-day week just because the government suggests that they do so? This is literally a marketing campaign with no law changes or subsidies or anything. Public policy vaporware

xenospn• 2 years ago

I spent a few weeks as a salary man in Japan (just working alongside them), and noticed how quite a few people would just stare at their monitors and pretend to do work, without ever actually doing anything. Then they’d run to the printer (to look busy and stressed), only to run back to their desks and stare at the same A1 excel cell they’ve been staring at for the last 3 hours.

Imagine spending your entire professional career doing that.

bravetraveler• 2 years ago

I think I'd prefer that over "Yes, Jim, that idea sounds great. Let's try that out" knowing full well he's doomed to fail... but has to see it for himself. Only letting the conversation end once they hear my support. The warnings and outright plea for a change in direction are ignored.

Above is how 99% of my days/meetings go in the US. Equally futile but requiring ongoing [and ignored] input. At most a pep talk.

I dream for that level of autonomy and honesty. Choosing when to get up/return? Not being goaded into saying something that's ultimately ignored? Oh, yea! When can I move?

edit: Oh, the other 1%? Watching people double check the things I said I did. It's like there's no trust or purpose... because there isn't. Give me the spreadsheet.

beefnugs• 2 years ago

Is there a special name for these purposefully imprecise meme like terms? "4 day work week" means 10 different things to 5 different people.

People sick of capitalism are like, finally some kind of relief?

Business owners are like, yeah great everyone can work 12 hours days and i pay less office heating.

Japan is like, if you are a good quiet slave you may get fake praise for your incredible dedication worth well over 100 hours a week crammed into 4 days.

Greece is like, enough of this communism they will work more days by force!

Everyone has their own different flavor of propaganda around it: like people stating "studys" without thinking for one second people arent so desperate for change they would try to game that study at all costs

methou• 2 years ago

Although in practice Japan currently has 5 days workweek, but in law it’s 6 days (Saturdays included).

carlmr• 2 years ago

Funny, it's the same in Germany.

its-summertime• 2 years ago

One side presents current conditions as empathetic patriots fighting for their country's progress, the other side presents the new approach as "I like being able to go to the doctor"

hindsightbias• 2 years ago

Wait, post-covid there are actually people working Fridays?

derwiki• 2 years ago

Why do you think that post-covid no one is working Fridays?

Japan wants its hardworking citizens to try a 4-day workweek

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