I am interested in entertaining the idea of abolishing the 40-hour work week. I figure r/antiwork is probably one of the best subs to discuss it.
So how, exactly, would this work? Let's say a company that pays $40k/year switches its employees to a 20-hour work week. If they keep the salaries the same, that's basically a pay raise of 200% even though employees' annual income doesn't change (they're getting paid the same to do half the work). However, now the company's work force has effectively be cut in half. That's half the productivity, so now the company needs to double its employee head count to fill the void in order to maintain production levels. This equates to doubling what they're paying out for employee salaries. How would a company be able to manage that massive increase in overhead without passing the costs on to the customer? This would cause production costs to increase which would get passed on to retailers. The retailers also switched to 20-hour work weeks and will have the same overhead increases in addition to the usual mark-up to remain profitable. I can see a $4 bag of Doritos going to $8-10. Who would actually pay that?
On the other hand, if the salary remains proportionate to the hours worked in the new 20-hour work week then all employees' annual income just got cut in half. They're going to need to work two 20-hour/week jobs to make ends meet, so now they're right back to working 40 hours a week.
It doesn't have to be 20-hour work weeks. Maybe cut it to 30, but the same math applies. In any case, I'd like to hear everyone's ideas on this.