Context: guy made a comment saying people wanting a 30 hour work week were weak acting like it was burden. I typed out the below but Reddit wouldn’t let me post since it was to long lol. And I accidentally took an extra dose of adderall this morning. Anyway, thought some of you would enjoy reading it (if you can, I’m a long winded bastard I apologize)
Insinuating people who are calling for lower hour work week time “weak” is honestly some of the most uneducated, bootlicker, corporate kiss ass shit I have ever heard. I’m about to write a fuck ton and I doubt you actually comprehend or read any of it but I accidentally took an extra adderal and people like you piss me off so fuck it. If I change your mind I welcome you with open arms tho, all love bro.
Here’s the thing, 40 hour work weeks were primarily “designed”for factory jobs (Henry Ford actually was the first one to normalize it, solely so his employees could have the actual time/wages to go out and buy his model T’s), or really I should say mandated by the government so that employees weren’t worked to death, because if companies could make you work 80 hours with no OT they absolutely would, hell they employeed literal children back in the day. In fact they still do, just children in countries that aren’t here and don’t have labour laws or don’t have laws that are enforced (in fact though, they still do it to children from foreign countries actively in america right now too, but that’s another tangent that will make this 10 paragraphs longer, if you want to personally know more about it look up the raids on Tyson meats and US Hyundai factories among others, and I’m not talking back in the 70’s-90’s I mean literally right now). Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the average amount of time spend working was around 20 hours a week. Even today, modern day tribes that are still living a nomadic hunter gatherer live style work around 20 hours every week. I’d love to see anyone try to convince me they work harder than tribes that have to literally chase down and hunt animals and forage for food to not starve to death for their entire lives. I think one of the best examples of how our perceptions have skewed is modern medias depictions on the back breaking work of pre revolution farmers, who many people look at and thank god they have the luxury of wasting only 40 hours of every week of their life. Often, and somewhat correctly depending on the context, families are shown as working 12-16 hour days in the fields 7 days a week, digging, planting, and harvesting by hand with extremely crude tools. While yes this is true for a small percentage of extremely poor small family owned and operated farms, most farms and homesteads had hired help. Horses and other large livestock for plowing have been around for centuries. Plows also weren’t for the only tools at their disposal. Even kings/governments would provide needed help for farms on occasion, because what use is ruling a country/kingdom if all your citizens starve to death (Stalin didn’t get the memo). But the biggest thing I think people do not realize, is that field upkeep, plowing, planting and harvesting, even if it is you and your family is doing it for 12-16 hours a day for months is that growing seasons are not a year long affair. You prepare the field, plow the field, plant the seeds, maintain the crops, and harvest. Maybe a couple times a year if you’re lucky or if you have crops with different growing seasons (most back then focused on 1 crop usually though, but some crops you can get 2 or more harvests), and then your keep what will get you and family through winter, and sell the rest. You, your family, and employees then are done farming until the next year. Did they just lay on the couch watching tv like we all would today? No, but they now had much, much, much more time for personal endeavors, hobbies, improvements to their house/home/land/ whatever they wanted or needed until the next growing season started again. Guess what all that averages out to? 20 hours a week. Yes, in all fairness there were some extremely challenging periods mixed in. This is also all dependent on your growing zone of course though, the zone 1 with the shortest growing season being 100 days up to zones 10-13 having year long growing seasons. It is important to know though different zones have different crops that can be grown, and even with 10-13 having year long growing seasons crops are never grown year round, at least not in the same fields as they take time to recover after a harvest especially without a lot a fertilizer which wasn’t a trivial thing to source in large quantities back then. With all that said, I’d still be willing to bet a large amount of people would be willing to work 60-80 hour weeks if it meant they had 3-6 months off a year to get that get that 20 hr a week average.
But back to why the 40 hour week model works well for factory jobs. For example, say you have 10 employees on a line, they work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 40 hours total. You let the line run for a week/month or longer to build initial stock and keep track of the metrics and now management/owners know exactly how much product can be completed in a day/week/month (barring people out sick, if that was even a thing for your job / supply chain issues, etc. but at least a rough estimate). Now, when other company clients or consumer customers want to buy the products coming off the line, you have a rough estimate of what amount of product you can sell them, and what time frames it will take to produce the goods for various orders if your backstocks aren’t sufficient, and what will you need in men and assembly lines if you need to expand. Your company starts doing better than expected and you can’t fulfill orders in a reasonable time frame? You can add more lines or people, or do 24/7 rotating shifts and you can hire more people. Factory is at full capacity? Build a new one. New tech comes along to make things quicker? Add it in and update the metrics. The model is fantastic, if not a little dehumanizing and soul crushing for the line employees, for a manufacturing factory to product based business, which from the early ish 1900’s to about the 80’s is what a vast amount of companies were doing. It’s what every exec hopes for, a simple, easily scalable venture to rake in money. Back in the day, this was one of the best career paths for most people. You get hired at a factory, you do your 40 hours, and you (mostly) make enough money to support your family, buy a house, hell you could usually even take a few nice vacations a year. Who knows, maybe one day you could move off the line to a higher position. The age of booming US physical product production was great (economy and quality of living wise, at least for most if not for you know, the whole racial and social issues side etc) and is what truly created the middle class in America. You didn’t need a college degree, an internship, or hell you barely ever needed a highschool diploma and you could easily land a job good enough to have a decent home, your family provided for, shoot even maybe a couple vacations every year, even if the job effectively made you the equilevant of a robotic arm for 40 of your waking hours for a lot of Americans this was the American dream. Hell, a lot of fathers working at factory had the expectation that their son/‘s would come to work at the same factory as them when they turned 18 back then. I know I’ve gotten on a bit of a tangent but my main point for the above sections is to show that 40 hours at a factory was easy to get, made sense, paid well, and was looked at as something to be proud of, even if the job itself wasn’t fulfilling for many. It still didn’t need to be 40 hours a week, they could have hired more staff and done shorter rotating shifts, everyone got paid the fucking same anyway, but whatever, we will move on just for the fact that most Americans were ok with it back it then, and a lot (not all) people could live comfortably.
These days? Those factory/plant jobs are practically non existent. Companies quickly realized decades ago they didn’t have to pay livable salaries to Americans if some factory (sweat shop) in east/South Asia would make their products for Pennies on the dollar, they didn’t have to deal with the employees at all, and to this day they don’t (even if they claim to) give a single fuck if the factory making their shit is employing literal children as young as 10 years old, if not younger. They don’t give a fuck if the employees are paid the equilevant of 5$ a week(regardless if they work 40 or 80 hours) in whatever country it’s in. For fucks sake these corporations don’t even care if these factories have to install literal suicide prevention nets to stop people from commuting suicide from jumping from the 10 story of the factory because the pay, hours, and conditions are so awful Are they all this bad? No, but I’ve read enough to know a lot are, and those are just the ones I know about or that other parties know about. The simple fact is no human should have to work in any conditions like this, and anyone who disagrees is either a sociopath, purely evil, or brain dead. Rough right? And no I’m not directing any harsh comments at op or the reader, but if you read the above section and think it’s ok or tried to justify it in your head, well, fuck you.
if you’ve read this far thanks, I just felt I needed to provide context on a lot of things for what I am saying to be an affective argument. Only a few paragraphs left I promise, probably with more tangents and possibly unneeded context, I can’t help myself lol.
Okay, so what jobs are the younger generations getting these days? If all the “shit, soul sucking factory jobs are gone surely they must be doing great, right?”. No actually! Most are doing worse than any generation in the US that wasn’t in the Great Depression, or generations of youth that got forced into some war we (probably) needlessly joined. If youth today are fortunate or hardworking enough to obtain a college degree, get an intern ship, and are in general extremely lucky they may land a good gig that pays well and has benifits (health insurance, 401k, etc) and now they get to spend 40 hours a week and as much as 2.5 to five more hours a week if you have a commute. Oh, and the real kicker is that almost all high skill/education jobs are salary exempt, meaning no over time. That 40 hours you agreed to can easily and quickly become 50+ hours a week, all of it away from their families, hobbies, friends, etc, and the commute and OT are all unpaid! (Mostly, some people can get milage pay and/or are not OT exempt, but goodluck finding that in an entry level position).
Ok, but what if they don’t have a degree but went to trade school? They will likely be paid well and have benefits, a lot of the time making more than most people with non STEM degrees, at least early on. Honestly a really great option right now for younger people, or even older if you are in decent shape. The downside here is, if not very careful, is that their body will likely be too worn down to continue work before they even hit retirement age, especially if they aren’t able to make it into a position with less manual labor within their industry. It is effectively gambling that you can outlast the damage your career physically does to you either until you can save enough to retire or that you can move up the ladder to less demanding jobs in the industry. And the worst part? If you do damage your body badly enough you may not be able to pivot into a role that does not involve physical labour, simply because you could be in constant, debiliting pain. I know I sound like I’m being dramatic, but I personally have had a father, cousins, and friends that this has happened to. If I know that many personally, it is a scary thought to imagine how many men this has unfortunately happened to. On top of all the above, manual labour is ententiled to OT, but this isn’t exactly a blessing because many companies can and will make you work 50-60+ hour weeks. I do still encourage people to pick up a trade if they are interested, but you need to take real, educated, careful of your health and body in general.
Now, what about kids that did neither of these schooling options, either due to a poor upbringing, a lack of funds, or simply being a stupid 18 yo kid like all of us were at one point? Well, the vast majority of them are going to be working dead end, low paying, little to no benifit jobs for the rest of their life unless they can pivot into some type of schooling, finding a shit job but with lots of upward mobility, or starting their own venture. Not going to school and not having a plan at 18 isn’t the end of the world. But you need to have some sort of plan in your head by 21, and you need to be actively working toward that plan once you make it. Don’t flip burgers at Burger King your whole life. You could always join up in the military as well if you have no idea what you want to do at 18, at least then your getting paid while you think and you’ll have a ton of benefits when your out. Or stay in if you want, it’s not that bad honestly. If you stay a private your whole career though the same things I said about manual labour applies to you too though. Have fun filling those sand bags.
Obviously, there are exceptions to all of these cases, as well as more options I’m not taking account of but for the vast majority of the youth in America the above is what their future holds.
Finally, (I know, my bad, I promise to never double up on my adderall again lol) to the main point of working 40 hour weeks I can give you multiple examples of how shortening the work week to at least 30 hours (keeping salaries the same and bumping hourly to match) can if not fix, can at the least alleviate some of the issues for all 3 scenarios for youth employment I mentioned above, and most of it will also apply to people well into their careers.
1: The college educated kids that landed good jobs in the hypothetical are already in good(ish, most of this does still apply though) positions, so I want to provide examples for college educated kids that were not so lucky, either be it for low grades, a low in demand field, or if they were unsuccessful in finding an internship while in school. Basically these kids are going to for one, have a difficult time landing a job period. Seriously, even with a bachelors, most industries will still hire these kids into entry level positions only. If you don’t believe me, go to linked in, indeed, whatever and search for entry level jobs. Not only is the pay laughable for people who just spent god knows how much on a degree, but the job requirements absolutely insane, even if the pay was great. For example, I personally work IT and have a decently high up position in my company. I keep an eye on indeed for openings in my city and no exaggeration,
9/10 “entry level positions” I see are asking kids to do the roles of an entire team of people for the pay of less qualified person. Not to mention they all want at least 2 year’s experience for “entry level”. So, this means they are going to have to go find a job that they are over qualified for, apply, and if they are “lucky” get fucked over on their pay for at least 2 years to even have a hope of getting a slightly better but still super shitty job. So, how does a 30 hour work week help? They can spend those greatly needed hours obtaining certifications (which often count toward experience), learning new skills, and job hunting, among also of course, doing things they actually fucking enjoy or seeing their friends and family.
-
For labourers. This one is more complicated a bit, since first in my opinion labourers should be paid a base salary (not getting paid for 2 weeks because it’s raining is absolute bullshit) and I also believe OT should be opt in. Forcing someone to work 50+ hours a week or facing getting punished/fired should absolutely be illegal imo. If you need the money or don’t mind, go for it though. With that said if labourers had 30 hour work weeks max, with optional OT on top, the could spend the time relaxing, recovering, or even doing cardio/stretching/weightlifting work to strengthen their bodies for longevity. Your emoloyees help is never worth a project getting completed on time. If your boss has your team pulling 50+ hour weeks, he can get his out there and do it, he fucked up, not you guys.
-
For uneducated/unskilled workers. And I’m not knocking you guys by saying uneducated/unskilled, I worked in kitchens and waited tables for years, I know the shit is hard work. With that said, I do believe you guys should be paid a base salary (every job should imo) for waiters, you guys make tips and I know most of you already don’t 40 so, well, your good. To my boys in the kitchen, fuck hourly, find a job with salary, and if your manager understaffs your kitchen and calls you in tell him to eat a dick if you worked your 30 and aren’t getting OT. If you’re good they won’t fire you 😉 or if they do they’ll call you back in a week to come back and give you a raise. For everyone else, I honestly don’t know anymore for the 30 hour week arguments I could make for you guys, been a while since I’ve beeen in that boat. But I’d love to hear ideas if you guys have any.
Lastly, to any bootlickers, managers, owners, whatever, I already know your main argument against a 30 hour week. “BUT WE HAVE 40+ HOURS OF WORK TO DO A WEEK, WE NEED PEOPLE HERE FOR ALL OF IT” then hire more people and rotate. That fucking simple. If you can’t afford to hire enough staff, pay them appropriately, and ensure they have a work life balance then you can’t afford to run your business. Maybe don’t buy that second boat or give the CEO another multi million dollar bonus this year and the hiring budget will grow a bit. Eat a dick
If you read this far I love you and if you want to have casual debates on any topic dumb or intellectual let me know. Even just shooting the shit. I moved to a new city and have no friends yet so ya boy venting here. All love