We are globally and officially on a 40 hour work week since the 1940s. 80 years later after 200% increase in productivity we are still predominantly on the same schedule. Why is that?
Let's take a look at the business logic behind things. What happens if we decrease hours by half for example?
It will halve unemployment and double competition for staff automatically. Explains why companies are generally against part-time work. But at the same time unemployment has to be kept under control in all circumstances in order to prevent civil disorder. How do businesses control that while maintaining growth? The answer is simple by creating bullshit jobs as explained in depth by David Graeber. But how do we persuade people to request new bullshit services which create bullshit jobs? Simple enough – societal narrative is driven by media and it's media that creates the individual urges and needs. Eventually it all boils down to psychology of the crowd.
Now to the more important question how do we persuade companies to actually embrace and implement less working hours? That's a trickier question. The only valid answer that comes to mind is by economy downturn, less demand and high unemployment at the same time. Oh wait, actually this is already happening for the past 3 years. So how do businesses handle that scenario? They turn to higher prices, micro-transactions, pay as you go and rent it instead of own it models to cope with the lower purchasing power of buyers. For how long could this work? A little while in my opinion, until people realize that they are struggling to afford what they could a few years ago. All those workarounds are not solving the problem they are just delaying the inevitable.
References:
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs