The pressure of having to work 40 hours per week is getting to all of us. If you are not born into wealth, you will likely be working 40 or more hours per week until you either make it to retirement, or die. Retirement is not even guaranteed if you are on the lower end of the income spectrum.
Not only is work pressure becoming too much to handle, it is also one of the leading causes of suicide amongst workers. Despite this, many political leaders of many different countries are pushing to increase the amount of time citizens must spend at work, and decrease the amount of days they can spend at home and with family.
With all the technological advancements being made, employees should get to experience a reduction in the amount of time and labour put into a job, but work expectations are only increasing. Employees are demanding a lot more throughput from employees, not less.
what can we do about this?
We need to change the culture that surrounds work. We need to normalize a 3-4 day work week, with only 6 hours per day employees are expected to spend on the job. On top of that, all workers should be earning enough to provide for themselves and their family.
I propose that we start by creating our own not-for-profit businesses in every sector made for the sole purpose of transferring wealth to the working class. These not for profit businesses should abide by the following rules
- workers should not be made to work for more than 4 days a week
- Workers should not be made to work for more than 6 hours per day.
- Business owners and CEO's should not be allowed more than 2x the amount payed to the lowest payed employee
- Profits should go towards improving the business or distributed among all workers
- The lowest paid employee must be paid at least 3x the amount the cost of living in the area of which the business operates.
I myself hope to earn enough money to open up a chain of businesses that does exactly this. One day I may be open to donations to get this started, but am hopeful that other people with the means to do so will do the same.