President Biden Saves The 40-hour Work Week

bquintb@midwest.social to politics @lemmy.world – 179 points – Biden Just Saved the 40-Hour Work Week
newrepublic.com

Meanwhile, in Florida, the GOP is busy banning water breaks for working people

Please vote in November!

22

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

Good step, but let's get that down to a 32 hour work week with no reduction in pay.

Most jobs that are OT exempt have been shown to be more productive with a slightly shorter work week.

totally agree. I remember in the '90s, we were told that because of technology, we would have way more leisure time and everyone wouldn't have to work so hard.

The exact opposite happened as productivity skyrockets and wages stagnate. it's time to fix that with a 34 hour work week!

They've been saying that since the 1950s. Thankfully our corporate masters figured out how to fill our lives with toil so we don't have to endure the horror of enjoying them.

I used to work in construction. When I saw the first new tool demonstration, I thought, "Cool!" After the 50th, I thought "Great. Another thing to make working easier so we can just work more."

I mean, new tools are still probably a good thing if it means less damage to one's body over time.

You know what else reduces bodily damage?

Being home 😆

But in all seriousness you're right, but that lies right at the heart of the "productivity vs pay" debate. We create all sorts of new tools (coughautomationcough) that increase our productivity, but the only people who reap the benefits of that are the capitalists who now have time to play two rounds of golf on Tuesday instead of one.

We create better tools to enable work to be easier. But now we're expected to produce more instead of have a better work-life balance.

But on the flip side, new tools are pretty cool.

We're literally never going to have that utopia as long as we maintain this "ownership class."

We "don't deserve" the fruits of the increased productivity because they came with the technology and machines that the ownership class owns.

"They deserve the profit because they paid for the machines."

We will literally never have that utopia because the workers don't own anything.

It wasn’t just the 90’s. That’s been happening since the Industrial Revolution.

Hell how many stories have there been of people getting fired for automating their job haha.

But then billionaires wouldn't be so stinking rich if we did.