Finland To Introduce Four-Day Working Week and Six-Hour Days [Update] (standard.co.uk) 173
Finland's new Prime Minister has called for the introduction of a flexible working schedule that would involve a four-day week and six-hour days. From a report: Sanna Marin, the youngest female head of government in the world , has announced the intention to trial the initiative, which she claims could be "the next step" in working life. The 34-year-old leads a five party centre-left coalition - all led by women. The Social Democratic Party leader told NewEurope: "I believe people deserve to spend more time with their families, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of life, such as culture. This could be the next step for us in working life." UPDATE: After being reported by the Evening Standard, Guardian, Independent, and many other outlets on Tuesday, we have learned that this news is not true. "Not only are these proposals not included in the Finnish government's policy program, multiple government sources told News Now Finland on Monday evening that it's not even on the horizon," reports News Now Finland. The Helsinki-based media project explains the origins of the story in their report.
Finland will try new things (Score:4, Funny)
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If they try to get Finns to talk to each other, there will be a general strike! No wait, they can't organize a strike if they don't talk to each other...
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talking to each other, etc.
Really? The usual Finnish stereotype is illustrated by this story:
Mika and Peppe hadn't seen each other for ages, so they decided to get together for "one" beer. At the end of the first pint Peppe says
"How have you been?" Mika just grunts in reply.
At the end of the second pint Peppe asks
"So how's your family?" Again, Mika just grunts in reply.
After three pints Peppe asks
"How's work going?" Mika turns and shouts
"Perkele! Did we come here to talk or drink?!"
https://www.expat-finland.com/... [expat-finland.com]
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In the Findland business community, they don't seem to get shit done anymore.....
Skyrocketing productivity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well rested, unstressed employees, generate more profit for their bosses.
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And that is wrong!!!! No one should profit off others!!!!!!
Yes yes, that is sarcasm!
FAKE NEWS (Score:5, Informative)
...and Slashdot happily contributed.
https://newsnowfinland.fi/poli... [newsnowfinland.fi]
Re:FAKE NEWS (Score:5, Informative)
https://twitter.com/MarinSanna... [twitter.com]
"A 4-day week or a 6-hour day with a decent wage may be a utopia today, but may be true in the future."
Not just that, but the "FAKE NEWS" report says
Not only are these proposals not included in the Finnish government’s policy programme [valtioneuvosto.fi]
Except, there is a commitment to review hours worked! (emphasis mine)
Employment and labour market policy ...
The trend in employment will be monitored using more detailed indicators. Analysis of the employment rate will also examine in parallel the employment rate for those aged 20–69. In assessing the employment trend, we will also review the number of hours worked,
So what do you call an erroneous report on fake news? Just news? Metafake news?
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Except the article above, and the news stories in question don't say "Finland considering X" nor do they say "Finland PM argued for one of these two things."
They say "Finland is doing X." Which is factually incorrect and would have taken very very little fact checking to correct.
But fact checking gets in the way of sensationalist clickbait. And that's what the news is now. Because people like you find it within yourself to defend them when they do this dirty crap.
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"Finland to induce" means "Finland will do it". It doesn't mean "Finland is thinking about it".
Slashdot has updated the article, maybe you'd like to check it out.
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The "FAKE NEWS" is (among other) that it was NOT the Prime Mnister to make the iniative! It was a womon who later became the Prime Minister.
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Maybe outside of manufacturing. In manufacturing there's a minimum amount of time required to hit production targets, usually governed by whatever machines you're using in line manufacturing. Cars for example. You'd have to increase shifts, and there may not be enough people available to keep the plant staffed 24/7 for serious output.
Eventually plants might not need so many people to operate, making the policy feasible in those scenarios. Seems premature otherwise.
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Re:Skyrocketing productivity? (Score:4, Informative)
...You'd have to increase shifts, and there may not be enough people available to keep the plant staffed 24/7 for serious output.
The number of manufacturing jobs isn't increasing. It has been shrinking. See this graph, for example https://www.pewresearch.org/wp... [pewresearch.org] (that's America, not Finland, but presumably Finland is something similar).
Note that employment in manufacturing dropped by 30% over twenty years. So you need to drop to a 28 hour work week (from a baseline of 40) to keep the same number of people employed.
Eventually plants might not need so many people to operate, making the policy feasible in those scenarios. Seems premature otherwise.
Bingo! If you look at the second graph, you see that those 70% of the initial number of people are producing 84% more product.
"premature"? Looks like it's past due. This policy could reasonably have been implemented 25 years ago.
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You may also not want to keep it fully staffed. Many operations prefer to run slightly understaffed.
The issue is that, in a manufacturing business with seasonal variation, like the industry I formerly worked in, if you ramp up for the busy season so that everyone keeps regular, non-overtime hours, you have to take a big hit in the profit margin on the off season or lay people off (nobody likes lay-offs).
It's also hard to train people to an adequate level of skill to keep scrap to a minimum if you can't keep
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Indeed. And Ford and others found out ages ago that for mental worker 6h/day (at 5 days/week, I doubt they tried anything less) is optimal. All those long-hour work "heroes" are actually costing their employers money.
Re:Skyrocketing productivity? (Score:4, Insightful)
The commentariat around here sounds like the "A fair day's work for a fair day's pay!" guy from Life of Brian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Fucking boot licking authoritarians just looking for a strong daddy figure who will bend them over his knee, why do you even exist?
Re:Skyrocketing productivity? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty ironic to here you of all people calling someone out on sociopathy. Half the time you're in the comments it's to condemn things like due process and call for more witch hunting and unpersoning.
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It's more sociopathic to demand that people ignore their moral objections and interact with people who they do not wish to.
It doesn't matter which is more $FOO if you are engaging in either of them.
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I think it comes from a deep-seated insecurity and lack of belief in one's worth as a human.
I think so too. In essence, it is an extreme (because you do it all the time) form of virtue-signalling. That the productivity peek (per week, not per hour) is somewhere around 30h/week for mental workers has been solidly researched and known for a long, long time. And while (very rare) exceptions may apply, all those people working 60h weeks or even more and claiming they have more productivity per week than others, are just lying to themselves and doing damage.
I think, below this is some deep-seated belie
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I thought I had been here a while!
Re: Skyrocketing productivity? (Score:2)
efficiency (Score:2)
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It's what you get when you stop electing people to run your country as a 1%er retirement hobby.
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She probably just looked at very old studies by Henry Ford and others that clearly found the productivity per week (!) to peak at around 6h/day, 5 days/week for mental workers. (Manual workers are at 8/day, 5 days/week.) This has been known for a very, very long time. All the idiots working much longer are just mindlessly virtue-signalling and actually cost their employers money.
That's great, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that a bit of an extreme start? I like the idea, but.... that's almost a 50% reduction in workforce hours.
Why not start with 4 days a week or 6 hours a day?
And, who [in Finland] would this apply to, anyway?
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What about the campaign socialists maids and gardeners?
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Hospitals would be an excellent place to start. It's mystifying why we think having medical staff pull 36 hour shifts is a good idea.
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The macho bullshit is a possible reason why physicians think it's a good idea. It is not a reason why the rest of us (i.e. the patients, eventually) do.
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Because there is no way that fire stations or hospitals could staff 24/7 under those rules. /s
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Time spend waiting is not "work", as long as you can rest.
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Re:That's great, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not start with 4 days a week or 6 hours a day?
They did. A trial in 2015 for 6 hours a day was a roaring success.
As it is the Finns already have the most flexible working time on the planet with 97% of companies offering flextime. The new law in effect now mandates that unless there is a very good reason employees are allowed to not only have flextime, but also choose where to work 50% of their time (e.g. from home). You only think this will be a shock to the system because you're applying foreign norms to Finnish work culture.
Re:That's great, but (Score:4, Insightful)
I suggest you read up on the Hawthorne effect [wikipedia.org]. In a nutshell, the very act of making a change to try to improve working conditions leads to a short-term productivity increase, even if that change is to switch back to the original starting condition. Either the novelty of being involved in a study, or knowing that the company is trying to improve work conditions causes people to increase their productivity. To really see if a change causes a real increase in productivity, you have to implement the change without the employees knowing a change has been made. Which is kinda hard to do when you're reducing the hours worked.
Re:That's great, but (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing that someone who disagrees with a result invariably will invoke a Hawthorne effect despite the data not being able to show that it was ever a factor.
They say correlation does not equal causation, and you sir have not put in place any testable hypothesis as to how you can even prove correlation with the Hawthorn effect.
Why not blame the change in productivity on climate change while you're at it.
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To really see if a change causes a real increase in productivity, you have to implement the change without the employees knowing a change has been made. Which is kinda hard to do when you're reducing the hours worked.
Actually, you just have to run it for longer than a few weeks. Contrary to your assumption, the people doing these experiments are not stupid.
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Thanks for trying clearing that up [while expressing your superiority*]. Lucky for you it turned out to be "fake news", though this makes your tangential point even weaker than it was to begin with.
* Actually, I've lived in both Europe and Asia in addition to North America, so I'm quite familiar with working norms there. Nice try, though.
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Thanks for trying clearing that up [while expressing your superiority*]. Lucky for you it turned out to be "fake news", though this makes your tangential point even weaker than it was to begin with.
You're welcome. Although I'm not sure why you dismissed what I was saying. Nothing I said was in any way related to anything which turned out to be fake news.
They did have a 6 hour work week in 2015.
97% of employers do offer flexitime (based on a survey done at the start of last year)
And the new regulations on the table right now does in fact mandate the requirement to offer 50% flexible working location as well.
But thank you for demonstrating my superiority to someone who doesn't even bother understanding
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Although I'm not sure why you dismissed what I was saying.
You're a good troll. Allow me to feed you a bit more.
Nothing I said was in any way related to anything which turned out to be fake news.
Perhaps. However, you responded to my comment, not the general discussion. The issue here is that:
- Your points had very little to do with drastically cutting back work hours on a permanent basis, which was central to the original post to which you replied.
- The only part of your point that was related was a trial. It's great that they did a trial. I was suggesting only that it would be better to implement such changes for an extended period of time befor
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It's a bit of a fake news, really. https://newsnowfinland.fi/poli... [newsnowfinland.fi]
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Check this article update, please.
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Yes, this was my first thought. Too much all at once. That may be an end-goal, but trying to do too much in a short period often causes a big backlash.
You also have to put this into European standards. The 8 hour day is nearly mandatory in culture, even if not put into law. Workaholics who stay late are nearly unheard of, and few bosses would are to suggest that a few hours more are needed during crunch time. So dropping to 6 hours would probably slip through if there was a decent reason given from the
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Because the entire story is fake: https://newsnowfinland.fi/poli... [newsnowfinland.fi]
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It is not. It is 6h/day _or_ 4days/week. And while time may be reduced, solid science says, productivity per week will likely increase a bit. The "work hour" is an entirely unsuitable measure for productivity.
Bad thing for civil servants (Score:5, Funny)
6 hours is not enough sleep, you'll have to rest at home too.
This is a gross misinterpretation of the facts. (Score:5, Informative)
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Twitter is an official political platform as any, and the PM's tweet says she wants either 4-hour work week or 6-day week. "or", not "and" -- that's seemingly the only mistake of the reporting.
The "Programme of Prime Minister Sanna Marin Government" states they "will also review the number of hours worked" in their labour market policy.
Good idea, but...depends on the job (Score:3)
For many jobs, a 24 work week could be sensible. Some jobs you really cannot be productive, day-in and day-out, for eight hours. Just yesterday, I started at 08:00, and by 16:30 (including a lunch break), I was just done, finished, no use any longer.
On the other hand, there are jobs that require presence more than concentration. If a shop is open, personnel have to be there. Reduce the working hours from 40 to 24, and the shop will have to nearly double the number of employees it has. Even if the pay-per-hour remains the same (unlikely), the ancillary costs will increase total expenses, leading to higher prices.
And on the gripping hand - going back to the intellectual jobs - there is always a fair bit of crap-work to be done. In my case, this is fairly low, maybe 20% of my total working time. But the amount of crap is basically a constant: meeting, paperwork, etc, etc.. If I were to reduce my working hours from 42/week (currently) to 24/week, then the crap would eat 35% of my working time. I'd love to find a way to reduce my working hours by reducing the crap, not reducing what I actually enjoy doing.
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For many jobs, a 24 work week could be sensible. Some jobs you really cannot be productive, day-in and day-out, for eight hours.
However, if you're engaged in work activities, those 24 hours of productivity are more likely to occur.
If you're at work for 24 hours in a week, you'll only get 12-14 hours of productivity.
So a 24 hour work week (Score:5, Insightful)
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...and the employee will be more productive so the process will generally work itself out.
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You go spend 1 year doing 24 hours per week cutting lawns, and 1 year doing 48 hours per week cutting lawns. I guarantee you that the difference in amount of lawns cut will be trivial.
For most jobs the output does not scale linearly with the amount of time spent.
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And a complete misquote (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, the current prime minister has, indeed, stated that her vision and dream at some point would be to have EITHER six-hour workdays OR four-day work week, not both.
Second, that target is not in her government's program. It's a statement outlining vision, not a goal. So "Finland", as in Finnish government, is not going to introduce anything. It might end up as a long term-goal of her party that they can float around during campaigns, but nothing like that is going on.
Somebody picked up a statement made in completely different context (before she even was a prime minister) and managed to even mangle that. This is just bad press.
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Goverment's correction to news is also here:
https://twitter.com/FinGovernm... [twitter.com]
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Is there any other kind, today?
Propose != Introduce (Score:3)
The prime minister has called for such a system but this is far from the country has a firm plan to do it.
Not quite true (Score:4, Informative)
The Finnish media has been laughing at these reports that have suddenly popped up. They seem to be based on a single comment by the current PM, last summer, before she got to be the PM, about that it might be good idea to look at 4-day weeks OR 6 hr workdays.
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The article says virtually nothing. Is she going to make it a govt requirement to allow no one to work more hours? Is she going to apply this to govt employees she controls? Is she going to apply it to govt contractors? Who the fuck knows?
But they did include a picture of a pretty woman. I'd fuck her. More pictures please.
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My friend once worked for IBM in San Jose. They literally kicked everyone out of the building at 5pm, i.e you weren't allowed to work any extra time, even if you were in the middle of something important. As a programmer, he hated it.
Yeah. I'd hate living in California too.
Slashdot seems to be on zero-hour workday (Score:4, Insightful)
Great idea, won't work in the US (Score:3)
Six hour work days make sense in a post-industrial economy. For jobs that require physical presence, scheduling might be a little harder. But, when faced with more and more work being displaced by automation, if we want to keep the consumption cycle going, we need to spread what work is left over a larger working population. The alternative is to pay people not to work, but no one seems to see the need for that (yet.)
I would love to be able to hang out with my kids after they get home from school instead of having them spend a couple of hours in various childcare situations until either my wife or I can get out of work and pick them up. Giving people back an extra two hours a day is a game-changer for some people in terms of quality of life, especially when a lot of your 8-hour shift at work is just "presence" and not a lot of productivity.
I doubt it will work in the US until there's absolutely no other choice, however. Even just in IT/dev/tech companies, there's a new crop of graduates every year who are practically begging to be worked every hour of the day. Tech companies love this...all they have to do is provide a college campus-style workplace and three meals a day, and they get double or triple the amount of work out of traditional employees. There's just too many people who would shoot this down as people being lazy and not wanting to do work for the good of the company. Working crazy hours gets recognized more than good productive work.
Same thing (Score:2)
This is what our ancestors were promised. (Score:5, Interesting)
Rat Race (Score:3)
See what unions can get you! (Score:2)
See what unions can get you!
Fake News (Score:2)
Years and years ago I had a funny poem. (DOES ANYBODY HAVE IT? I CAN'T FIND IT.) It was a ground tech working on something, reporting to his boss that "This is absolute SHIT." His boss reported it upwards that the job is absolutely full of excrement. HIS boss reported almost that
A shame it's not true (Score:2)
It's a shame this isn't true because it's a great idea. If your government can support it, then do it. You have one life to live, you should get to live it pursuing what makes you happy (and financially secure). I don't understand why anyone would find fault with that, at least the big picture.
Interesting (Score:2)
Re:an odd position for government (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, only an odd position for a USA government. Pretty much every other government in the world regulates employer / employee relationships from minimum vacation, minimum wages, to maximum shift length and maximum work week.
For example the countries which do not mandate a minimum vacation period are: Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Tonga, and the United States of America.
The USA keep strange company.
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The US government has lots of regulations about employer/employee relationships too, including working hours. They do manage to skip some that most of the rest of the world thinks are important, notably minimum vacation time.
Re: an odd position for government (Score:2)
The problem with our laws (FMLA, COBRA, etc) is thst they set minimums like 100 employees or 50 employees. Yet 80% of all small businesses in the USA have less than 20 employees. Nearly half of -all- businesses have less than 15. So the regulations are as useless as tits on a bull.
Re: an odd position for government (Score:2)
Yet 80% of all small businesses in the USA have less than 20 employees.
What about big businesses in the US? How many percent of those have less than 20 employees?
Re: an odd position for government (Score:3)
By definition none of them. But why pass a law that is only going to affect 1 million people at most? There is only so many apples and General Electrics and IBMs. If they only have 10,000 employees a piece, that is not a significant population. If 80% of the work force is in eligible to receive laws that protect the worker, then its posturing. What you basically have is a politician that passed a bill into law so he can claim he did great things. However, the company owners do not grumble since very few of
Re: an odd position for government (Score:2)
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No, France mandates 25 working days of paid vacation per year, which is only slightly higher than the more common 20 days mandated in most European countries.
About retirement age, it's actually 62 but slated to increase and reach 67 in the future.
Re: an odd position for government (Score:2)
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The USA keep strange company.
I'm fine with that if it means we're the only country which gives more than lip service to individual dignity, liberty, and autonomy. I'm willing to let people make choices for themselves. I'm not naive or arrogant enough to believe I know what's better for Olaf down the street. How in the world would I know for sure he's better off with more free time than more earnings?
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I'm fine with that if it means we're the only country which gives more than lip service to individual dignity, liberty, and autonomy. I'm willing to let people make choices for themselves.
You're an idiot for thinking that. The people who make the choices are those with the backing of the government. In nations where this isn't the case the employee is way too weak in the relationship to make any "choices" between accept getting crapped on or have no work.
Dignity indeed. Dignity for the 1%, the true experts, the golden programs with the midas touch, ... oh and fuck everyone else. amirite! USA! USA! USA!
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Obviously that method is used literally everywhere, and has seemed to overwhelmingly favor the employer for a long list of reasons.
It does seem as though all the advances in productivity are mostly being lost in profits to shareholders, with little return to 99% of the world. It will be interesting to see, in an environment where a lot less is lost to entropy, whether we have made such improvements that we can do 50% less work and still be equally productive. I admit to some doubts.
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Well, in addition you have to ask "productivity of what, exactly?" You can measure it by market value of products, but when the consumers only have a choice between crap A and crap B they end up buying crap anyway, and we usually end up with crap because of the inevitable race-to-the-bottom under capitalism coupled with the need to protect intellectual property in a purely competitive environment, which introduces numerous inefficiencies and product defects.
So it's not just profits of shareholders sucking
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When the company makes that decision, you find out that the company would like their workers to work 12 hour days, six days a week. In China, that's known as "996" (9am to 9pm, 6 days a week). On the books, China is supposed to have 44 hour weeks and 8 hour workdays, but of course, with enough government connections or clout, obviously companies can do as they damn well please.
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The funny thing is that this is entirely stupid and this "improved exploitation" ends up costing the companies money. Productivity per week _drops_ above 6h/day for 5 days/week for mental workers and the same for manual workers at 8h/day for 5 days/week. Yes, people that work more produce less overall. This is well known and researched.
The only way 996 is sustainable at all is if people basically slack off at work and are un-productive for 40% of that time or so.
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Finland has strong workers unions. Even salaried software developers are in unions.
Note that this is just a proposal, I think it was be a big stretch to ever see it implemented. The Finnish government tends to be left of center, but the population as a whole seems to have a somewhat conservative attitude; independent minded, hard headed, able to survive torture in saunas, etc.
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Unfortunately, when government is not involved, most employers of any particular size dictate all terms in employer/employee relationships. Only those at the higher end of the pay scale can even begin negotiating terms of employment. Most employees already have no voice in the matter. They accept terms of employment given to them (and to everyone else) or they walk, only to go to another employer and face the same terms (or worse).
Maybe in extremely small businesses (5-10 employees), you'll find some neg
Re:an odd position for government (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments have been establishing maximum hours per day and per week since the 19th century, because otherwise factory owners gave employees the offer "work a 12 hour shift 6 days a week or have no job."
Your Libertarian leanings are fantasy. Governments of the people, by the people and for the people have every right to represent the interests of the people. Governments work for citizens, not for corporations. Corporations are given the luxury of a "legal personhood" for the limited purposes of being able to hold assets, liability and equity, not so they can actually be persons. Businesses have extraordinary leverage over their employees, and it is only right and just that the government assure minimum employment standards, since governments represent actually living breathing people, and not fictions or markets or any of the crap that Libertarians worship like some sort of modern day Zeus.
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Beautifully said. My kingdom for some mod points!
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I know you will find this unbelievable, but not everyone thinks primarily in black and white, good guys and bad guys, our team and their team. Not every argument has to demonize someone.
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I know you will find this unbelievable, but not everyone thinks primarily in black and white, good guys and bad guys, our team and their team. Not every argument has to demonize someone.
What, you think you can have a good argument without demonizing somebody? What are you trying to do, arrive at some consent in the end, where people actually agree on something????? That sounds excessively un-American! (At least today. Dark times.)
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The view of work for someone else as a source of purpose seems horrific to me.
If it's your life's calling to be an entrepreneur and run your own business, making it your purpose seems fine.
Making money for someone else so that you can pick up some crumbs should not be anyone's purpose.
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The view of work for someone else as a source of purpose seems horrific to me.
Why? People are social in nature, and joining a collaborative effort to do something is rewarding in and of itself.
Getting paid too? Awesome!
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The poor people of today have it better than Kings did 200 years ago
Today's wealthy thank you for not paying any attention to the difference in their standard of living compared to 200 years ago.
The rest of us will still look at you strange for thinking making rich people richer is a meaningful purpose for your life.