India is Considering Four-Day Work Weeks But With Longer Shifts (businessinsider.in) 61
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Indian government might soon allow companies to go ahead with a four-day work week. The Union Ministry of Labour and Employment is working on new labour codes which will make way for a three-day weekend, but will keep the working hours at 48 hours a week, which means employees might be subject to long days. "Companies will have to give three days' of paid leaves and 12 hours of work per day to their employees with the consent of the workers. We are not forcing employees or employers. It gives flexibility. It's an enabling provision in sync with the changing work culture. We have tried to make some changes. We have tried to give flexibility in working days," said Labour and Employment Ministry Secretary Apurva Chandra.
Quick maths ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So folks who are already working 12 hours a day for 5 days a week, will have to work 15 a day.
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> So folks who are already working 12 hours a day for 5 days a week, will have to work 15 a day.
They are trying to help employers that run 24/7 support. Now employers can't run 12 hour shifts or are legally required to pay extra for overtime. 3*8 shifts would be harder to maintain in one country. India has trouble covering even one 8 hour slot as their regular hours overlap wih other two possible 8 hour slots.
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Pretty much what I do. When it's slow. Because my skills are not in heavy demand where I live, making it really difficult to negotiate a better schedule.
When it's busy, it's more like 15 to 18 hours 7 days, but, actually, I almost don't mind that as much, because I'm actually doing something, and the time goes by much more quickly.
Re: Quick maths ... (Score:3)
As a North American who works with offshore folk in India, I could see this working well in some instances as some colleagues of mine in India end up working really weird long days, some days, to make regular weekly meetings with us, and as far as I can tell, currently without any sort of compensation or leniancy to their regular hours of work.
Best thing to ease unemployment (Score:4, Insightful)
We again are at a place where there is just less work. Most legal documents, for instance are handled electronically quickly where before it would be a day of someoneâ(TM)s time.
We need a 30 or 35 hour work week. We need a $15 minimum wage. We need to end states that force people to work fake jobs, like pumping gas or checking groceries.
Fake jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I know offices where it is still a persons job to put papers in plastic holders and file them in a binder. There are offices where the job is make sure everyone get their tea.
We have to ask ourselves what are real, useful, jobs in the developed world and what are just jobs so we can have an excuse to pay the peasants.
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When I was a self-employed SysAdmin, most of my clients were attorneys. You would be absolutely shocked at the amount of paper that lawyers process and store. The myth of the paperless office is just that - a myth. These attorneys had tens of dozens of Banker's Boxes full of documents in their offices AND off-site storage facilities filled with documents. All of this is on top of all the electronic documents they maintained. So yes, they paid people to maintain the filing and organization of these documents
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He probably meant "meaningful" jobs. Doing those tasks is not meaningful for the people doing them (it's boring, mindless automaton tasks).
People can pump their own damn gas. Gas-powered vehicles are on their way within a few decades anyway. Self-checkout stations are eliminating cashiers, which are themselves going to be replaced by cameras and A.I. within a few decades too.
I wonder how many potential writers, composers, inventors are never going to be given a chance to even realize they're able to create
Re:Fake jobs? (Score:5)
There are a lot of them that do not have skills nor the capacity to learn...and therefore depend on non-skilled labor jobs being there for them to earn a living.
No, not everyone can be a programmer...nor do they want to be.
We need to actually start promoting vocational schools and skills again more, in order to keep jobs out there for all brain and physical levels.
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Because EVERYTHING can be done more efficiently. Everything. Heck, Facebook is constantly peddling AI created artwork to me.
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Because EVERYTHING can be done more efficiently. Everything.
No. Economies don't work that way.
What matters is comparative advantage [wikipedia.org].
Good and services are exchanged for other goods and services, so all that matters is their relative efficiency of production.
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You're talking about meat packing plants and certain jobs picking crops in agriculture (and even that is getting more automated). One might consider forestry, but again, that could eventually be automated as robots get smaller and software more discerning.
There are certain manufacturing processes which can't (yet) be automated which unskilled people could do, but it's dependent
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Surely there's a lot of useful jobs that are suitable for non-skilled labor AND more difficult to automate or get rid of?
Um, no?
Not a lot, for sure. And not in the numbers we're going to need them in.
You have to realize that pretty much everything we've built we've built around the need for humans to be involved. As we build new, we're building humans out of those systems. We're not creating new places for unskilled labor to replace what we're automating.
The garbage truck came this morning, and it's now a 1 person job. The driver has a camera and a robotic arm. He pulls up, lines the arm up, pulls the lever, and it grabs the
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Not a lot, for sure. And not in the numbers we're going to need them in.
People have been saying that ever since the invention of the steam engine 300 years ago.
They have always been wrong.
When told that similar predictions in the past have always been wrong, people have pointed out various reasons why "This time is different."
They have always been wrong too.
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Again, you're not removing work, you're just shifting work.
You're shifting it from a skilled, practiced cashier to "How tf do I look up this vegetable? *touch*touch*pound*POUND*pound* where tf is it.." doing it yourself. You're getting rid of a (boring) paid labor position and shifting the work to your unpracticed, inefficient self, likely with sub-par tools (those touch-screens at the store SUCK and are terribly unresponsive) while having a camera literally 16 inches from your face, "HAL is watching."
Bring
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I'd rather spend 5 minutes checking my own groceries than spend 10 minutes standing in line to have a paid cashier do it.
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Well, only if I only have 1-4 or so items....which generally is not the case for me.
I tend to grocery shop once a week in general and I buy my weekly supply, what's on sale that week, etc....so I often have a cart full and it's worth it to me to let them scan and bag it.
Especially with the pandemic, I try to hit the grocery store on Saturday near when they open at 7am, but you can get
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People can pump their own damn gas.
People can also grow their own food. I choose to pay someone else to do it for me.
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I choose to pay someone else to do it for me.
That should be your choice to make.
But it isn't everywhere. In some jurisdictions, including the state of New Jersey and several counties in Oregon, self-serve gasoline is illegal.
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Yep. And every time I go to a gas station, I get out of the car and pump gasoline into my automobile. Should I be getting paid for that?
Note that there are places where it is illegal for me to pump my own gas. For pretty much the reason you cite - we'd be putting people out of work if we allowed that sort of thing.
By the same token, we put mailmen out of work by allowing email.
And traffic lights put policemen out of work - used to be a cop had to direct traffi
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Should I be getting paid for that?
You are getting paid for it in the form of cheaper gas. Jurisdictions that require attendants have higher gas prices.
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Putting gasoline in an automobile is work. Ringing up groceries is work. If you are employed in this job, and you are paid for it, it is in no way fake.
I think they mean states (well, just New Jersy now) that forbid you from pumping your own gas. I'm perfectly happy doing it myself, and don't want to pay extra just so I don't have to get out of the car.
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Re: Best thing to ease unemployment (Score:2)
One person can handle managing 6-8 self checkouts.
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How much could an automatic register cost, ten dollars?
I honestly have no idea, the BOM has to be a few grand tops since it's basically r-pie class of hardware with a touchscreen and barcode scanner plus a scale and the enclosure. To be conservative, let's multiply this by 10 and we're at maybe 30 grand. That's not enough to pay a human for *years* once you account for any benefits, taxes, and overhead.
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What are these magical registers that cost hundreds of thousands? Are you talking about some kind of industrial equipment or actual retail registers?
All the ones I've seen in stores can't possibly cost more than a few dozen k and their main bottleneck is that you have to both take the stuff out of the basket and scan it.
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Apparently, the average cost of a self-checkout register is somewhere around $125K.
https://theconversation.com/th... [theconversation.com]
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Of course replacing humans is never just a matter of how much the machine costs. It is how much the human steals, complains, think they need time off to care for kids, steals, wants working clean bathrooms, moans when they are sick
But the d
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Thing is, you can literally pay a human for *years* to ring up groceries, and not come close to the cost of a *good* auto register.
A four machine checkout system costs $125,000. That is $31,250 per machine.
A typical cashier earns $15 per hour. Working 40 hours per week for 50 weeks per year, that is $30,000. Add FICA, Medicare, management costs, etc, and the cost is about $45,000. More employees mean more shrinkage, so that is another cost.
Then consider that the cashier works 40 hours per week but the self-checkout machine can be available 168 hours per week.
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We again are at a place where there is just less work. Most legal documents, for instance are handled electronically quickly where before it would be a day of someone's time.
I'm agnostic on the question of whether we need a shorter workweek, but I don't think yours is an effective argument in favor.
If the advent of electronic documents means that less time is being spent on paperwork, why shouldn't the spare capacity be dedicated to other more productive work? Is there no additional productive work to take on? Is it in an individual's best interest to spend a smaller proportion of their time on work (and therefore presumably be compensated less than if they worked more)? What
Re:Best thing to ease unemployment (Score:5, Insightful)
That is great, where it works and is applicable.
But remember, one size does NOT fit all.
There are parts of the US where $15/hr min wage makes sense, where the cost of living is high.
But there are other parts of the US, many of them, where cost of living is MUCH lower and $15/hr min wage is not necessary, and would impact the economy there where costs would be counted in job losses.
And especially in those communities, with the pandemic, those business are going to have trouble to survive much less open up and pay that much money in employee costs.
So, doing the locally makes sense where it makes sense, but federally this does not make sense and could be detrimental to many areas.
The lower work week, again, makes sense where it makes sense in various industries....but not across the board.
So, while these are good ideas, they should be considered where they best fit, especially in such a vast and diverse land as the US, where the terrain and different state needs and wants must be taken into consideration.
Remember, you are a citizen of your state first and then a citizen of the United States next....so, you have to look at these policies in that fashion.
IN the US, one size rarely fits all.
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Since West Virginia gets roped in here so often because of Manchin, lets break down costs in that state.
Per month:
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We again are at a place where there is just less work.
There is no such thing. There is not a fixed about of work to be done after which we all go home. This is Luddite thinking.
We work so that we can improve our quality of life. So you can have that new car, a bigger house, a sharper TV, a more luxurious vacation. Machines and technology make people more efficient at doing work, at turning labour into wealth. But they don't reduce the amount of work because there is no limit. As long as people desire to improve their lives there will always be more work.
Subject (Score:4, Insightful)
This could be cool if people had the option of one way or another, though I suspect that won't be the case.
Personally the concept of doing 4 10 hour days instead of 5 8 hour days really bogs me down, and 10 is about the max I can mentally tolerate. I had one instance where I had to do a 16 hour day for an emergency and I was literally to the point where I was like "I'm about to quit this job if I don't go home.".
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Wait until you are 50, 8 hours is plenty!
No mod points, so best I can do is reply, agree, and expand.
I find the same thing as I get older. It's not that I'm any less energetic than I was 25 years ago. It's that my tolerance for stress is reduced and not compensated by new experience. Today I can have some 8-hour days that are positively therapeutically relaxing. Things go well, I get stuff done, feel like a king, could go another few hours no problem. Then there are days where it's "shit, server down, hundreds of users impacted, bullshit un
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I had a job once where we went to four ten-hour days and it was the absolute best schedule I've ever had. I really didn't notice the extra couple of hours those four days. I was already there, so it wasn't that big a deal. But I certainly noticed the three day weekend every week. That was awesome. Now I'm salaried and basically on-call 24/7 on top of the "normal" five-day work week. I'd take that ten-hour, four-day work week in a skinny minute (assuming I could still make what I'm making :) ).
India is not considering a 4 day work week (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for doing stuff like this is so companies can have fewer employees. Long shifts make it easier to cover 24/7 operations like factories, hospitals and 24/7 restaurants. That's all this is about. If we had any real Journalists instead of corporate dogs left that would be what the story is about. Not "flexibility".
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your comment seems the most likely... the 'benefit' to the worker is how the idea is sold, but certainly not the real reason a company would favor this
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It's about how many employees you need (Score:2)
You can sometimes get away with 3 8s for factory work, where the work is constant, but for restaurants and hospitals (and IT for that matter) there are busy times and slow times. Long shifts let you have overlap when you need it without having anyone ever sitting around. Even for factories this can happen though since one part of the factory may be dependent on ano
Not a proper 4 day week reduction (Score:2)
A 4 day week is a reduction in hours, from 40 to 32 for people on an 8 hour week.
Why do people try to change the meaning? Or just fail to understand the meaning.
The point is to work less for the same pay, and has been shown to result in the same or better performance.
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> The point is to work less for the same pay, and has been shown to result in the same or better performance.
Depends on the job. Grocery clerks don't get as much done in 32 hours as 40. Same for nurses, cooks, etc.
Architects, lawyers, coders - there's some evidence for this when the workload is fixed. No entrepreneur is working 32 instead of 60 and getting more done.
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It's a general rule. There are always exceptions. Exceptions don't invalidate the point.
Using them does weaken the argument, though. Why are you trying to weaken the argument?
3, 4, 5 or 9 (Score:2)
In a past job we had the option of a regular five day week, a week of four longer days, a week of three really long days, or a nine day fortnight of slightly longer days. The last option was the most popular and was the one I did.
I'm older now and would really appreciate a bit more time for my own pursuits. Thanks to You Know What I had some unpaid time off last year but it's just not the same. I actually took a couple of vacation days just to remind myself what a proper day off felt like.
...laura
3-day work week with 14 hour shifts (Score:2)
That way I can work two full-time jobs and barely scrap by in this crazy world. It's too difficult to hold multiple full-time jobs on the current 5 or even propose 4 day week.
Robots (Score:2)
What about robots? Don't they get time off work? Imagine stamping something all day every day non stop. It sucks to have to do the same thing over and over. The only things I can tolerate doing repeatedly over and over are breathing and rapidly contracting and relaxing my heart muscles around once a second. Strange I haven't gotten bored of doing that yet.
4 days per week and 12 hours work is awesome (Score:2)
I did this in mid 2000's at a place I worked. I talked to the owner and said hey can I do this as I wanted to pursue more photography.
Mon - Off
Tues/Wed 8am-8pm
Thursday - Off
Fri - 8am-8pm
Sat - 9am-6pm
Sun - Off
It was fucking awesome BUT then some of the other employees caught on and the place agreed to try it with management. Problem arised with management/sub management having too many days apart from each other and thing not getting done. So the owners fully scrapped it after couple of months. If it wasn't
So? (Score:1)