to understand numbers. So, bird in Iceland cheering about working hours reductions:
Through the centuries, women’s headstones have rarely had titles other than “Housewife” or perhaps “Wife of [insert husband’s job title]”. Although today women in Iceland have all sorts of jobs, we have yet to reach full equality. But an important step on that journey has been the shortening of the 40-hour working week to 36 hours.
This change started in 2019 in response to campaigning by some of our biggest unions and following the success of trials that involved more than 1% of Iceland’s working population. As a result, close on 90% of the country’s working population now work shorter hours or have the right to shorten their working week.
Trials, law, campaigns etc.
Yet, even without all of those things UK working hours are also falling. By about the same amount too. Those ONS numbers are fuill and part time together. But later on you can see that the big fall driving that average down is reductions in male full time hours. And full time in the UK generally does mean 37.5 hours. One reason I know this is that if you multiply up and hourly rate by 40 and call that weekly wage you’ll always get a few folk sayin’ but, no, that’s too high in hours.
This is also naturally so – as people get richer they take some opf their greater wealth in more leisure. Just do, that’s what happens. But it’s not necessary to have unions and laws and campaigns about it – because this is just what naturally happens.
I nominally work 35 hours a week.
The trend is to campaign for a 4 day week working a little longer each day to make up the hours. This is frequently done by starting earlier, leaving later and compressing lunch.
In reality those extra hours evaporate quite soon, especially if they are worked from home. I wonder how long it will take for the hours expected to drop enough for the three day working week to become a goal.
How else are the unions going to fill their 36 hours of ‘work’ per week if they don’t campaign for this sort of thing?
Unions are needed to tell everyone that you produce more if you work less hours, which is why the unions now only exist in jobs paid for by the taxpayer.
The guy (or woman) who works at Kwik Fit finds that if his branch regularly says to its customers “It’ll be ready next Tuesday mate, we’ve only had your car for a week and these tyres are buggers to fit” doesn’t have much work after a couple of months and nobody gets paid. If you work in local government you can say “Yes it’s taken 6 months to process your application” you still get paid your £40,000 a year for the rest of your life.
Are union employees working 4 day weeks? Ditto, Labour Party employees?
When they are and they’ve demonstrated that they are just as productive after a 10 year trail ie union members are happy forking out their dues without complaint, we might, might, consider listening to them.
Trials, law, campaigns etc. are like CO2, aren’t they? They lag behind the actual change rather than cause it, but this doesn’t stop deluded and mendacious claims that they’re the cause.
As I got older I reduced my hours by not working overtime. I’ve worked in agricultural engineering where overtime was expected over the harvest period. I’ve worked at places where an extra hour every night and four hours on Saturday morning were optional but always available if you wanted it. As I got older and got more materially comfortable I didn’t really need the money and stopped doing it. There were colleagues who were maybe ten years older than me and who were also comfortably off who would work all of the available hours while complaining about how much they hated being there.
I don’t understand this. They’ve always had the ‘right’ to shorten their working hours – you just take a job with fewer hours. Call in sick regularly, whatever.
What they’ve LOST is the *right to work longer and make more money*.
How is an all-round shorter working week for everyone a “womens issue”?
Is it because Guardian writers can’t think outside their bubble?
If rising wealth makes a country work fewer hours, then why do Americans still work such long hours?
They don’t. Americans work longer “paid” hours than Europeans. And fewer unpaid household hours. They automate more of domestic chores by buying tech that does that for them that is. About what you’d expect with the difference in income taxation….. I think it was the Nobel Laureate Prescott (no, not our one just gone) who pointed this out at length.
My experience (admittedly from the turn of the century) is that USAsians spend more time in the office, but don’t actually get more done. Be there before the boss and leave afterwards but do SFA inbetween.
Americans’ long hours? It’s to make time for all the meetings.
Maybe Americans take fewer unpaid hours at home because childcare and maids are cheaper. Possibly illegal but cheaper.
And at the trivial level are less likely to prep 3 or 4 lunches before leaving the house because ordering in your chow to the workplace is more common.
“Housewife”, just like “Farmer”, is a 24/7 hour job. And just as badly paid for the investment involved.
That said… As my body started failing ( EDS in males is a biatch..) , and I couldn’t keep up with the demands of even a 24 hour week, I shifted to supporting the few ladies of my acquaintance who did chose that Traditional occupation.
I might not have kids of my own, I do have a veritable Cloud of them that aren’t mine, but still call me “Uncle”.
(Respect depending on actual age. Teenagers be Teenagers, but funnily enough, once past that and getting some Knocks by Real Life™…. Varied Are The Ways Respect You Earn Are….)
And a solid number of the Mothers, and nowadays sometimes Grandmothers, generally seem to be of a Pleasant Disposition towards me.
This is, of course, a life in complete juxtaposition which the Feminists would like to see, because it supports “The Core Family”. So I (have) tend(ed) to get some Flak by the usual Feminists.
Which is how I found out Mums can punch harder and meaner than most trained blokes if you threaten their scheduled afternoon Naps.
Which, judging from this article, hasn’t sunk in with the Modern Feminists. Mums should Punch Harder.
( Disclosure… My Mum was one of the Dolle Mina’s burning their Bra’s at de Dam in Amsterdam way back when.
That was about Equal Pay for Equal Effort.
She taught me …a lot… and she has my Respect, not because of Mother, but of what she *accomplished* .
But she’s still alive, and by *GODS* would she like to take this type of “feminist” for a little walk to the back of the Shed…. )
I worked many years for an American bank where long hours were synonymous with the name. During my tenure I visited the US every few months and my impression was that most pretended to have an 8AM start but in reality rolled in around 9-9:30 and departed before 6PM on most days with a somewhat earlier finish on Fridays.
The late start culture was demonstrated by the attacks on the World Trade towers where 50,000 people worked. The first plane hit at 8:46 when the buildings occupancy was fortunately relatively low.