if having a MAXIMUM of 30 work hours would "solve" unemployment ?

[cumfy]

After all employers would have to find the labour hours from somewhere or find efficiencies ?

actually Xenia have to disagree with your first line.

I was a night carer - not even qualified in any shape or form when I started - on the minimum wage.

It never even occurred to me even once that "oh it's 7am I can stop what I'm doing any go home". No - I stayed until the work was done. Not only did it not occur to me to do that, I would have been halled over hot coals had I done so.

Re "I've done my hours this week, bye"

Could be say 1600 h /year.

I used to work in data analysis/IT.

Am out of work currently.

It's been tried in France - not only did the unemployment rate not come down, the work ethic has suffered massively and French businesses are less competitive than they were.

France has become an awful place to get things done in, and no-one seems any the happier for it.

And people still bitch about working too much

Do agree about the culture, Xenia.

Sometimes it has seemed like a competition as to who leaves last!

Bar, yes, that's true and after I wrote it was then thinking of all those other jobs people do for very little money but keep working when it's time to knock off, even vicars etc although the professions with lots of long hours and no paid over time are different from many 9 - 5 jobs in terms of regularly working much longer hours than you are contracted for.

And I'm different again. I only get paid if I work. We only eat if I've killed as it were.

Cumfy, I don't mean to sound rude, but you've got no idea about how "real life" works in a lot of industries.

Also, aside from the fact that you seem to think employers have bottomless pits of money - which, by the way, you'd realise is not the case if you looked at how many well established businesses have gone out of business in the last couple of years - I would hate to job share. It would just not work, as most of my work is not the kind of thing where I can hand it over to someone else and just pick up again tomorrow on "my shift".

In Belgium once you are 55, you are entitled to work 4/5ths so basically 4 days a week, or about 30 hours. In theory, this allows people to wind down for retirement, whilst freeing up man hours to employ more young people. In reality, they employ no-one extra and every one else gets more work to do.

I have worked part time since DS1 was born 17 years ago. For years I worked 17.5 hr (mon, tue half day weds). I was in admin and TBH I was doing a pretty much full time job, I just had to squeeze it in to half a week.

Not applicable to all work but for a lot of people it would mean about the same work for half the pay (or whatever pro rata). I think this would be particularly likely if you only cut off 6 hours.

I was paid to work as well (well apart from any overtime at the end of a shift - and when the clocks went back - fuckers ). If I didn't got work, I didn't get paid, - mind they were crap employers - I had 1 day (night) off sick in the time I worked for them. When I was pregnant and my blood pressure was so low that I couldn't stand with out being dizzy. Given that a large part of my job involved helping very unsteady elderly people around I decided it was probably in their best interests that I didn't work (despite needing the pay!). I was criticised for my boss for not letting her a know in advance (I rang early the day I was due to work to let them know - funnily enough since most days previously my blood pressue hadn't been that low I didn't bloody well know that I would wake up on that paticular day with it so bad). They reckoned my Moving and Handling training mean the residents were at no risk (apart from the fact that the training we received only really worked with residents who did't have dementia and could remember 1 minute later how you'd encouraged them to "use" you - the ones with dementia would just grab at your next, or round your wasit leaning heavily on you with no notice.)

Maybe it's a general work ethic thing - my mum worked a low paid "only get paid if you work" job as well, but she would always stay until her work was actually finished too) - with no extra pay.

Miss

I'm not sure that everything would just collapse in a heap in "real life" if some limit were placed.

Yes employers put pressures on employees, to a degree, because they are competing with others who are doing the same.

It really has nothing to do with the cash companies have, they'd all be competing on a level playing field.
No cash would magically be created or destroyed.

simplistic non-solution.not all jobs can be done by all people so forced reduction hrs worked wouldnt necessarily lead to any more jobs

actually the more I think about it the more ludicicrous the idea sounds.

Mr Joe Company Owner employs 2 people to do a job that in general (lets keep it simple) means the they can clock off a finishing time. He has 2 of them as that's the amount he needs to get the work done. They both work 37.5 hours a week.

He's told he has to reduce their hours to 30 and employ someone else to pick up the extra 15 hours a week work......

Like hell would they do that - they'd expect the current 2 workers to do the same amount of work in less time, not go through the cost of employing someone for 15 hours a week

CUMFY, cash would not be magically destroyed, but productivity would drop if employers could not afford to pay enough staff to do the work that needed to be done. Smaller and local businesses would fail and big business would relocate abroad in a flash.
Also, all the businesses that cater to the top end of the market would fail.

By definition, the only jobs that can be easily shared by interchangeable workers are fairly low-skilled ones. They are not well paid and the people doing them wouldn't be able to survive on 75% of their current wage. It can be a nightmare to find one candidate to fill a highly specialised role and finding two would be impossible.

It's also a stupid idea because even if it did lead to full employment, full employment is highly inflationary. You actually need a certain level of unemployment for the economy to function.

and how do companies afford to pay higher salaries and therefore higher employer ni contributions to make a living wage for people doing 30 hours and do the same for the extra people they would have to take on to do the hours not now being done by the people who are being given the same money for far fewer hours? And the annual leave entitlement? sick pay? etc?

As Bub says,big companies would relocate and the little guys (traditionally the ones to always get shafted from all directions!) would go under.

And suppose big companies did decide to stay in the UK even though they would lose money - Everything would become more expensive than it is even now. And how competative globally would we be with such increased costs?

Just read OP (sorry should be getting dcs ready instead of Mnetting)

They have reduced working hours from 40 hours a week to 35 hours a week in France (for that very reason), it has not solved the unimployement problem and they are now talking to go back to 40 hours it seems.

I worked in France for over a year- I did my normal hours, about 55-60! Both bosses worked even more hours!

DH works a 60 hour week. 30 hours sounds great, as long as he doesn't get half the pay and you can find someone with his exact ridiculously complicated skillset to do the other 30.

Why should someone who works their butt of to provide for themselves/their family have to give their hours and income to someone else? Confused dot com!

"I'm not sure that everything would just collapse in a heap in "real life" if some limit were placed"

Yes, it would. Which is why, when the maximum compulsory hours was set at 48, there was an opt out.

Sorry, should have said one of the reasons, rather than implying it was the only reason.

Maybe a better starting point would be to pay people for the hours they are worked rather than so many people putting in so much unpaid overtime.

Obviosuly never going to happen (don't know whether to give that a or a ) but if it did, it would lead to job creation as if you've got to pay the going rate, some of the time it's going to mean hiring an extra person rather than giving it all to one person who's knackered.

I think we would be better making it more acceptable for men to work part-time in order to have a better work/homelife balance.

For many many years now, as a family, we could have managed with my h only working say 3 or 4 days a week and having a day where he has more time for the dc at the start and end of the day, school drop off and pick-up etc instead of cramming most of his hands-on daddy time into the weekend.

Lots of women work part-time because their families can afford them to. Lots of financially better off families could afford the man to work slightly reduced hours too but it seems to be totally unacceptable to think about doing this or to ask for it to be considered, "career suicide" if you know what I mean.

Making it possible for this to be considered and perhaps forcing larger employers to show that they have at least offered their male work-force the option might work in freeing up hours here and their to create the odd new position. The benefits are potentially massive if lots more men got an understanding of what it's like to look after the dc whilst their partner is at work, they'd have less grounds for not taking a slightly increased share of the housework too.

However I know how so-called "part-time" working for professional staff of a certain level happens in practice and it just means that staff get paid less for the privilege of not having to be present in the office for the whole week whilst their workload remains pretty much unaltered.

If we as a nation were to be able to manage on 30 hours pay we'd have to have had a massive drop in house prices and be content with less material stuff in our lives.

I think it's a good idea. Everyone gets to do some childminding and hobbies. Very few jobs can't be job shared. My daughter had job share teachers at her primary and they were the best teachers she had there. They seemed to put more effort into the time they were there and seemed to know her better than some of the other teachers. Secondary school teachers would need to stick to teaching the same class from year 3 upwards (in Scotland) but that could be arranged.
Alot of doctor's job share. Yopu don't "clock off"
you do however just work certain days or parts of days. Operating sessions over run, but not normally by a long time as there are different lists for the mornings and afternoons anyway.