To think it's weird Monday to Friday still exists

[Psyberbaby]

We developed all this incredible tech but a 35/40h week is still the norm?
Has tech not improved productivity them?
I'd expect us to be at a 20h week by now

Ok. But many people work in schools, universities etc. There has to be a structure. Not everyone has the luxury to work remotely as and when possible.

Presumably schools are only 9 to 5 because that matches the worker day...

But if you work half the time you should be paid half the money - if technology is doing half your job or making it quicker then fine but you literally can’t expect to be paid for something you’re not doing, so yabu
If youre more productive in your time due to things being quicker and easier now, but you’re still contracted to work 40hr I would just expect you to achieve more within that time

Schools are hoe they are because children need breaks, they need the weekend as do teachers and other adults workers in school.

If technology was made to work for everyone - all humans equally at the top of the hierarchy then it wouldn't be a case of needing to be paid less for less work - because you don't need to pay the tech so the value they give could be evenly shared between everyone

It is weird, the longer work week makes sense from when we were doing repetitive, labour intensive work. In today's environment where people are expecting 40 hours of much more mentally demanding work because the rest is automated then it's not so possible. All that happens is that fewer people do the jobs. Of course this is different for roles where caring is involved but it impacts everyone. School teachers work a lot but the children have 5 hours of lessons a day not 8 and that's not just because of prep work (in the past that was minimal) . I think shorter work weeks make a lot of sense and could apply across all sectors, most education and healthcare have people working part time and still cover a full time service. It just takes some will. In terms of getting more people into work it would make a huge difference, far more jobs could be less than 40 hours a week than currently are. It's an artificial cut off. It used to be 60.

Definitely not if you're a farmer - 7 days a week 10+ hours per day. Would be great if we could get to a point where everyone could have a more balanced work/life divide. Suspect we are a long way off that though, it's the same old profits before people.

school isn't childcare what are you on about ?

The effect of tech in my industry isn’t to save anyone any time - it just means my employer can get more out of the workforce in that time. It also make the working day more and more fast paced and expectations higher around personal productivity, to an almost impossible and certainly unhealthy extent

so you want technology to take away people’s jobs?

No it’s because they need the time to educate children!

I dunno about weird, but annoyed - absolutely. I would very much like a week formed of 3 days of Saturday and 2 days of Sunday followed by a Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tech isn't free!

I suppose it has helped. I can complete my work at a manageable, unstressed pace and whilst working from home (3/5), fit in some life admin and chores to make my non-work time, work better for me.

The tech is an industry in itself, requiring 24/7 on call work in case of incident.

also this, how much should somebody be paid for this mythical/magical 20hr week?

School isn’t generally 9-5 either.

Improved tech has made stuff cheaper for most of us. When I first bought a video recorder in the '80s it cost me more than a month's wages and not many people had one! Food production is cheaper, food used to cost a much larger proportion of the monthly budget. So yes, tech has made stuff easier to produce but we all want more and would not be happy to be paid half wages for half a week's work....

Also you have to be trained and knowledgeable in the tech being used. Its only as good as the information being put in so it doesnt necessarily do the work for you. So you probably shouldnt be paid less.

Thanks I think you're the only one who got my point

There is still an awful lot of jobs that can’t be done remotely/on a computer. DH is a scientist. He can’t bring that home.

Lots of jobs are made up busy work to keep people occupied and the economy turning; they could be 0 hours or 100 hours, it really doesn’t matter, it’s just whatever has been invented as the norm.

While the driving factor for countries remains chasing growth, and the driving factor for companies remains profit, companies will continue to push for fewer people doing longer hours to make labour savings, which increases their profits. This is incentivised by governments because it leads to “growth”.

What you are suggesting would require a complete overhaul of our economy and politics.

The pandemic proved schools absolutely are childcare. Why do you think the children of keyworkers who couldn't work from home went to school during lockdown? It's incredibly snobbish of teachers to think they are somehow better than childcare workers, both jobs are very valuable and are about educating the next generation.

Well, it depends what your job is. If you are head of marketing or social media manager or some other non job, maybe. But a lot of people, in the public sector at least, are trying to work through case loads, or deliver services with less resources than they were a year ago and 40 hours isn’t enough. At all.