Full time work to be re-defined as 30 hours a week

[EssentialFattyAcid]

OK not really....but would this not be a great idea?

Then there would be enough work for everybody who wanted to work,
income distribution would not be so extreme
parents could spend more time with their kids or dependent relatives
more people could become involved in voluntary work
this would help facilitate equality between the sexes

What would be the downside?

(FWIW I would NEVER hire a painter and decorator on an hourly rate! can you imagine? I'ld only ever hire on a price per job + materials basis!)

Monkey you would be free to hire on a job basis, you have missed the point here

but that's the basis of the high salaries too, they are for contracts and targets etc

I thought Greece was in trouble, hehe.

No, seriously, this wouldn't work. People just wouldn't work so few hours, especially when trying to keep a family with this rate of inflation. If it's 37.5 or 40 hrs now, why do so many people work over 48 hours, and much more? Presumably to keep an OK standard of living which they can't do with less hours, not because they are in love with their job.

monkey the point is that the purchaser pays for the job done. The company doing the job have to hire more people to do it, that is all. Each of those people earns 20% less money, but more people get to have jobs instead of there being not enough jobs to go around and people left to claim benefits who want to work.

Prices are likely to go down not up if the 30 hour week takes off so inflation won't be an issue. Its also the case that ccgg you are falling into the trap of measuring standard of living by how much you earn.

In my opinion standard of living includes consideration of being able to spend time with your children, being able to help care for dependants, having a future for children that means they can work, having a less divided society, having less crime, giving a decent standard fo living to those unable to provide financially for themselves etc etc etc

but they WOULDN'T hire more people to do the same job!
a lot of places already don't hire maternity cover etc now they just expect the same amt of work done by less people, just as if they dropped people's hours by 7.5/wk they would expect them to do exactly the same job they got done before!

EssentialFattyAcid I am not falling into a trap of 'measuring standard of living by how much you earn'; in fact I am measuring a standard of living by working out if there is enough nutritional food on the table and a secondhand car to go for days out in. Not unrealistic since about 1960. £7x30=£210, not a lot. £7x48=£336, enouh (just about).
As for not having children unless you earn £10 per hour+, consider that many people have been made redundant and taken other jobs.

I think there should be more flexibility for full time staff. Lots of office jobs can be shared and some people would be happy to work a bit less to give themselves more flexibility.

yeah where I work they've pretty much got rid of PROPER part time contracts, if they brought them back (used to be that every job was advertised as FT or PT now they're all FT) then there would be more PT work for those that want it.

if all jobs that could be shared, HAD to be offered as FT or PT job share, that would help!

30 hrs a wk would be great and then get paid over time for anything above that.

EssentialFattyAcid

monkey the point is that the purchaser pays for the job done. The company doing the job have to hire more people to do it, that is all. Each of those people earns 20% less money, but more people get to have jobs instead of there being not enough jobs to go around and people left to claim benefits who want to work.

So the company is going to hire more people, is it? Why? Because you say so? Perhaps they can't afford to hire more people. Perhaps they'll do what they currently do in France with the 35-hour week, and be less productive.

Prices are likely to go down not up if the 30 hour week takes off so inflation won't be an issue. Its also the case that ccgg you are falling into the trap of measuring standard of living by how much you earn.

Why will they go down?

I find it extraordinary that, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and all the ghastly sights that we saw as Communism collapsed - the brutality, the corruption, the pollution, the state-mandated violence, the absolute and total disregard for individual liberty - some people, like you, still think that telling people exactly how they should live their lives is a recipe for success.

Communism failed because it took a system and applied it to people and showed no regard for the desires or thoughts of those people. You're doing exactly the same thing with your '30-hour week'.

Presumably, if everyone works 20% less then everyone will get paid 20% less. This means everyone will pay 20% less tax (actually, it will be even less than that as, at the margins, people will drop down Income Tax bands).

Does your plan include cutting government spending (i.e. cutting benefits) by a similar percentage or will your measures further disincentivise the option of working for a living?

This is a very bad idea.

judgeypants Clearly there will be millions more jobs available for the unemployed.
Saving benefits payments of course and they will also pay tax once employed.

"Clearly there will be millions more jobs available for the unemployed."

How? To a business, having a large workforce is a cost, not a benefit. No one in the sane world measures the success of an individual company by how many people it employs. Nor does a company move from making a loss to turning a profit by taking on more employees.

What this proposal hopes to achieve is that for every four people in the workforce, their employer will take on another person. What is far more likely to happen - i.e. experience has shown this - is that simpler jobs are automated, outsourced or absorbed by the rest of a company's workforce. The 'beauty' of this proposal is that everyone gets their wages docked by 20% in the meantime.

Let?s face it, the reason that the western world is in the shit now is because our governments are spending more money than we as a people can afford to repay. The cause of these structural deficits was the belief that we were richer than we really are. Reducing the individual output of everyone in the UK by 20% would be an odd way to fix this problem.

this is a good idea, but noone will go for it.
I earn 7 pounds per hour, how can i afford to pay rent a dn live off that?

western world govs are in trouble because they favour business over people. only business dousnt work without people to work of customers.

people are what keeps a business going, if we all say no. what will they do?

LittleWhiteMice

^western world govs are in trouble because they favour business over people. only business dousnt work without people to work of customers.

people are what keeps a business going, if we all say no. what will they do?^

Stop trading. And who does that benefit?

Judgeypants the whole point is about sharing out the jobs that there are so that the unemployed can have jobs - so it won't be "reducing the individual output of everyone by 20%". Some people will reduce their output by 20% and others will increase their working hours.

Its about doing the same work overall as a country but sharing out the rewards of labour more equitably.

You say"To a business, having a large workforce is a cost, not a benefit". but businesses will only pay for the same hours as they previously did - their costs will not change.

For the UK, having people on benefits who want to work is a cost - and not just a financial cost, also a social and health cost.

You say "experience has shown this - is that simpler jobs are automated, outsourced or absorbed by the rest of a company's workforce" - this happens regardless of changes in working hours and is also known as productivity increase. Changing the working week will make no difference.

Why are you so satisfied with the status quo? Do you even think that a 40 hour week is better than the working hours norm of victorian britain?

Do you like the fact that young people are struggling to find work? Do you like the fact that the growing gap between rich and poor creates civil unrest and more crime? What would you have us do?

Redefined by whom? My contracted hours are 40 hrs pw. Is the government proposing to fine people who work over? Lock up persistent offenders.
Businesses have enough problems finding good skilled staff without limiting them further.
The idea that businesses will give some zero qualification fuckwit a job just because they've been forced to cut the hours of their capable staff is ridiculous.
Sounds more like one of Khrushchev's fanciful ideals rather than a workable option for a free society.

Krushchev fanciful idea? Bit dimissive considering they did it in France?
And how come the working time directive was implemented across europe?

And what did the working time directive achieve? Everyone gets given a form and told - sign this. Then everyone carries on as before.

I'm not aware of what they did in France: stopped anyone working more than 30 hrs pw?

I'm interested in the idea of National Happiness and the idea that it can be measured, It seems right now that some people work almost all the hours there are and others can't find jobs.