posted by
n1
on Friday April 11 2014, @09:49PM
from the waiting-for-government-mandated-siesta dept.
from the waiting-for-government-mandated-siesta dept.
Center for American Progress reports:
Hundreds of municipal workers in Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city, will soon have just six-hour workdays at the same pay.
A control group will continue with their 7-hour days and productivity will be compared.
Among several other things noted: Greek workers, put in more than 2000 work hours a year; German workers put in about 1400, yet German productivity is about 70 percent higher than in Greece.
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Swedish City Trying 6-hour Workdays
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Friday April 11 2014, @10:14PM
Ah, Social Science Research at its finest....
6 Hour Crew: If we bust our but for the next few weeks we can keep these hours.
7 Hour Crew: We gotta screw the pooch for the next few weeks so we can get 6 hour days.
Please someone, bitchslap those researchers for me will ya?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Friday April 11 2014, @10:43PM
Why was he modded "troll"? Seems plausible to me.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 11 2014, @10:52PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @11:13PM
This sub-thread reminds me of the scene in "Cool Hand Luke" where the machine is laying down asphalt and the humans (convicts) shovel dirt onto that.
Luke (always the iconoclast) starts a competition to see who can shovel the most dirt.
They reach the end of the road and there's still daylight left.
The boss (guard) doesn't know quite what to do; it's never happened before.
A movie classic. If you haven't seen it, your education is incomplete.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday April 11 2014, @11:59PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12 2014, @04:42AM
The convicts in the movie weren't chained together, so there have been *worse* conditions on work gangs.
Then again, the bosses in the flick carried rifles, so, if you ran, you would be shot in the back.
In the Secure Housing Unit, solitary confinement is the norm.
It is common in lesser prisons as well
If people knew about the conditions in the American penal system, they would be appalled.
Don't hold your breath waiting to hear this via lamestream media.
Pacifica Radio affiliates [wikipedia.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday April 12 2014, @05:19AM
I wasn't alluding to the period in which the convicts were chained together or risking a bullet in the back.
I was referring to
* a time of MLK Jr dared to dream
* a period in which the average American had the guts to challenge the status-quo and the authority [wikipedia.org]
* a time when USA was going to the Moon not because it was easy (and not counting the pennies it would cost to do it)
* a time when the young stood for their rights [wikipedia.org] (and didn't screw their life over to pay the study loans)...
A time when USA was truly the home of the brave and not a faint shadow cowering in front of a bully [wikipedia.org] (or two [wikipedia.org]).
A time the USofA was a place to really envy... as someone who grew behind the iron curtain [wikipedia.org], I can tell that much.
"Cool hand Luke" captured the popular ethos of the moment (... a thing that today's generation seems to find funny... oh, well)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 13 2014, @03:48AM
Too many snarky comments lately.
My trying to read between the lines instead of taking your post at face value was a bad call.
I also allowed the Funny mod to influence me.
Apologies for my off-base reaction.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday April 13 2014, @04:22AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday April 11 2014, @11:57PM
Nobody can. Perhaps, if it were to happen sometime... Might as well try to imagine a situation where everyone thought they were yorkshire terriers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday April 12 2014, @12:07AM
I can. As I can imagine a world where a bunch of geeks write good code and give it away: I think that would be have to be called Open Source. Even more, there would be economic entities that pay them to keep them happy and continue do what they like the best.
(silly me, such geeks would think of themselves as yorkshire terriers, it will never happen)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday April 12 2014, @03:17AM
As I can imagine a world where a bunch of geeks write good code and give it away:
That actually happens.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday April 12 2014, @04:32AM
No shit?! Really?
Then... it is so far a jump to think there could be people in this world who have the primary motivation the pleasure of doing a useful thing and do it well? Or you think is only the OSS that has the monopoly on such people?
(if I'm not mistaken, I told yea some time back to shake yourself out of thinking everything in this world is about cost, efficiency, competition and winning. Was in the context of nations and carbon emissions and making a "better world" even if/when it's only a small part of this world to be made better... remember?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday April 12 2014, @04:51AM
it is so far a jump to think there could be people in this world who have the primary motivation the pleasure of doing a useful thing and do it well?
Yes. As I noted, the OSS people do it for free. The Gothenburg people get paid. And when you get paid, other motivations like building a life or having a family come into play.
if I'm not mistaken, I told yea some time back to shake yourself out of thinking everything in this world is about cost, efficiency, competition and winning. Was in the context of nations and carbon emissions and making a "better world" even if/when it's only a small part of this world to be made better... remember?
The plan in question is ridiculous. One group works three-quarters of the time of the second group for the same pay ("full pay" according to this article [news.com.au]). Even if Gothenburg truly did manage to find enough idealists, they aren't going to like being treated differently and unfairly like that. This is basic human nature.
And now that I think of it, I do seem to recall someone claim that Germany made a difference by reducing carbon emissions, when they were really just handing the world on a silver dish to China who didn't reduce their CO2 emissions. Even by consuming less petroleum, they enabled China to consume more petroleum (and thus, increase their CO2 emissions even more).
One can talk about how the world is all not about cost, efficiency, competition, etc. But enough of it is. And ignoring the parts that are about these things will get a country into serious trouble.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday April 12 2014, @05:37AM
(told yea to shake off the idea the competition is the essence of life)
You know... Sweden has one of the highest taxation levels [wikipedia.org] in this world.
Let me translate to you: they shaped their society around sharing/cooperation (by income distribution) rather than efficiency-by-competition. Looks like they found a sweet spot, so that they can afford to experiment reducing the work-hours and still maintain the same wage.
Speaking of human nature... maybe... just maybe... the municipality workers are payed just enough to stay at the upper side of the "Esteem" level [wikipedia.org], so that indeed they are doing their job with the pride of a job well done?
Besides, don't forget that this is an experiment limited in time: at the end of it, they are going to switch to one single way of paying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday April 12 2014, @11:06AM
Ever hear of evolution? Competition really is the essence of life with competition present at all scales of life, from the genetic level up to the human society at the international level. There's no point to "shaking off" reality.
The more I contemplate this, the more I want to start a deadpool to guess when it all comes crashing down. The article is full of economic idiocy like when they tout the virtues of the six hour day - taken sick time means less cost for the employer. They can hire more people. None of that makes sense for a normal employer. Sick leave is not that significant a cost. Hiring people has large fixed costs.
You have too much of that sort of rationalizing by the powerful going on in your country and it's going to fall apart.
Well, yes. Government jobs often are like that. Captive revenue stream and no accountability. It's living the dream at least till you run out of other peoples's money. They probably could set the hours to zero per week and still pull it off, at least till the voters kick them out.
Here's my take on why this is just a stupid idea. First, it's not practical for anywhere where you need work done and cost is a constraint. There are way too many costs per employee. Making it so that you need more employees just to do anything means that you greatly increase the costs. As I noted already, that's not a problem for a government that doesn't care, but it is a problem for anyone trying to turn a profit.
Second, it ignores that employees don't just magically work from the moment they punch in. Even for a menial job, you have to get your gear together, communicate with the rest of the team, and deploy to wherever you actually work. That has to happen whether you work twelve hours per day or six. For a government job, I could see that happening once or twice per day (since they'd have to repeat the process after lunch break), sucking up half an hour to an hour. So for the experiment in question, they're probably going from 7 to 7.5 hours of effective work per day to 5 to 5.5 hours of effective work per day. That's several percent more of your day gone.
Note that they could have just had these employees work four eight hour days (or even three ten hour days) rather than five six hour days. This particular approach just doesn't make sense, unless the work is something like US-style fast food where you can be working hard from the moment you clock in.
Third, it appears to be a political gimmick so that a certain mayor can win a coming election.
The fourth issue remains the disparity in hours between people who get paid the same. It is foolish to ignore that. I'm going to be proud to work two more hours per day than you for free? Swedes haven't been lobotomized last I checked. The experiment will probably trainwreck on that basis alone. On that note:
A bullshit management theory doesn't compensate for fundamental unfairness in the workplace. You got the mayor covered with that theory - it's all fine by him, but you don't have the employees covered.
Fifth, I just don't think the results are going to be impartial. There's too much politics involved.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 12 2014, @11:45AM
Speaking about the evolution: you know why the hominids got ahead of other species? Because they cooperated in the hunt of much [wikipedia.org] bigger [wikipedia.org] animals [horsetalk.co.nz], now extinct [wikipedia.org].
Other than that, it is clear that we can agree to disagree and live happily ever after.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday April 12 2014, @12:25PM
Economic competition is also cooperation, but of a sort you don't recognize.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday April 12 2014, @04:47AM
As I can imagine a world where a bunch of geeks write good code and give it away
Writing code is intellectually stimulating, not physically difficult, and the society appreciates the contribution. However fixing potholes is on the other end of the spectrum. Very few people would be eager to clean public bathrooms for no reward whatsoever. Most menial jobs are just like that, shoveling snow from one infinitely large pile into another, from sunrise to sunset.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 12 2014, @05:46AM
Really? Speaking for myself, I have a slightly higher respect/appreciation for the garbage men that take away my garbage every week than I have to, say, a city council bureaucrat.
See? There's you problem, the "no reward whatsoever".
Now... guess what? The municipality workers in Gothenburg are subject to an experiment to see: "can we pay them the same while rewarding them with a reduced work-week?".
Put this in contrast with "Can we reduce the cost of city cleaning by firing 20% of the workers?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday April 12 2014, @06:40AM
Really? Speaking for myself, I have a slightly higher respect/appreciation for the garbage men that take away my garbage every week than I have to, say, a city council bureaucrat.
Well, that's a strawman. Nobody appreciates a bureaucrat's work :-) Truth be told, the society does need effective managers, but 99% of paper pushers in the city/county government are neither effective nor managers. They exist only to justify existence of similar chair warmers above them.
What I was trying to say is this. Fixing potholes is not intellectually challenging; it is also not easy physically; and the society thanks you for this by lowering the window and shouting at you "You, bastards, this pothole was there for a year, what took you so long?" :-( Maybe you should suspect me of elevated cynicism, but I have seen such things happen. Can't say that F/OSS developers are never accused of *, but by and large users of software are more or less civil, so the developer does receive some emotional reward from publishing his code. Complex work (like programming, or art) calls for larger emotional reward; simple work (like digging a ditch) often results in very little appreciation. This can be easily proven by doing those jobs for money and then comparing the income.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday April 12 2014, @07:14AM
Who? The bureaucrat? ;)
Salary of a municipal worker in Sweden: [thelocal.se] $3810 - also, see the 70% of taxes paid to that level of salary.
Average salary in Sweden: [wikipedia.org] $4536
My points:
a. maybe the Swedish people have enough budget to repair the potholes sooner than 1 year
b. maybe the salary of municipal workers are enough for them to do a good job - so maybe potholes are less frequent
If you think the taxes are huge, think that the Swedish people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by evk on Saturday April 12 2014, @07:45AM
That 70% includes tax payed by the employer and maybe also VAT.
(btw. you'll find plenty of potholes in Sweden...)
(Score: 1) by robpow on Saturday April 12 2014, @01:05PM
As a Swede living in England I see a marked difference between the standard of roads in the two countries. Potholes are not as common in Sweden and they tend to be due to repeated freezing and thawing of the road sublayers (tjälskott) causing movements and cracks. English roads suffer more from poor maintenance aggravated by higher levels of traffic.
Sweden has over half a million kilometres of roads but only 9 million people compared with a third of a million kms and 50 million people in England. I remember one Saturday driving 550kms during the day in Sweden and only meeting a few dozens other cars. Here I see more cars than that just merging the motorway.
(Score: 1) by TheLink on Saturday April 12 2014, @05:39PM
How many very heavy vehicles did you see in Sweden compared to England? Heavy vehicles damage the roads a lot more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_ra ting#Importance [wikipedia.org]
You could have millions of bicycles ride over a road every day and they might actually leave more rubber on the road than wear it out. But have one heavy truck and the road breaks at a weak point.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday April 12 2014, @09:05AM
Who? The bureaucrat? ;)
No, of course not. A strawman can at least be useful in a garden :-) Bureaucrats have negative value - they consume time of people who could otherwise spend it productively.
pay from their own pocket - in average - 3% of their medical costs (the rest come from taxes) ... all the education (including University) - is free (paid from taxes)
It was the same in the old USSR. Healthcare was free, as long as you don't care about results. Education was free - actually, if you were doing OK you were paid a small stipend. However once you start working, all your *actual* salary went to pay taxes. You never even knew how much value you created, since the salary was published and negotiated after taxes. Basically, workers were given only some pocket money, just enough to make a token payment for the apartment and to buy some very basic food. A visit to a restaurant could cost a month's salary. A single ride in a taxicab in a city could take 10-15% of your monthly income. To buy a simple Soviet car you'd have to work for 6 years straight without spending on food or housing. But, of course, most people had no savings.
I looked into that index, and it appears that USSR would have taken the top prize there. Everyone was literate. You had great chances of surviving to 60. Everyone was paid the same, so nobody was poor (or rich.) Everyone was employed (it was a crime to not work!) But... what does that mean? I suspect it means not much, really. USSR was a drab, gray, hopeless society, where attitude of lifelong serfdom in service to the omnipotent state was the only one you could officially have. What then can I think of Sweden, if all I have is this index? The index measures only how polarized the society is, not how wealthy it is. North Korea would do fine in that list; but the highly polarized USA occupy #17. Spain, #15, is not richer than the USA.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 12 2014, @09:49AM
Well, quite a lot of effort to suggest Sweden may look like the older USSR. But... I no for sure your parallel is even remotely valid.
I know from first hand experience how the life looked and felt (so don't even think to convince me it's the same in Sweden). I can tell you the education was quite good... and you know what?... some [wikipedia.org] say it was intelligentsia [wikipedia.org] to act as the socioeconomic underground current which lead to USSR dissolution; I think they are right, even if the intention wasn't to actually overthrow the regime, but... how could one imagine a growing class of highly educated people support the dictatorship of the proletariat [wikipedia.org]. You see, this very last concept does not exist in Sweden's politics: it's a true democracy, they chose to share their income with between them (by taxes redistribution), nobody dictated it.
As for the comparison of heath care quality: have a look over this graphic [wikimedia.org] and read some comparisons [wikipedia.org] and then let's discuss about the quality and efficiency of competition (US) vs cooperation (Sweden) in heath care:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12 2014, @04:17AM
When someone says that no worker would ever take pride in his work product, that tells me a lot about the person with the opinion.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday April 12 2014, @04:54AM
So have you found anyone in this thread who has that opinion? There's a difference between having such pride as your main motivation and having it as a secondary motivation.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday April 12 2014, @11:13AM
BTW, shallow, mean-spiritedness is a natural consequence of this sort of pointless pontification (you don't even consider what I actually say). If you don't like it, maybe you ought to stop being part of the problem?
(Score: 1) by citizenr on Saturday April 12 2014, @02:35AM
Parks and Recreation is NOT a documentary.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday April 11 2014, @10:58PM
Okay, I took the scenic route to get here, but the conclusion I came to is... actually yeah, it should be researched. I don't know where it'll all land in the end. I've worked on too many projects where, if we were to do them all over again, we'd get them done in a shorter amount of time just because we're not exploring all the 'what-ifs'.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday April 11 2014, @10:48PM
Ah, typical "amurrican" thinking at its finest: everybody should spit blood to drive the cost/prices down, screw everybody in the process ("I ain't rich 'til everybody else is not poor" - also know as "competition as a life-style") and (relevant for this case) "seize the opportunity as it presents itself. If it's not illegal, who cares about honesty?".
And if it not so, then the perp, stupid as s/he is, should be punished or coerced to comply to this way of behaviour.
(note: amurrican [urbandictionary.com] != American)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by opinionated_science on Saturday April 12 2014, @02:57AM
ahh the problems of the placebo....
(Score: 1) by soylentsandor on Saturday April 12 2014, @03:04AM
Well until you try, how can you really know? If this experiment lasted one or two weeks, I would agree with you. I scoured both articles though, and I could find no indication whatsoever of the proposed duration of this experiment. These being Swedes though and civil servants on top of that, I suppose it would be more like a year, possibly even more. In which case I'd say your argument is invalid.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Dunbal on Friday April 11 2014, @10:30PM
Wait - government employees actually working and not playing Solitaire?
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Friday April 11 2014, @10:37PM
It's sweden. There's just so much solitaire one can play to fill an 18-hour night or day.
(Score: 2, Funny) by The Archon V2.0 on Saturday April 12 2014, @01:12AM
6*5 = 30 hours a week. I'd rather work four 7.5 hour days, or even bust my ass three 10 hour days. Two extra hours to the day doesn't tempt me half as much as an extra day every week to sleep in, skip the commute, and go places without the weekend crowds.
Actually, to be perfectly honest, right now I'll take a 40 hour work week as a refreshing change.... Damned Gothenburgers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by evk on Saturday April 12 2014, @07:36AM
Normally you would work 40 hours a week in Sweden, and that's 8 hours a day for most people.
I've been working six hour days for years, and for me it's a big difference. I do as much, or more as I did working 8 hours and the quality is better. I get some time over for my self and my family each day.