476
submitted 1 week ago by neme@lemm.ee to c/workreform@lemmy.world
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] hark@lemmy.world 57 points 1 week ago

We should've gotten a 4-day work week decades ago. Now it should be a 3-day work week at most and I'm being generous. The capitalists are always screeching about the low birth rate, but if people were working 3 days a week and making a decent living off that time, it would help the birth rate because then a household with two working parents could be scheduled on different days and alternate staying home with the child, plus have a shared day off every week.

Anyway, that's just a selling point to make to the capitalists. Whether or not it helps with the birth rate doesn't matter as much as the fact that we're owed shorter work weeks thanks to all the blood, sweat, and tears that labor has put into making the world as wealthy as it is now. What's the point of all this work if not to improve our standard of living? Technology making our lives better is hitting diminishing returns and now it's often not making our lives better or it's even making our lives worse.

[-] Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

The argument for a 4 day work week is that studies have shown it maintains the same level of productivity as a 5 day workweek, but it makes people happier, so it doesn't slow down the economy, but actually improves it. What's the argument for a 3 day work week?

[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago

Because people deserve more time to be people. Not everything has to serve the Holy Economy.

[-] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Sure, I agree with that. However, we also need to consider what a "net decrease in productivity" actually means for the population as a whole, and whether it's something we want to accept as a trade-off for more free time. Briefly, we can collectively choose to work four, three, or even two days a week, despite seeing a decrease in overall productivity. However, a decrease in productivity means that stuff like clothes, transport, food, IT services, and pretty much everything you can think of that someone has to produce becomes more scarce.

You basically need to answer the question of "would you prefer two days off per week with current access to goods and services, or have more days off with reduced access to goods and services". Of course, there may come along technological innovations that change this in some ways, and there are studies showing that a lot of people can be sufficiently productive on a four-day work week. On a society level, I still think the point stands as an overall tradeoff we need to consider when talking about whether we should reduce the work-week.

My point is that it's not just a "capitalists are bad, and we're owed more free time" thing. If we produce less, then goods and services become scarcer for everyone. I would say the distribution of wealth in society, and how it's shifted the past 20-50 years is more concerning than the fact that we're working the same hours as we were 20-50 years ago.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

A 3 day work week maintains the same level of productivity and makes people happier.

What's the argument for a 2 day work week?

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago

My reading of their argument is that when the 5 day a week, 40 hour work week began there was a specific level of productivity. As technology increased the output increased. If we believe that recent increases make it so that we only need to work 4 days to maintain our current output, we should be owed 3 days because by the same logic long ago we should've dropped to 4.

[-] Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I would assume that there's a balance to this. At some point the reduction of hours will result in a loss in productivity. You can do 5 days of work in 4 days if you're better rested and more focused, but this might be less true in 3 days. I mean if studies show that there's isn't a dip productivity and that it improves well being, then sure, that would be great but I think it's likely than a 4 day work week.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Widdershins@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Imagine being rich as fuck because you're working 6 days a week instead of still barely making ends meet.

[-] DudeImMacGyver@kbin.earth 45 points 1 week ago

We should already be on a fucking 3 day with increased pay with how much productivity has gone up, instead we're just getting ass raped harder and harder while rich assholes keep getting richer and richer with no end in sight.

[-] slaacaa@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

No, you don’t undestand 😡

One day I’ll be a billionaire too and I can be the one that ass rapes others 😎

Tap for spoiler/s

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 1 week ago

Wait until automated freight delivery services (from trains and trucks down to little carrier bots) kill about a third of the jobs that exist.

In ten years people would be working less than twelve hours a week, but rich and powerful people will not give up a jot or penny of wealth and power.

[-] BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

Look at the rust belt to see our futures.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 21 points 1 week ago

Heck. This should have happened in the 80's.

[-] DudeImMacGyver@kbin.earth 13 points 1 week ago

Instead we got trickled on.

[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago

Get ready for more. We have the golden dome coming.

[-] NoForwardslashS@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago

The forecast is sunny with a 100% chance of golden showers

[-] slaacaa@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Fucking clown of an actors was the most destructive US president to the planet, we still suffer the impact all over the world. The horror we have today is the evolution of the foundation he built.

[-] somethingsnappy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

1880s. Industrial revolution.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

It did, for a select few. Less than four days, even. You just had to be one of the finance sector aristocrats who laid claim to enough passive rents.

[-] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 19 points 1 week ago

“Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations,” Sanders said. “You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I’m gonna reduce your work week to 32 hours.”

0% chance this wouldn't also come with a 20% pay cut.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

40% pay cut, those server farms are expensive

[-] Kichae@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago

Sure, but that's not what's being discussed. Sanders is saying people deserve a 4 day work week at full pay.

Anyone can negotiate a 4 day work week for a 20% paycut. That's not worth public figures time to discuss.

[-] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I've had a difficult time negotiating this as an American mechanical engineer. There's this bizarre norm of working long weeks even though we get paid way more than most jobs.

I just want health care and they won't offer it at 32 hours. If I'm missing some obvious trick here, please inform me!

[-] kreiger@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I just want health care [...] If I'm missing some obvious trick here, please inform me!

Move out of the US?

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago

Except even with a 20% pat cut it might still be hard to get because any amount of personal time threatens your dedication to their profits.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 18 points 1 week ago

Does anyone here actually see productivity improvements to their roles from using AI?

I'm a telecoms engineer and I see limited use cases in my role for AI. If I need to process data then I need something that can do math reliably. For document generation I can only reliably get it to build out a structure and even then I've more than likely got an existing document the I can use as a structure template.

Network design, system specification and project engineering are all so specific to the use case and have so few examples provided in public data sets that anything AI outputs is usually nonsense.

Am I missing some use cases here?

Also, if you do see productivity improvements from AI, why would you tell your employer? They want a 5 day working week but they know what they expect to be achieved in that week, so that's what they get.

[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yes.

Document that code I wrote 7 years ago, suggest any security or efficiency changes. It's surprisingly adept at that.

Give me the changes to NixOS 25.05 configuration.nix to add wadroid. Fails with an error, paste the error back into prompt. Oh, you need these kernel modules that are no longer default as of 25.05 make this change. Different error paste it back, Make this one last change and then reboot. It works. I spent a total of 5 minutes on it. If I were just using Google and screwing around that might have been half a morning.

OBS is giving me a pixel resolution warning. AI: it's one of your cameras or some media you've added in an unsupported format. Give me a quick shell script to run through all of my media directories in this tree and convert all the MP4 video that's yuv720 to a supported format in new tree so I can swap them out in the end with no risk. 30 seconds later it's there. Yes, I can write that but I'm not going to have it done in 30 seconds. And if one of the files errors I just shove the error right back in the AI. I don't personally care why one in 50 images failed I just want them to be converted and I'm far enough along and Dunning Kruger scale that I honestly don't really care about what I don't know as long as I can learn a little more and still get the job done.

Give me a python script to go through a file full of URLs and verify the SSL key expiration dates. Have a variable for how far the future to alert and then slack me a message at 10:00 a.m. everyday which URLs and IPs are expiring earlier than that variable. Also a bunch of the IPs don't resolve to external addresses so you're going to have to fake the calls to check them. Here's my slack token in the channel name.

3 minute project

It doesn't do my job for me but it gets rid of a hell of a lot of tech debt that I'll never get around to. I won't give it monolithic complicated jobs because it's not good at it. But I will absolutely tell it to make me a flask app with stubs for half a dozen features. Or give it the source for a shitty old admin web page and ask it to modernize the CSS and add session logins.

Sure, if I'm not watching it it might do something relatively stupid. But honestly it has about the same odds of catching something I did years ago that was relatively stupid and telling me to fix it.

[-] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Does anyone here actually see productivity improvements to their roles from using AI?

Unless you're a scammer or a spammer, the answer is legitimately "No".

[-] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 5 points 1 week ago

My gut feeling, based on the kind of repetitive nonsense I see them produce and bang on about, is that a lot of management types see AI efficiency because the work they do is repetitive and easily aided by AI input so they assume everything can be improved by it.

Not to say I don't see the benefits of a good manager, I just don't think they are that common.

[-] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago

I do. Part of my job involves writing code and I often don't even know where to start. When I get the first draft I'll know which documentation to read, and then I make it actually work. Even when the LLM fails completely, writing its prompt serves as a rubber duck.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] turtlesareneat@discuss.online 3 points 1 week ago

Claude can spit out powershell scripts up to like, 400 or 500 lines without errors or with minimal, easily debugged errors. Adds things like error correction, colored text, user interaction, comments the code pretty well. Saves me hours every time I fire it up, so that I can in turn save myself dozens of hours with the scripts themselves.

But as far as I tell my boss, there is no AI use, and that's how we're keeping that for now/indefinitely

[-] clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

you see, for programming, AI achieved what SQL tried to do with database queries: programming by just telling the computer what you want and the computer figures out the how.

the catch is that human language is imprecise, so if you don't know how to review what the AI produced, the AI might have written a script to wipe your data in the computer and you don't even know until you run it and it is too late

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

So you’re sharing your data with third parties and relinquishing code copyright without telling your boss?

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 17 points 1 week ago

Charmingly naive thinking the oligarchs will ever be happy with the level of production they get in return for less and less of their wealth.

[-] EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

3-day by now. 4-day was due before AI, so why would this great boost not make the difference?

[-] AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago

Most of my jobs expect higher output over the same duration.

So...yeah.

[-] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Nah, the top 0.1% will just pocket 90% of the fruits of that extra productivity and the top 10% the remaining 10%.

The rest will either be fired or asked to do the part of the work those who were fired did for the same pay.

[-] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago

No, personal computers made us productive enough for a 4 day work week. We’re down to like 24 hours per week now. I think many would enjoy four 6-hour days, while others may prefer three 8-hour days. And a rare few might want to work two 12-hour shifts.

[-] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 week ago

Honestly, there's probably a lot of people actually working these shorter weeks to get their productive work done but just being forced to sit at a desk for the full 40. Office Space's "15 minutes of real work each day" didn't come from no where.

[-] Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 points 1 week ago

But think of the productivity if we had AI and a 7 day workweek! /s

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Placebonickname@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I’m still waiting for self checkout, airport self service check-in, automated answer services for credit cards, and computerized healthcare systems to make food, airplane tickets, consumer goods, and healthcare less expensive.

And I feel like I’ve been waiting a while…

[-] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

but then shareholders?

[-] Greyghoster@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago

Computerisation, the paperless office etc all were supposed to generate better quality of life for workers. It was how it was sold. The reality is that staff numbers were reduced with work and competitive pressures increasing rates of stress and depression.

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
476 points (99.6% liked)

Work Reform

12871 readers
586 users here now

A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.

Our Philosophies:

Our Goals

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS