Policy of a 4-day workweek

Posted 2020-07-05 天涯柠檬

w6d1

News:

In the United States, employees typically work five days a week for eight hours each day. However, many employees want to work a four-day week and are willing to accept less pay inorder to do so. A mandatory policy requiring companies to offer their employees the option of working a four-day workweek for four-fifths (80 percent)of their normal pay would benefit the economy as a whole as well as the individual companies and the employees who decided
to take the option. The shortened workweek would increase company profits because employees would feel more rested and alert, and as a result, they would make fewer costly errors in their work. Hiring morestaff to ensure
that the same amount of work would be accomplished would not result in additional payroll costs because four-day employees would only be paid 80 percent of the normal rate. In the end, companies would have fewer overworked and
error-prone employees for the same money, which would increase company profits. For the country as a whole, one of the primary benefits of offering this option to employees is that it would reduce unemployment rates. If many
full-time employees started working fewer hours, some of their workload would have to be shifted to others. Thus, for every four employees who went on an 80 percent week, a new employee could be hired at the 80 percent rate.
Finally, the option of a four-day workweek would be better for individual employees. Employees who could afford a lower salary in exchange for more free time could improve the quality of their lives by spending the extra time
with their families, pursuing private interests, or enjoying leisure activities.

 

My Comments:

This is the first time I get to know this news. But frankly speaking, this policy are designed by those economists and only works in developed countties.

In developed countries, people are paid more than those in developing countries. One of my friend Alex told me, salary of a normal engineer in Reno,California would get 7000 USD per month. And cost for renting an apartment would be 1500USB,the rest are all for living costs. But in Shanghai, the normal salary would be 6000-8000RMB, and the cost for house are 1500-2000. It seems same by the figure, by there is a big contrast if we compare it with exchange rate.

Living state of different countries are different. In developed countries, people are paid well, and wish to have more time to enjoy the life. But in developing countries, people are paid less, and struggle to get more work to
keep the family.

Back to the topic today, I think, technically, it is a win-win situation, and will do good to the society, including the decreasing of unemployment rate, enhancing the people‘s happiness, and increasing the quality of
work.If the policy is out, the employers, employees, and the enconomy pressure of the society would benifit from it, definitely.

But let‘s try to figure out some weakness of the policy. If there is a policy like that, what will happen? I think most of the employer would choose to hire more workers and let all of the workers to work a 4-day workweek.
But it will get rid of the rights of those who wants to work more.That is to say, for a single employee, maybe the final choice would be "to be hired" or "to be fired".

To be or not to be, is a problem. But if we think deep inside of the policy, I think the employers will gain more and employees would lose more chance to make money. But in a general way, more people will get jobs in the
society, and the financial statistic data will look very nice.

Do you get it?

(Opinions in this article is only personal opinions,
don‘t mean to offense anyone or any organizations, thank you)

Jack
From Shanghai