No Canadian companies involved in a shortened workweek trial intend to revert back to a five-day week, new research from 4 Day Week Global shows.
Sanity reigns north of the US. Too bad trickle down doesn’t work, in any form.
We are bringing 1 million low skilled immigrants from third world, the house and renting prices are beyond crazy. Rampant immigrant criminals. We are getting more taxes soon.
This place is a shithole
Stop reading bullshit right wing propaganda and you won’t be so delusionally miserable about everything.
If you’re saying a million per year, that means you’re counting international students. By definition, if they’re coming here and paying our very-expensive tuitions, they’re not going to be low-skilled for long.
The number of people who enter through immigration (incl. refugees) is more like 450k (for comparison, 2015 target under Harper was 270k), and about a third of those are refugees. Yes, there are criminals who exploit the refugee system. That’s what it costs to be a decent person.
Don’t feel jealous on this one. We have had multiple successful trials of a universal basic income, and the only thing it’s led to is more trials. I am certain the 4-day work week will suffer the same fate.
What’s never clear in these sorts of articles is if there was any reduction in salaries, or increase in working hours. Like are people going from working 40 hours a week to 32 with no change to their paycheck? Or are they getting paid 20% less? Or are they still working 40 hours, just over 4 days instead of 5?
The 4 day work week is based on the idea that people are more productive with less time to goof off. Work 32 hours for the same pay and you should see the same or better outcomes. So likely the case is yes
I know that’s the idea, but I can’t imagine a lot of companies being eager to effectively pay their employees the same for 20% “less work”. I know it’s a good idea, I just have no confidence in companies. Just look how many of them forced people back to offices during the pandemic despite the safety, cost, and productivity benefits of working from home.
Exactly, which makes me wonder what the article is pushing. It could just be bad journalism but theses days anything like that has some agenda it seems. Two weeks from now we will see an article declaring Canadians as lazy because we don’t want to work 5 days a week. This is all hyperbolically of course, but truth is stranger than fiction these days.
My employer was not part of this trial but has been doing this since Spring 2022. There’s been no increase in hours/workday or decrease in salary (and in fact, I got a raise—I think most people got at least a COLA).
We ran our own trial and the results are honestly even more positive than I would’ve thought myself.
My boss just mentioned 4 day work weeks… with the same amount of hours, I said that the idea is less hours, not the same hours crammed into less days and he absolutely refused that that is what people mean with 4 day work weeks…
I’ve been discussing this, lightly, on and off for a couple of years know, and most workers can’t wrap their head around the idea, either.
“They’ll never do that for us,” says the class the owners are completely and totally dependent on.
To be fair to your employer, he may have conflated two different kinds of 4-day work weeks.
The current discussions are mostly about 32-hour weeks, but there is a very long history of what labour law calls the “modified work week” in which the number of hours per day or days without breaks are changed to allow for alternate scheduling without triggering overtime. I’ve worked 4-10s, 8 on 6 off, and other oddities since I entered the work force in the early 1970s.
The most common of those is 4-10s, and it’s always been known by that name (4-10s) or 4-day week, or “4 and 3”, with “4-day week” being the most common in my experience.
I know that my own following of this issue makes it clear that there are a lot of people confusing the two different kinds of 4-day weeks.
This works for many businesses, but sadly cannot work for certain industries like manufacturing, steel making, petroleum refining. etc. These are 24/7, 365 operations and running less than that actually costs them money. However, you’re usually well compensated in these industries in my experience
That’s why they have shift workers. Reduce the shift hours to be the same as a 4 day week. Its not hard
But then you need to hire more staff. I think part of the sell is that it’s no more cost for the employer, since workers get more done in less time. That might not be true for many operational jobs.
It could also lead to better productivity and less turn over with employees which would be a net positive in the end. When I did labour jobs 2 days off was not enough for me to recover, 3 days off would have been better for my body and mental health and maybe I would’ve stuck around longer.
And these were the same excuses used when we went to 40 hours a week and the world kept on turning.
You have salary workers like process engineers for example. Working less than 5 days regularly just isn’t acceptable. I would not be effective in my job if I only had 4 days a week to get everything done. Also someone always has weekend coverage on “off” days for salary or holidays. So you’re still “working”
Also many plants have minimum hour requirements in their union contracts where we have to run X days minimum a week or we still pay. There is more to the puzzle than just the office sector.
You have shifts and shift workers yes but again, the mill basically needs to run 24/7. so lots of people get forced for OT, or willingly take it
Edit: I love the downvotes with no refutement. I am not talking from no experience here. I actively work as a process engineer in a steel mill and actively deal with these problems DAILY. Moving to a 4 day week changes nothing in 24/7 operations. You have to run all of the time, end of sentence (or your mill is getting shut down, and you all lose your jobs…nobody in the mill wins there). The compensation is through the roof and most people end up pulling in tons of overtime. I dont know many other jobs that an 18 year old can pull in an EASY 6 figures with no form of education past high school. The hourly guys make WAY more than any of us salary folk (me and other engineers have spoken candidly with guys on the floor, and they pull in well over 100,000 with no overtime), and on top of that, there are guys who get legitimately pissed when they can’t get enough overtime or work more hours cuz they want that money
Also to your other part about “it’s not that hard”
It actually is. We cannot get enough bodies in the mill to not work everyone at full time. We pay 18 year olds 6 figures to operate a mill and we still cannot get enough bodies to come anywhere close to working a 4 day week.
It straight up doesn’t work that simply when you’re running enormous 24/7 operations in critical industry. Thats like all the football fans on the couch yelling at the coach “JUST DO X”. Really easy to say “do X” but the application becomes extremely difficult. Yeah in an office, sure…in a refinery where you create base stock products that allow hundreds of other major plants to run to produce all the basic products you use every single day? Not gonna work that way
This isn’t some machinist shop that takes orders. it’s a multi billion dollar full rip steel mill/refinery/plant/etc. that loses LOTS of money when it’s not at full capacity. That has lasting knock on effects on other industries for example when base manufacturing can’t keep up
We tried to bargain 4 day work weeks years ago at a place I worked, and it was a scheduling nightmare.
Objectively, since we needed to have doors open and responders/equipment operators on site 5 days a week, it would have meant hiring something like 30% more people.
Non-ojectively, when management brought these concerns forward, our position was “that’s a management problem”.
hiring something like 30% more people.
I bet it was ( 5 / 4 or ) 25% more.
Having that one day when external coordination is impossible is why absolutely no business is ever open from Sunday to Thursday or Tuesday to Saturday since they all failed. Except they are.
If you need some scheduling help, you may want to buy a computer and have it help the crunching. At the famous fast food restaurant a while ago, we used tools to ensure adequate coverage against workload; and your problem sounds the same except with one fewer variable. It was 35 years ago, so it probably works as an app on your watch, now.
If some companiea can offer fulltime or hybrid WFH to have an advantage in getting employees, some others will.offer 4 day workweeks to be competitive with other companies. Canada can start the trend.
It would help if the governments did it… but I can’t see them being a leader on this one because of the optics.
Government treats public servants like shit because it’s popular to do so. Nobody wants to believe their tax dollars are going toward somebody having a good job when they themselves don’t have a good job.
help if the governments did it
You’d be interested to know that was the sticking point on the recent Fed strike.
And they got it.
I know dozens of people working on unionized government work who were WFH 100% since CoViD day, and haven’t been back. Desks were sold/scrapped, leased released, space repurposed. Onsite are a handful of people, usually rotating assignments, for things like shipping/receiving, and the WFH language is baked into the latest contract there too.
The gov people ARE making progress.
