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the 40 hour work week

 
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The New York Times debate this week was about the 40 hour work week.

The debaters said:
  • It was predicted we'd work less but we don't
  • The tax code discourages people from working more
  • If you get work done, it doesn't matter when you work
  • Moving toward a 30 hour week would help the environment because people would have more time to do things slowly
  • This is a white collar problem to have
  • We don't have a 40 hour work week now


  • What do you think?
     
    Ranch Hand
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    Haven't seen the debate, but I agree with the points you have listed. I quite charging OT and took it in comp time -- My math had me paying about 29 percent of my pay went out in various taxes. OT hours were taxed near the 50 percent mark.

    The one point I might take exception too is the bit about this being a white collar only issue. At least here in the US, that has spread into the blue collar sector. Here in the rust belt, there are few jobs to be had, and those that are available are part time and minimum wage. If I recall correctly, if you work regularly 28plus hours a week, you are considered a full time employee and entitled to benefits (such as they are). As my brother is fond of saying, McDonald's was never meant to be a career job.
     
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    I am from India and I think most of the people out here put in more than 40 hours a week at work. This wasn't always the case. I remember in 2008, my first company had 40 hours' work weeks. And at least 1.5 hours of the 8 hours were for your personal development. So the estimates were made considering that. I loved my first job. Towards the end of 2008, things changed. To cope up with the slowdown, the only thing the management could come up with was asking employees to put in more hours. So 40 became 45. But our brains and bodies were not conditioned to deal with the change. I think this affected the productivity negatively.

    In the early 2008, I could take piano lessons even on week days. I used to go to a gym everyday and on weekends I would work on something else, like on a community service project, or take GMAT coaching etc. Fortunately or unfortunately my first company was very flexible about letting the employees work from anywhere they wished to work from. But after the work weeks were made 45 hours' long, I couldn't do anything else on the weekdays. I thought after the recession we would again have 40 hours' week but that never happened. They forgot that 40 -45 hours was a change brought upon to deal with a certain condition that was history.

    In my other jobs( including my current job ), we still have 45 hours work weeks. But the employees work for 40-45 hours, I think. Productivity I think has gone down because of longer work hours. I think your body cannot take up additional assignments after a while. Even if you stretch and put in more hours, you can't deliver the same productivity the next day. So the average result is the same.

    I think 40 hours also is way too much work for a week. We spend so much time at work that there is practically no time to do anything else at home. You have so many things for the weekend that all of it goes into completing the domestic chores ( filling up the store room at home, managing laundry, arranging the messy wardrobes and cupboards, electronics and other equipments maintenance, cooking something new and interesting, going to a hobby class ... even the shopping seems like a mundane task - I remember last month I bought a pair of shoes even though I didn't like them so much. I just bought those cause those were the best of what I saw in the stores I could visit in 45 minutes. )

    I actually read what people have said in the New York Times article and I hated the part with the heading 'Don't watch the clock ...'. I think most employers use that sort of a thing to deceive employees and others. To that person I felt like saying this - 'No, not everybody converts hours into money in the first stage of their life and then converts money to hours. Some of us like to live happily everyday. If you have had a different experience, then that is your problem.' In fact I will go one step ahead and say that it's because of the people like him that the rest of us have to suffer.

     
    Java Cowboy
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    As a contractor I get paid by the hour; if I would work an hour less that directly impacts my income, because it means I get paid an hour less. In general, the agreement with my clients is that I work 40 hours per week, if I would want or need to work more hours then I would have to make an agreement with my client about it.

    I don't really like the direct relation between time and money, it would be nice if I'd have additional ways to earn without it being so directly coupled to the number of hours I work.

    Anyway, this direct coupling between time and money doesn't make me want to work less than 40 hours a week.
     
    Bartender
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    I can't help but think that we've become hopelessly spoiled when we think 40 hours a week is too much. My grandfather was a coal miner who worked 12 hours a day, six days a week for his entire life starting at the age of 13. He never, ever had a vacation. If he were around today he would be appalled at our attitude.

    Having said that, there is no way I could work like he did. I think there are very few people who are that tough anymore, except maybe farmers and soldiers. I know I'm not that tough. It's all indicative of the "wussification" of America, I guess.
     
    lowercase baba
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    I don't think it will ever happen. (I didn't read the article/debate)

    If i start working a 30 hour week, then my employer has to hire additional workers to make up for the work i'm now not doing each week. I don't see them effectively giving me a huge pay increase for nothing. I also don't want to take a huge pay cut.

    So maybe i'm more productive, and can now get 40 hours of work done in 30 hours, due to better tools, computers, etc. OK...then my employer is just going to say "we used to give you X tasks per week, now we'll give you 33% more to do (or whatever makes the math work). If it take less time, they'll simply require me to do more each week. They have investors/shareholders/boards that they have to answer to, and maximizing their profits/return on investments exists, regardless of how much i'd like to only work 30 hour/week.
     
    Heena Agarwal
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    Actually yes.

    38-40 hours a week would be kind of nice. It's better than 45. 38-40 hours a week means you can watch a movie on a week day, say a Friday. I think that would work very nicely. :-)

    Obviously I am just saying all this on a lighter note. I'm generally not the crib club member. So it's not like I'm unhappy with the current setup. A cut in the paycheck - hell no. Who does that!
     
    Rancher
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    In forty years of working in software development, I've never had a job that was a 40 hour week. And none have paid over time.

    For software development, IMHO, 45 to 50 hours a week is the max I can do effectively for months on end. I've worked projects that required much more, sometimes 80 or more. But the marginal productivity drops off very rapidly after 50 hours, so working 60 only nets a few more effective hours than working 50. Working 80 probably only yields one or two more effective hours than working 60.

    Paying by the hour is a cultural thing. Bosses and clients think it gives them control over what they pay. They are wrong. The problem is that they can't apply a metric to productivity in our profession. So they pay by something that they can measure.

    Sigh.
     
    Ranch Hand
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    Indian culture in US, especially for small insurance companies that employ them in IT located in Omaha, NE, is to work 20 hours per day Monday through Friday, 10 hours per day Saturday and Sunday. Because the IT management is Indian and the company owns the H1Bs, and the Kano management just wants it cheap, they pay the Indians twice what the Kanos make, and just keep one or two Kanos around to use for scape goats. Indians can call in sick any time they want, and they take days off without charging vacation time. But if a Kano worked 4 days x 10 hours, then wants to take Friday off, the Indian IT manager forces the Kano to charge vacation time.

    I went back to contracting just because I can charge by the hour. Now I wear jeans every day, every Friday is WFH day, and if a little rain falls, we WFH also. The point is, on this side of the contractor fence, if I work 50 hours, I get paid for 50 hours. If I work 4 x 10 and take Friday off, I still get paid for 40.

    Not sure why Offshores in Omaha enjoy 80 hour weeks, no family time, but they seem to like the pay.
     
    Rancher
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    I'm afraid to ask .... What's a Kano?
     
    Roger Sterling
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    Jayesh A Lalwani wrote:I'm afraid to ask .... What's a Kano?



    A Kano is an on-shore resource with right-to-work citizenship status; in this case, since the host country is United States of America, this refers to an American citizen. Where in the US, the current effective unemployment rate for U. S. College graduates (aka Millennials; well-educated, well-qualified workers) is 16.2 percent in March, 2014. At the aforementioned little insurance company in Omaha, Nebraska, the Kanos drive ten-year-old Ford pickups or Honda Civics, whereas the H1Bs drive brand new Mercedes-Benz C-class/SLK-class or Nissan 370Zs. Promotion opportunity and other incentives greatly favor the latter, in which the published Human Resources manual about vacation time-work time policy is blatantly disregarded for that class of worker and rigidly enforced for the former class of worker, in spite of the unemployment rate or EEOC laws. The coming mid-term election may or may not provide enough actors in the U. S. Congress to enforce existing worker policy that promotes economic opportunity and growth for the host country's citizens over that of other guest workers, as other countries do such as India or Canada. For example, what's the likelihood of a foreign worker to prosper twice or three times the income of an Indian citizen in India ? Not likely at all. In fact, India has no guest worker program on the magnitude that the U. S. has. If the U. S. were to eliminate the guest worker program here, there would be very little unemployment for U. S. citizen Millennials, especially in IT. Relating this to the OP's question about 40 hour work week, many U. S. jobs are being downsized into the 22.5 hour variety to avoid having to provide ACA compliance anyway. The current U. S. guest-worker policy amplifies the impact since many U. S. jobs are owned by H1Bs, whose population in U. S. is over one million workers.
     
    Sheriff
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    If I recall it correctly, France has established a 35 hour work week a few years ago, to reduce unemployment. It was't very successful scheme and, while the legislation probably nominally still holds, it was effectively scrapped over time by relaxing unpaid overtime restrictions, which cancelled the effect of the shorter work week.
     
    Pat Farrell
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    Roger Sterling wrote:

    Jayesh A Lalwani wrote:I'm afraid to ask .... What's a Kano?


    If the U. S. were to eliminate the guest worker program here, there would be very little unemployment for U. S. citizen Millennials, especially in IT.



    I see very little unemployment for US Citizen millennials already.

    The tone of these two postings about "kanos" bothers me. It feels most than a little racist.
     
    Bartender
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    Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:The New York Times debate this week was about the 40 hour work week.


    First: excellent thread.

    My thoughts:
  • I suspect that whether "we'd work less" or not is directly proportional to how much you actually like your job.
  • The tax code only dampens enthusiasm for those who only see fulfilment in money.
  • It matters when you work (unfortunately) if you want to get paid for it.
  • Moving towards a 30 hour week might also help ALL of us to actually feel productive.
  • Is it a white collar problem, or simplistic "bottom line" economics? A lot of corporate effort these days seems to be geared to exporting labour to countries that charge the least for it, no matter what impact it has on the environment - or anything else for that matter.
  • "We don't have a 40 hour work week now" - Well I certainly don't , but it has been a slogan for fifty years or so now, so maybe there's a deeper meaning to it.

  • Back in the mid-nineties, when there was a lot of publicity around the "virtual office" idea and I was doing my MBIT, I did a project around the idea of a working week where not all of that time had to actually be spent at the office, and I got a lot of favourable responses from workers.

    Yet, twenty years on, and despite the explosion in business property prices, most companies still prefer to pay for "bums on seats" - apart from those in the country club set of course who, it would appear, are still the only ones implicitly trusted to be able do their jobs by "networking".

    A "white-collar" example perhaps; but an interesting one, I reckon.

    Winston
     
    Roger Sterling
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    Pat Farrell wrote:

    Roger Sterling wrote:

    Jayesh A Lalwani wrote:I'm afraid to ask .... What's a Kano?


    If the U. S. were to eliminate the guest worker program here, there would be very little unemployment for U. S. citizen Millennials, especially in IT.



    I see very little unemployment for US Citizen millennials already.

    The tone of these two postings about "kanos" bothers me. It feels most than a little racist.



    Hi Pat - There are 318,000 hits on Google regarding IT unemployment for Millennials. One IT staffing firm, Adecco advocates a positive outlook, but recognizes the problem. If you view my previous posts through a neutral prism, without prejudicial bias, you may see them in a more informative light. Putting blinders on to pretend that discrimination does not exist in the workplace, whether overt or covert, won't help improve the situation. For us to really address the issue honestly , which in the context of my two previous posts, pinpoints guest worker preference (ie. reverse-discrimination) over that of the country's citizens in hiring practices , vacation enforcement policy , promotion opportunity and others. Do we, as a country, really need 1.4 million documented guest workers, and 22 million undocumented guest workers ? Since you are employed, your employment rate is 100 percent for you. This cannot be said for the under-employed or the un-employed in our country. Can you clarify what you mean by "I see very little unemployment for US Citizen millennials already."? Are you saying that all these college graduates have the jobs they need and there is no employment crisis?
     
    Sheriff
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    Robert D. Smith wrote:Haven't seen the debate, but I agree with the points you have listed. I quite charging OT and took it in comp time -- My math had me paying about 29 percent of my pay went out in various taxes. OT hours were taxed near the 50 percent mark.



    The U.S. tax code is progressive, which means that income over certain thresholds gets taxed at higher rates. It's not a matter of whether that income came via overtime or not. I don't know of any U.S. tax that distinguishes whether income came in via overtime or regular wages. Withholding rates might be different, but I don't think so, and if they were, that just means you get the money back at the end of the year. Even so, I've often heard people claim that OT were taxed higher. I'm not sure where that comes from.

    I do agree with you that taking comp time is better than OT though. Life is short. You've got to live it while you have the chance.
     
    Bartender
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    Greg -

    the us tax code only cares how much you make --- many employers will take out more when you work overtime -

     
    Greg Charles
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    Steve Fahlbusch wrote:Greg -

    the us tax code only cares how much you make --- many employers will take out more when you work overtime -



    ... is exactly what I said. Employers withhold more if you make more income ... they have to. You pay more taxes on higher income too. It's not based on whether it's overtime or not though.
     
    Bartender
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    I think this is part of the broader shift in economic power around the world. Ordinary workers seem to have less power now than 20 or 30 years ago, and of course IT has always been a sector where membership of trade unions etc was already pretty low. Technological advances ought to mean that everybody can work a reasonable number of hours for a reasonable wage i.e. "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay". But economic and political changes - especially globalisation - mean that more power is concentrated at the top of the corporate food-chain, while employment protection is being undermined in the name of "flexibility", so workers are constantly warned that if they don't work harder their jobs will be shipped offshore to low wage countries. Strangely, this doesn't seem to apply to the bosses: all those CEOs claim to need bloated salaries and fat bonuses, just to persuade them to do the job they're already well rewarded for, yet apparently we can't replace them by outsourcing their jobs to cheaper CEOs in India or Brazil. The rich are getting richer, but the so-called trickle-down effect seems to be as elusive as ever.

    Here in the UK we've seen some recovery in the number of jobs since the gobal financial crisis 5 years ago, but many of those jobs are low wage and/or part-time (or even "zero hours" contracts), while many of the well-paid skilled jobs that disappeared in the crisis seem to have gone for good. Our labour market is being hollowed out - a small number of very highly-paid people in the financial sector seem to dominate the earnings tables, while millions of others struggle to stay in insecure and poorly-paid jobs. In many Western countries median earnings have barely shifted in real terms since the 1970s, and as President Obama acknowledged recently, too many people have to work two jobs just to survive. In other words, many of us are having to work harder/longer for the same pay or less than our parents earned.

    Interestingly, productivity doesn't seem to depend solely on working hours. The USA has fairly high productivity and people work long hours with little paid vacation. Germany has high productivity, yet people work far shorter hours and have lots of paid vacation: in my last salaried job in Germany I used to work a 35 hour week with 35 days holiday plus public holidays (I once calculated that I worked at least a month a year less than if I'd had the same job in the UK!). People in Greece work longer hours than Germans, but their productivity is far lower. And here in the UK, we work fairly long hours compared to some European countries, but our productivity is still lower. And productivity itself is harder to measure and compare in service industries like IT, because you can achieve more productivity in terms of output per hour but end up with a lower quality product, yet still be able to sell it to somebody.

    I know it's a cliche, but it really does seem better to "work smarter, not harder". On the other hand, if you start to look at how technology and a certain tech-based ideology that some call "digital Maoism" is reducing the perceived value of intellectual and creative labour - e.g. people increasingly expect music/books/software to be free of cost - you have to wonder how anybody will be able to earn a decent living in future in some fields.
     
    chris webster
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    J. Kevin Robbins wrote:I can't help but think that we've become hopelessly spoiled when we think 40 hours a week is too much. My grandfather was a coal miner who worked 12 hours a day, six days a week for his entire life starting at the age of 13. He never, ever had a vacation. If he were around today he would be appalled at our attitude.


    I'm sure lots of people might agree with you (or your grandfather). But I think it's also worth asking who should benefit from your labours? I live on the edge of the South Wales coalfields, where a lot of families would have experienced similar working conditions to your grandfather in the past (my own included). Deaths, child labour and very long hours were the norm, together with the traditional trick of forcing people to take their pay in the form of over-priced goods from the company store. It took decades of brutal struggle for workers to secure better conditions, including shorter hours. And then the mines and related industries were all closed down anyway when the UK government decided to shift to a service-oriented economy (usefully eliminating lots of skilled but heavily unionised jobs in the process). The economic benefits of the coal miners' jobs soon disappeared - no miner or steel worker ever earned enough to secure his family's future for generations, and the loss of so many (relatively) well-paid jobs also crippled local economies permanently in many areas. But the descendants of the coal-masters and iron-masters were all right - their families had long since joined the growing establishment of wealthy capitalists and many continue to benefit from the labours of past generations of workers. The rich look after themselves, and it's only the determined efforts of working people that will ever improve their own working conditions.

    Today it seems the executive classes no longer want to share even a small proportion of the fruits of the labours or ordinary working people - in terms of better pay or shorter hours - and insist on grabbing an ever larger slice of the cake for themselves: the average pay ratio of CEOs to average workers in US companies was around 30:1 in the 1970s, and it's now more like 300:1. The ratios are similar if slightly less extreme here in the UK, and this even applies to companies where the performance of the company - and implicitly of its executives - has been truly dismal, and executives continue to enjoy vast pay-offs even when they're fired for poor performance. If I had a choice between working harder for less pay at IT (as I'm doing right now) or taking a job as a CEO of a big bank I know which I'd choose - I'm sure I could f**k it up as badly as the last guy and then enjoy a similarly fat pension for the rest of my days!

    But if growing numbers of ordinary workers can no longer support their families and enjoy at least a reasonable quality of life through their own labours, you have to ask yourself whether the current version of capitalism is sustainable in the longer term?
     
    Marshal
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    chris webster wrote: . . . forcing people to take their pay in the form of over-priced goods from the company store. . . .

    That was called truck, as in, “have no truck with”, and was prohibited in the UK by statute in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. The Truck Acts require wages to be paid in “coin of the Realm”.
     
    chris webster
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    Campbell Ritchie wrote:

    chris webster wrote: . . . forcing people to take their pay in the form of over-priced goods from the company store. . . .

    That was called truck, as in, “have no truck with”, and was prohibited in the UK by statute in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. The Truck Acts require wages to be paid in “coin of the Realm”.


    Thanks - hadn't realised that was where the phrase came from. I think the practice persisted a while longer around here, although certainly not into my grandfather's day, of course (I may be old and grumpy, but not quite that old....). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_Acts
     
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    although certainly not into my grandfather's day . . .



    You must be younger than me. My grandfather was a Canadian who worked for Henry Ford. The family moved to Iron Mountain, Michigan, ( 1920's) to work at one of the timber towns Ford built to make the wood for his cars. Ford owned the town. Everything needed was bought in town because there was nowhere else near to buy things from. Other merchants were not allowed. My grandparents were paying a mortgage to Ford for their house, too. It became a ghost town when the work was moved to other mills. My grandparents walked away from the house and returned to Canada because without the mill and the jobs it was worthless.
     
    margaret gillon
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    I am lucky, I have always had a forty hour work week because I am tech but not management and my employeers don't want to pay overtime hours. My downside is that I commute and spend two to three hours a day in the car. Once I moved to be close to my job and four months later the company moved twenty miles away from me ( about one hour in L.A. traffic ). I don't mind the time, I listen to audio books, but often when I get home I don't have the energy left for my own projects and so I play catchup on the weekends. Does anyone else think about the commuting as part of their work time?
     
    Sheriff
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    margaret gillon wrote:Does anyone else think about the commuting as part of their work time?


    Absolutely. I try not to work any jobs that require more than a 20 minute commute.

    I've turned down jobs in downtown Austin (I live on the edge of town) because I don't want to deal with the traffic.

    (P.S. My current commute is anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes depending upon time of day and traffic.)
     
    chris webster
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    Bear Bibeault wrote:

    margaret gillon wrote:Does anyone else think about the commuting as part of their work time?


    Absolutely. I try not to work any jobs that require more than a 20 minute commute


    Wow, I am jealous! I've been working for over 25 years since graduating, and I've had maybe a year in total when I could walk to work in 15-30 minutes, which was great. Otherwise my typical commute has been 30-45 minutes each way by car or bus, and the worst was a couple of years of 90 minutes each way. These days I'm usually doing 40 minutes each way by car, which at least gives me plenty of opportunity to sing along very loudly and badly to all my old CDs of music from the 80s and 90s that my wife hates!
     
    Bear Bibeault
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    chris webster wrote:Wow, I am jealous!


    One of the advantages of living "in town". (one of the disadvantages is sky-high property taxes.)

    When I lived in New England, I typically had hour-long commutes (which could stretch to up to 4 hours in winter weather).
     
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    margaret gillon wrote: Does anyone else think about the commuting as part of their work time?


    No. I consider that my time. I usually use it to read.

    I'm very aware that I consider it my time when others at my company say "well I work longer when I telecommute because I don't spend all that time commuting." That's a nice gift to the company they are making. Discussing productivity should be at the same number of hours.
     
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    A few months back we had discussed about working hours, productivity, and stuff like that.
    Jeff Sutherland, in his article here, says that the results of some experimental studies show that working for more than 40-45 hours a week decreased the ability to make sound decisions in most humans on whom these experiments were carried out.

    Although it is quite not right to generalize things in this way, I tend to agree with his point.
    It is another thing if your working hours also include things that give you a mental break like crosswords or coding and refactoring challenges not directly related to deliverables.
    <Edit2>Not sure about others, but I think that I work at my best if I work for around 38-42 hours a week.</Edit2>

    Edit: URL tags







     
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    J. Kevin Robbins wrote:I can't help but think that we've become hopelessly spoiled when we think 40 hours a week is too much. My grandfather was a coal miner who worked 12 hours a day.



    You cannot really compare. Your grandfather, and my grandfather too, did not have to travel two hours a day to get to his job, and he did not have to do domestic tasks since his wife was home all day doing them. And if I compare myself to my father, he started to work in his teenage years too. But back in the fifties, there hardly was any unemployment. My daughter is in her twenties. She has had the possibility to study, but her competitors for a job also have. The unemployment is terrible and then even the Netherlands is not the worst place. Think of Spain and the youth unemployment there. So I greatly oppose this, 'we in the old days had it much worse and the youth always complains for no reason' thing.
     
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    Jan de Boer wrote: . . . But back in the fifties, there hardly was any unemployment. . . .

    Maybe in Europe and North America, but that was hardly true worldwide.
     
    Chan Ag
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    Jan de Boer wrote: So I greatly oppose this, 'we in the old days had it much worse and the youth always complains for no reason' thing.



    Yes, I have heard that too. Several times actually. Actually you know what. I agree that you can't really compare things. For my parents, their parents, and so on, they had as many challenges with their hours of work given their environment, expectations, and tools available to them as we have today given our environment ( yes it's a lot different. The pollution and stress can really affect your immune system ) and the tools available to us. Such comparisons are almost always unfair cause they tend to be biased because when such a comparison is made, one needs to consider everything ( intangible aspects included ) but when people say 'at your age, we used to .....', they almost always ignore other factors. At least that is what I have seen. They were smart enough to make the most of what they had. We as well are. Their complaintsreasoning suited that time. It might not be that applicable today.


    <Edit>That said I generally don't keep crib about things. Cause if I don't like it, I will probably change it. Just saying ... I know it doesn't matter.</Edit>
     
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    Jan de Boer wrote:You cannot really compare. Your grandfather, and my grandfather too, did not have to travel two hours a day to get to his job,...


    In the past, coalminers were often only paid for the time they were working at the coal-face (or sometimes only for the weight of coal they actually cut). It could easily take them an hour to walk from their homes to the pit-head in the morning. And it could take another hour or more to get from the pit-head to the coal-face. That's 4 hours a day, unpaid, on top of the long working hours that were paid.
     
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    Chan Ag wrote:I agree that you can't really compare things.



    Yes and even apart from time you also cannot compare individual situations. For example even in the great depression in the thirties, many well educated people kept their jobs and did not got that much influenced by the crisis. And nowadays there are people with less luck and possibilities that are unemployed for years, because they do not have the properties that are in demand in the job market. Same goes for location. There are a lot of people in the third world who have more possibilities than people in the so called rich countries, who are not that rich. But some people like to emphasize the problems of people both in history and in the third world. Downplay the problems of the European youth. ... Then tap themselves on the shoulder how modain they are. I dont even want to discuss such things, draws my time and energy. Let us talk about raw milk again.
     
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    J. Kevin Robbins wrote:I can't help but think that we've become hopelessly spoiled when we think 40 hours a week is too much. My grandfather was a coal miner who worked 12 hours a day, six days a week for his entire life starting at the age of 13. He never, ever had a vacation. If he were around today he would be appalled at our attitude.

    Having said that, there is no way I could work like he did. I think there are very few people who are that tough anymore, except maybe farmers and soldiers. I know I'm not that tough. It's all indicative of the "wussification" of America, I guess.



    Could he do coding+meeetings+etc for 12 hours ? Probably not. Wussification of US & A ??? How is it being wussified ?
     
    Ali Gordon
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    Roger Sterling wrote:

    Pat Farrell wrote:

    Roger Sterling wrote:

    Jayesh A Lalwani wrote:I'm afraid to ask .... What's a Kano?


    If the U. S. were to eliminate the guest worker program here, there would be very little unemployment for U. S. citizen Millennials, especially in IT.



    I see very little unemployment for US Citizen millennials already.

    The tone of these two postings about "kanos" bothers me. It feels most than a little racist.



    Hi Pat - There are 318,000 hits on Google regarding IT unemployment for Millennials. One IT staffing firm, Adecco advocates a positive outlook, but recognizes the problem. If you view my previous posts through a neutral prism, without prejudicial bias, you may see them in a more informative light. Putting blinders on to pretend that discrimination does not exist in the workplace, whether overt or covert, won't help improve the situation. For us to really address the issue honestly , which in the context of my two previous posts, pinpoints guest worker preference (ie. reverse-discrimination) over that of the country's citizens in hiring practices , vacation enforcement policy , promotion opportunity and others. Do we, as a country, really need 1.4 million documented guest workers, and 22 million undocumented guest workers ? Since you are employed, your employment rate is 100 percent for you. This cannot be said for the under-employed or the un-employed in our country. Can you clarify what you mean by "I see very little unemployment for US Citizen millennials already."? Are you saying that all these college graduates have the jobs they need and there is no employment crisis?



    I don't know anything about the discrimination, so I have no comments on it. Can you please tell us how many of the millennials are even employable for the jobs that you speak of ? If all the unemployed millenials (UMs) have the skills and experience that guest workers (GWs) have, then yes, something must be done to address this situation. Perhaps we can stop issuing work visas or reduce them significantly. Without evidence, "n number of UMs" is just a number which does not prove anything.

     
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    chris webster wrote:
    Today it seems the executive classes no longer want to share even a small proportion of the fruits of the labours or ordinary working people - in terms of better pay or shorter hours - and insist on grabbing an ever larger slice of the cake for themselves: the average pay ratio of CEOs to average workers in US companies was around 30:1 in the 1970s, and it's now more like 300:1. The ratios are similar if slightly less extreme here in the UK, and this even applies to companies where the performance of the company - and implicitly of its executives - has been truly dismal, and executives continue to enjoy vast pay-offs even when they're fired for poor performance. If I had a choice between working harder for less pay at IT (as I'm doing right now) or taking a job as a CEO of a big bank I know which I'd choose - I'm sure I could f**k it up as badly as the last guy and then enjoy a similarly fat pension for the rest of my days!
    But if growing numbers of ordinary workers can no longer support their families and enjoy at least a reasonable quality of life through their own labours, you have to ask yourself whether the current version of capitalism is sustainable in the longer term?



    To add to your point, here is an example I saw recently at the Business Insider. BI is good. http://www.businessinsider.com/tyrel-oates-letter-to-wells-fargo-ceo-2014-10


    Portland, Oregon-based Wells Fargo branch employee Tyrel Oates emailed the bank's CEO asking for a $10,000 raise for himself and his colleagues, the Charlotte Observer reported.
    He also CC'd 200,000 other Wells Fargo employees on the email to CEO John Stumpf. Talk about some chutzpah!
    Oates confirmed to The Oregonian that a copy of the letter posted on Reddit was authentic.
    In the letter, Oates brought up the issue of income inequality. He pointed out that Stumpf took home $19 million in compensation for 2013.
    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/tyrel-oates-letter-to-wells-fargo-ceo-2014-10#ixzz3HHybjpwj

     
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