SIO435: The Radical Idea That We Shouldn't Work Ourselves to Death

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 435. I'm your host Thomas Smith. That over there is today's expert. Hello, expert. Lydia Smith.

0:00:24 Lydia: Hi.

0:00:26 Thomas: Are you an expert in this time?

0:00:26 Lydia: I'm What I've realized, I'm an expert on work. I don't know. Because I did the minimum wage episode, you know, and like, and here I am back to talk about more work.

0:00:40 Thomas: I thought that was just like a really bad interview. Like, oh, so what would you say your biggest assets are? Uh, work. I can do the job. I care too much.

0:00:44 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Again, you hired me. So if you don't like my my responses in my interview. Yeah. Yeah, no. So I wanted to come on to talk about the four day work week. And this is something that has been talked about for a long time, a long, long, Long time. And I'll talk a little bit about the history. But the reason it's been coming up more often in the last week is because Bernie Sanders introduced a Senate bill. Yeah.

0:00:52 Thomas: Yeah. I am a perfectionist. Yeah. I know

0:01:18 Lydia: And so co -sponsored by is the replacement when Dianne Feinstein died. She's the individual that was brought in to fulfill the rest of that term. And this is Senate Bill 3947, and it is essentially the 32 -Hour Workweek Act. And it is to amend—we're on the, like, every single hour, yeah, you are working act. Yeah.

0:01:17 Thomas: That guy. All right, okay.

0:01:37 Thomas: That won't apply to us, right? Because we're on the 487 hour work week act. Yeah. I'll be excited to hear about this mythical four-day work week, uh, this ad break, of course, uh, non-patrons, you can get rid of it by going to patreon.com/seriouspod, and then you don't have to hear it, but, uh, how we collect the fruits of our 400,000 thousand week work week, okay.

0:01:47 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:00 Thomas: So tell us what the commies are up to now. Yeah.

0:02:03 Lydia: Right. So Senate Bill 3947 is a bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to reduce the standard work week from 40 hours per week to 32 hours per week and for other purposes, it says.

0:02:11 Thomas: Hmm. What does that mean? Hmm.

0:02:19 Lydia: Because it talks about, in particular, protections that would be in place to ensure that workers, workers don't lose the pay that would be associated with that extra day and address overtime compensation. Right. I wanted to turn it over to Senator Sanders with some highlights from this hearing. Come on in.

0:02:26 Thomas: Right. Oh. He's here. Bernie. Are you on the? Yeah. No.

0:02:39 Lydia: He's in my closet with me.

0:02:40 Thomas: We set him up with a neutral, own closet in the house too. Yeah.

0:02:42 Lydia: There you go. Yeah. Wow.

0:02:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:45 Clip: Morning, we are going to be talking about an issue that is very rarely discussed in the halls of Congress or the Senate, and that is the need to reduce the standard work week in the United States. In fact, the last time as we understand that the Senate held a hearing on this subject was in the year 1955. So I think maybe the time is now to renew that discussion. Despite massive growth in technology and worker productivity, millions of workers in our country are working longer hours for lower wages. As a result of the extraordinary technological transformations that we have seen in recent years, American workers are now over 400 % more productive than they were in the 1940s. While CEOs today are making 350 times as much as their average employees, workers throughout the country are seeing their family life fall apart as they are forced to spend more and more time at work. At a moment in history when artificial intelligence and robotics, and I hope we all understand that, that the jobs that people have today ain't going to be there in many cases in 15 years.

Our economy is going to be transformed through artificial intelligence and robotics. The question that we are asking today is a pretty simple question. Do we continue the trend that technology only benefits the people on top? Or do we demand that these transformational changes benefit working people? And one of the benefits must be a lower work week.

0:03:32 Thomas: More than ever. Well, I think I know the answer. The Republicans are going to give, "No, we do just keep the doing the trend of the going all to the top, we like that, that's that's our position." How

0:04:30 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. You know, he talked about some of the numbers there that workers in America are 400 percent more productive than they were back when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed. That.

0:04:45 Thomas: Do they calculate that? Do you know, because I, I've heard, you know, a lot about that, but I've never thought about, like, are we typing more words per minute, what are we doing, how do we

0:04:49 Lydia: Yeah you know I think there a little bit of a debate there. So one of the witnesses that Senator Cassidy on the other side on this committee, you know, had called in, had spoken about the of productivity and how, you are different ways to measure it. And I don't know exactly where. Well, actually, I do know where they're getting this number from.

0:05:14 Lydia: So this is, let's -farm business sector, labor productivity, meaning output per hour for all workers. And

0:05:23 Thomas: It's like, how many TPS reports we're doing, it used to be one and now it's 400 per day, that's, must be some mathematical, medical way they do it, but it seems like a lot, like, I don't know, people are that much more efficient, right?

0:05:33 Lydia: Don't think it's that it's people. I think it'S because of automation. I think that the gains in that has made it so we can become so productive because we're not having to spend our time, you We're not going to spend Our time making a zillion copies, you can just email something and the person over in another building has it, you don't have to wait for the mail, you You know, there's so many things that are happening there that have just made us more productive. Yes, to your point, Republicans are not super into this. The witnesses that Senator Cassidy called in, one of them is a named Vittert. And her brother used to be a correspondent with Tucker Carlson.

0:06:11 Thomas: Scrooge, okay. That's just a character from Atlas Shrugged, you can't just bring in the

0:06:23 Lydia: Goes on her brother's show on I it's News Nation now. News Nation. She goes on his show a lot to talk about quiet quitting and how people are lazy now. You know, not a completely unbiased source, I think, for this hearing. And the other one is a lawyer affiliated with the H .R. Policy Institute or something like that. Sanders' Sanders' witnesses included someone who literally like studies this. She's a Ph .D. in economics and she studies work.

0:06:29 Thomas: Fuck. Is a News Nation. Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:51 Thomas: Bob Cratchit.

0:06:53 Lydia: And her name's Dr. Juliette Shore. She's She's done a TED Talk on this. She helps lead pilots all over the entire world when companies want to give this a try. Fox News, you know, really just picked up on this idea of like, how dare people want want to work fewer hours with the same amount of pay. And I have a quick little clip to share so we can chat about some of the things that they talk about there.

0:06:53 Thomas: You got, oh, yeah, hmm.

0:07:16 Thomas: Can hear a very reasonable takes on the other side. I'm sure I

0:07:20 Lydia: Yeah, of course. Not

0:07:22 Clip: First, I'm listening to him about reducing the work week, number one. YOU'RE GOING TO ERODE THE WORK ETHIC THAT THIS COUNTRY WAS BUILT ON, HARRIS. HOW MUCH LESS DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO WORK THAN 40 HOURS? BUT NUMBER TWO, THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT ON CORPORATIONS AND SMALL BUSINESS, BY PAYING PEOP FOR AN EXTRA DAY OF WORK WHERE THEY'RE NOT PRODUCING WILL PUT NOT ONLY SOME BUSINEESSES OUT OF BUSNESS ALL TOGETHER, BUT IT 'LL CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE YOU'RE GONNA SEE MORE LAYOFFS BECAUSE THE COMPANIES, THAT'S NOT A SUSTAINABLE MODEL AND THE COMPANS WON'T BE ABLE TO AFFORD WE ARE IN AN ERA WHERE PEOPLE ARE WORRIED ABOUT THEIR JOBS ALREADY AND YOU WANT TO IMPLEMENT A POLICY LIKE THIS FOR THE PEOPLES WHO WILL STILL BE WORKING? IT'S DISASTROUS. WHAT HAPPENS FOR THE SMALL BUSINESSES WHEN THEY NEED PEOPLE TO BUY INTO THE CAUSE AND TO STICK AROUND EXTRA AND HELP ME MAKE THIS DREAM WORK? YOU'RE RIGHT. THAT'S HOW THIS COUNTRY WAS BUILT. SO PAUL MORO.

0:07:33 Lydia: Insane.

0:08:17 Thomas: Mean, unintentionally correct right wing take. What? This country was built was people who make all the money convincing other people to do unpaid labor for them because of our dream, like the dream, my dream, and then like getting laid off, yeah, later on. And also, like, could just pay time and a half for that extra extra day.

0:08:20 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. I dream Yeah And that's exactly what the bill is showing here, too. It's just changing the standard work week that 40 hours, which it did not used to be. These are the same talking points that they were using back in the 30s when we were saying that it isn't OK that people are working 70 hours a week. That's not reasonable. And so now we're rehashing the same exact talking points because ultimately, a 40 -hour work week is arbitrary.

0:08:35 Thomas: Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

0:09:02 Lydia: It's arbitrary. And I have a great little video that we'll play, too, kind of talking about a little bit of the history, but it's

0:09:07 Thomas: By the way I just stopped that where I wanted to. Was there more?

0:09:09 Lydia: Fine.

0:09:09 Thomas: There? Okay.

0:09:09 Lydia: No, does go on to talk about a little bit later. It too deep into the video, but she talks about what is referred to as the stat. Have you heard about this? The top 1 percent of earners pay 46 percent of the federal income tax bill. Is misleading, and it is used all the time. It has been used to shut down conversation, right? Share has risen because the top 1 % are making way more than they ever have. So of course, their proportion is going to rise.

0:09:10 Thomas: Oh. God, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey. Yeah. If you go ahead and pay the rest of us more money, we'll be happy to pay our taxes. I don't think that'll actually be a problem. It's not like, it's not like we're all gonna be like, but we should pay zero taxes on that, right? Like,

0:09:43 Lydia: Yeah, right, Right. And the other piece of it is this is only for income tax, income tax. And then saying that the top 100% pay more in income tax and they like slyly try to make it sound like all tax. That's not true. It's just this one particular tax that happens to be more progressive at the federal level. Chait has an article where he, one his quotes in it is the implied by the stat is that the bigger the proportion of income earned by the richest one percent, more imperative it is to reduce their tax rates so that they don't pay too high a share of the tax burden. Incredible.

0:10:26 Thomas: Yeah, if we gave all our money to one guy, then he'd be like, he pays a hundred percent of all the taxes, he's a saint. Yeah.

0:10:30 Lydia: Yeah. It's so stupid.

0:10:38 Thomas: It is. So dumb.

0:10:39 Lydia: So stupid.

0:10:39 Thomas: How of Fox News and all of conservatism, again, with the exception of, the you know, how weird Trump has made everything normal. Kind of of normal, run -of -the -mill shitty conservatism is just making, like you said, the same arguments that they made for a hundred years even though the data has completely changed. Like, that's what's so frustrating. And I'm not talking about, again, with the Trumpers or the people on the news max that whatever, I'm talking about even when arguing with, like, the few times that I've had arguments with relatives where it's actually like, Okay, I kind of, you know, I kindof care about maybe changing their minds, what's been frustrating is you see the numbers like, they are still making the, these efficiency, or the economy is going to collapse if you blah, blah, blah, they're still making these same arguments.

And you look and it's like, no, the companies are already making more off of that same, that hour work week that you were defending 20 years ago. They're making so much more off that now than they were when you were defending it then. So like if if your argument was real, then you'd say, oh, okay, well it looks like that's fine. Like they're making more. Off of our efficiency. So I guess nevermind, we don't need that 40 hour work week clearly because

0:10:46 Lydia: Yeah, right. Yeah? Yep. Right. Right.

0:11:46 Thomas: The efficiency is there, but it's, it's combination of they're always going to claw for every dollar that they can. Slash conservatives don't really update their views at all, it's always just wherever they are, lower taxes, less government, lower taxes. Let's go, and they don't actually pay attention to like, but where are we, like, how much do do they even know, like how, how just top heavy the economy is. Like, it just gets worse every year, I think.

0:11:59 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, they have to know. I mean, yeah.

0:12:12 Thomas: Average ones don't, I think, like my family, they just don't actually, or just your average conservative that you might know, or your friends, I think they, they don't think too deeply about it, and it's just these stances that they've been taking since fucking Reagan or something, but I think the people, the people on Fox News, I think they are just obviously chilling to, for the top one tenth of one percent all the time.

0:12:15 Lydia: Yeah

0:12:33 Thomas: Personally.

0:12:33 Lydia: Well, and I think that that's kind of what, who comment on, you know, the stat, talk about it like gun rights has the same sort of thing where you have a one liner, and it shuts down the conversation because it's misleading. It's hard to combat. Know, it's pretty freaking frustrating that this is where we are because, you record profits and I can speak for myself. I'm, from the public sector. So it's different. Are no record profits in the public sector.

0:12:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:13:03 Lydia: The was in a salaried position and, you I didn't get paid over time and I was really committed to the mission and working really, really hard. You know, you watched some of the hours I was putting in weekly because I cared about the work I was doing. I wanted to do it well. And for what?

I mean, for peanuts, you move into management, into that salarified position And was, you know, after taxes, like a couple hundred dollars and I was adding 20 hours of work to my week every week. It's it's just silly. So I think that this is something, you at how can can we right -size the situation that we're in. The world in 2024 does not look how it did in 1938. how do we, you adjust and sort of take that mission of that vision of fair wages, fair work weeks, you in order to have the country that we all want to be working in, What does that look like? And it's going to look different in 2024 than it did in 1938. And we've decided instead to dig our heels in with the 1938 model. But meanwhile, it's actually like reversing.

I think the been some some studies that have looked at the average number of hours that people work. Work. And obviously, there are people who have multiple part -time jobs, and so that's part of it too, or a full -time job and then additional, a second job. So they're working many, many hours per week. The hours per week, that's not what Americans are actually working per week。 That

0:14:37 Thomas: Right.

0:14:37 Lydia: Is no longer the standard work week, even though by law it is considered the standard work week, people are working, I think the average is something like, I don't know, I don't want to misspeak, 46, 47 hours, something like that, where it's, it is, it

0:14:49 Thomas: Well. It's also kind of meaningless. It really depends on the job and the position and whatever. It's hard to take a broad average. Oh.

0:14:53 Lydia: Does. But you look at that number, and, you know, granted, I'm sure there are a lot of variables here that come into play, but you look att what the United States is doing versus what other countries are doing, and Americans work more hours on average than, you know, other folks in in um countries

0:15:08 Thomas: Yeah. Well. That's for sure. There are other countries. That have like, to sane views of work, and they're like, oh, I have a vacation for two months. I'll see you later.

0:15:10 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Know, I know, one, and like, that's a couple jokes there, right, was like the whole, um, what out of office replies look like for Americans, and, and it's like, you know, I have, um, surgery, but you can still reach me, I'll be I'll been available for approximately 30 minutes, but I'll have my work Phone with me while I'm in recovery and, you know, brought my laptop too.

0:15:31 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah God's too true. And, and I, I do want like, obviously we work a stupid idiot amount, but like, that's, it's still different when you're working for a company, you know, it'S a company that, that we own. So it's a whole different thing too. When you're, you're stuck working for the man for something that you never see equity out of and and they're, you know, giving you maybe the pizza party or whatever the fuck to like, get you to work 60 hours for, you know it's, it'S just, itS miserable and it'S shitty and it's really frustrating. And I, I don'T want to like compare the fact that, you KNOW, we get to do interesting work for a company that we own, which is a different situation. Even though I'm working, God knows how many there are minus like a couple of sleeping hours. That's still different. You know, it's still way different than like you're stuck clocking in for someone else in of not great conditions anyway and being underpaid for it. It's just miserable.

0:15:42 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, is. I think what's kind of key to that and what we saw with COVID and sort of the transformation of a lot of jobs during COVID is the need for flexibility that, that, you we work a lot, but we also have great flexibility with the business that we own and like the stories that we cover and how we go about doing the work that we want to do. And as a result, working all these hours, you know, it kind of comes as part of the territory.

But if you're talking about, you're no, your standard job, that, you people I used to work with, they're all being called back to the office, I'm not going to get into remote moat versus, you working from an office based location. That's a whole other can of worms. But I do think that we've recognized that flexibility is really, really important, not just for satisfaction with your job, but satisfaction with your life and your mental health and your physical health and your ability to feel like you're meeting the needs of the other people in your life that are important to you. As a mom, I can really, really, really relate to that need, but know I had mentioned that the work week, the number of hours anyway, is kind of arbitrary and

0:17:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh,

0:17:49 Lydia: I sent you a little video of kind of like talking about how we got there that I think is really interesting and Henry Ford, you know, is behind some of this, surprisingly. Just

0:17:56 Thomas: Yeah. How

0:17:57 Clip: Imagine it's 1914. Henry Ford just created the factory of the countries that assembly line and his company's productivity has skyrocketed. A car that took twelve and a half hours to assemble now takes one and a half. He decides to double the pay and reduce the workday from nine hours to eight, and he later reduces the work week from six days to five. The nation is shocked. His workers are thrilled and his company thrives with increased productivity and loyalty. Manufacturers around the country follow his lead, and it eventually becomes standard practice and becomes a law in 1938.

0:18:33 Clip: So how did Ford settle on 40 hours in a work week? He adopted the idea from labor activists a hundred years earlier, who thought that the average 70 hours a week in a factory were brutal and unsustainable.

0:18:38 Thomas: Talk to God.

0:18:38 Lydia: Isn't

0:18:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:46 Clip: They campaigned with the slogan, "'Eight hours for labor, eight hours for rest, "'eight hours for what we will.'" Eight hours also conveniently made three equal shifts to keep Ford's factory open 24 hours a day. But Ford also believed that leisure time was indispensable to capitalism. Working people need to have enough free time to find uses for consumer products, including automobiles, he said.

0:19:10 Lydia: That funny.

0:19:10 Clip: As the work week shrank from 70 to 40 hours, economists predicted that the trend would continue, and Nixon suggested a four -day work week was right around the corner. Economist John Maynard Keynes thought that technology would allow us to be working three -hour days by 2030. Some experts say we are entrenched in a culture of overwork, and we were already in the midst of a burnout crisis when COVID hit.

0:19:19 Thomas: Yeah, I

0:19:35 Clip: This is something that was actually building for a long time before the pandemic. This is Carla Miller. She's our columnist that writes about the workplace. People were already reaching high levels of burnout. They were being asked to do more with less of their jobs and put in longer hours. So Americans in particular are not really good about taking leisure time for ourselves. We don't take the vacation or paid leave even when we have it. It. And when we do, it's really hard for us to disconnect completely.

0:19:33 Thomas: Said that I'm the expert Oh, at the model t in the garage, I barely ever

0:20:03 Clip: And that becomes sort of like a low level app running in the background and draining our batteries.

0:20:03 Thomas: Driving it.

0:20:09 Lydia: So that was one of the things that was striking to me was, uh, Henry Ford was like, you know, we do need some days off because people need to be able to drive their cars around.

0:20:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, well, in order to have customers, I need these, you, slaves to have some time to like buy my products, geez.

0:20:25 Lydia: Yeah, and actually use it. Yeah. You think that that video is really interesting that, as I said, COVID had a big impact on some of this stuff that's really been sitting with people a lot. Quitting has been like a big movement to where people are recognizing like, hey, I'm working really hard for pay that does not seem reasonable based on how many hours I'm putting in. So I'm just going to meet the minimum that's expected of me. I'm not going to offer to help with bigger projects. I's not going try for management, you know what I mean? And just kind of make the environment so it's reasonable for them.

Video goes on, it's it talks about, you all of these instances in which it's been piloted to try a four -day workweek. And one of the pilots that they mention is in the UK, which was through an organization called Autonomy. Multiple This organizations have been looking at this. And with the UK study, they recently released their report called Making It Stick. And this This just came out pretty recently because it's been a year, a full year, since they had done the pilot program and the pilot had ended. And they wanted to say, all right, how of this worked out for you, organizations that participated in this?

0:20:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:56 Thomas: Dogs and cats living them together, mass hysteria, the whole thing, there's they actually fell into the ocean, the place doesn't exist anymore, they can't even it's on fire, it's that it's a community gif of him, what's his name, coming back in with a pizza and the whole place is no Don Glover and it's all just on fire, impossible.

0:21:46 Lydia: Right. Donald Abed? Glover. Yeah. Troy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In the pilot program, 61 organizations had participated and they spanned industries, you know, all over the place for that. They had a variety of different company structures. Some of them were, you know. Small, fewer than 10 employees. Some were large, 100 plus, kind of all overthe map. And a year after the pilot had ended, 54 of the 61 were still operating a four -day week policy. And 31 of the 61 had officially made it permanent. They rewrote their policies to promise a permanent four-day week. And that can look different for each company.

I think one of the big takeaways from these studies is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all and that a four day work week could look like the is shut down on Fridays, right? It's open Monday through Thursday and the weekends are Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Or they might say we do have right. We do have need for it to be open five days a week. So we're going to stagger our staffing and rotate when someone has that additional day off. Are people who will do, you know, like half days on that as well. Like you do a half day and a half Day to make for that that full day eventually. The managers that participated in kind of additional conversations in this study, % of them said it had a positive

0:21:56 Thomas: Nice. Yeah.

0:22:49 Thomas: You can staff differently Yeah.

0:23:18 Lydia: Or a very positive impact. It is a bit of a sample bias because not all organizations, not all 61 said, yes, we're willing to talk to you more, you I want to recognize that and call that out. So this is probably people who were eager to talk about it already. Still, 100 percent, like none of them answered neutral. And the most of the 100 percent did say very positive.

0:23:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:43 Thomas: Well, I mean, you would think if there's somebody who's super pissed, they might be like, "I'm going to tell these people about how bad this was." I don't know what the original sample of, I guess, people, workplaces willing to do this was, I Guess that would be a, where

0:23:49 Lydia: True. That'S true. And yeah. And so they didn't see that. Right. That also mentioned mentioned some specific positive impacts that they saw. Eighty -two percent of the companies that continued with this conversation in this follow-up study saw a positive impact on staff well -being. Fifty percent saw positive improvement in reducing staff turnover. Thirty -two percent saw an improvement in their recruitment efforts because this is an opportunity for them To stand out from other companies.

0:24:15 Thomas: Yeah, I bet. Yeah. That's the thing. Really matters what the job is, obviously. But for your typical bullshit office job, which I think is a pretty large proportion portion of the American economy. It doesn't fucking matter. God, it doesn't matter. You stretch your way. I wasn't sure. I know this study exists. I'm not sure if it's one you looked at, but like just stretch out your time. There's no, like it would be a miracle if what, if you're working in a fucking office. Wow. It just so happens. I have exactly 40 hours of work to get done each week and I get it done just on time, just barely on time.

And then I go on the weekend and I come back, I clock in exactly. No, like you, it's, you fill the day, you know, like there's a a bunch of stuff and if you if at any time in the office jobs I've had, someone boss that was cool was like, "all right, here's what we need you to get done, can you do it in four days and then we'll let you have that fifth day of" fucking yes I will get I would be a better worker I would absolutely be like, "not only will I get that done, I want to make sure you don't take this away from me so I'll do a great job." Yeah.

0:24:26 Lydia: It's Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah yeah. Well, and to that point, so they also talked to employees as part of this study and they did you interviews, so it's qualitative information, they had the opportunity to hear straight from the employees. How's this going? And from like the work sort of side of things, one of the quotes that someone said was, "I feel I'm more productive and able to complete tasks without being overburdened or burntout Having that extra day off means I'm able to concentrate more and feel more motivated during my working week."

Um, know, people had said that prior to the the four day work week, all the meetings that people were having to sit in and they decided to restructure the meeting. So it reduced to who really needs to be there. They're 15 minutes, they're 30 minutes now. Right. Like social media breaks, people would go on because you way that brains work, you can't just work for a solid number of hours straight. Like we are not not robots. And that's why we see productivity increase when we're able to rely on automation and robots, because they don't get tired. They don't need to stop and eat all of

0:25:58 Thomas: Such a waste of time, yeah. Mm -hmm, yeah.

0:26:32 Lydia: These other things.

0:26:32 Thomas: They do eat batteries.

0:26:32 Lydia: Right. Yeah.

0:26:33 Thomas: I think no.

0:26:34 Lydia: But if you're plugged in, then you're fine.

0:26:36 Thomas: I mean, they literally chomp on like a bag of batteries that their robot mom packed for them for the day. Their

0:26:41 Lydia: But I think, you me, the question that I have is, OK, what, what is the kind of world I want to live in? And there are elements in the personal lives that I think are really, really, really important.

Ask them, "what are you doing on your extra day off?" Lot of people said that they were, you care responsibilities, disabilities, said that they were coming back from maternity leave, so they got to spend an additional day with their kid and save on daycare costs, but also feel like they could have that additional time with their baby, even though they were coming back to work. Some of them shared they were engaging in hobbies, personal and professional development. Some of them were going back to school.

Some of them are doing their doctor's appointments on that day. So then they weren't having to to cram it in on days that they're supposed to be working or use leave time to order to go to their doctor's appointment. Some of them were doing chores on that day. So then the weekend was actually about spending quality time with the people that they love in their lives and not just doing laundry and mopping floors. Thing in particular, somebody said that I thought was just lovely.

Quote, "I don't say this lightly. The four -day week will save lives. It will improve overall well -being much more than it was intended to achieve. When first joining my organization, I was extremely skeptical on the four - Day week and what it would achieve overall. However, it has far exceeded what myself and my immediate family and friends were expecting.

The time I get to spend with family is now so much more as I use my well - being day for for me to do my hobbies and interests where previously I would be trying to juggle and balance." Is important to realize that

0:28:24 Lydia: The four -day week not

0:28:24 Thomas: Job was a juggler, by the way. They, yeah.

0:28:29 Lydia: Only has a positive impact on you, but those around you. If you use the multiplier effect, it has a significant well -being impact on thousands. And for myself, you I were working a typical job, I know how I am when When I'm burnt out, when I'm stressed and how it can be really hard to manage that when the kids are around and how I would get, you And my patience was really, it was worn thin before the kids were there. And then when thekids are there, then I feel like I'm taking out my low energy and like high stress on them. And they don't deserve that. I this is something that like truly could be just game changer for a lot of people. Honestly, like reading all of these reports, I think it's incredible the potential impact, as this person said, not just on the individual employees, but everybody around them. Like, we were in regular jobs, you and I would get more quality time together, too.

0:28:55 Thomas: It's hard, yeah.

0:29:32 Lydia: Like, we would get the opportunity to actually be together.

0:29:34 Thomas: It's a good point. Maybe we should just quit our job and work at Starbucks. Interesting.

0:29:38 Lydia: Beyond But that, Dr. Juliette Shore, who I mentioned, was one of the witnesses that Senator Sanders had called for this hearing. Did a study through the University of Massachusetts Amherst looking at the environmental impact. Impact. And this was a while back, and it had shown that with a 10 % reduction in working hours, it cut an individual's carbon footprint by 8 .6%. We see this in remote work too, right? That like when you're not commuting and you that day is at home either working or not working, you're Not going to be driving across town.

0:30:01 Thomas: Yeah that's true, especially again for the office type job, uh, there's gonna be plenty of jobs where this is different, but for, for that office type job, which is kind of where my experience is, except for my, you know, construction crap and all that I did, um, from a, yeah, like a global climate change perspective, a carbon perspective, getting more of your bullshit work done per fewer trips, I didn't even think about that part of it, because really, when we, if you take a trip all the way to the office and then if you're anything like me, it's a day where you actually don't really have much work and just fucking sit there, you're, it's not doing anything, like you're just, you're almost, you're wasting every, all the time and resources it took to get you there for nothing. That's

0:30:31 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:30:50 Lydia: I totally agree. And I mean, this is something where, you have have to put their foot down to like if they have the opportunity for four day work weeks, seven out of 10 employees said that if If their company took away the four -day work week, they would demand a pay increase of between 10 % and 50 % if they were going to, yeah, I don't know who that person is.

0:31:19 Lydia: It's probably a single person. Trying to make a point. If they Were expected to work five days a week, they would expect to be paid then more than they're currently getting. And 13 % of people in that study, this is the four day week global study that cited quite a bit in this hearing with Senator Sanders, percent of people said there is no amount of money that would persuade them to give up a four day work week. No amount of money. I

0:31:17 Thomas: A bit much, but yeah yeah yeah well, there's probably some amount of money, but no

0:31:48 Lydia: Don't know. I mean, yeah, well, and I'm sure you've seen like those tweets go around that's, you basically saying like we really do need a three day weekend every weekend, a day A day to do nothing, a day to do chores, and a day to manage our kids, yeah.

0:31:49 Thomas: Amount of reasonable money, yeah, yeah.

0:32:00 Thomas: Or for us three days to manage our screaming kids, yeah. Yeah

0:32:07 Lydia: And I mean, I would love to have a dedicated day to, like kids' activities, a dedicated day to cleaning, and a dedicated day for a day or two sleeping.

0:32:12 Thomas: Well and the other way to think about it again is like maybe that people still work but they just get paid more for that day as well, which is I'm always for higher pay because the pay is dog shit everywhere, so yeah, there's no reason not to to support this, no.

0:32:21 Lydia: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and ultimately, right, the 32 hour work week act would reduce the standard work week from 40 to 32 hours over four years. This would be phased in, yeah, by lowering the maximum hours threshold for overtime compensation for non -exempt employees. That's how they would achieve this. It, overtime pay at time and a half for workdays longer than eight hours, and overtime pay as double a worker's regular pay for workday is longer than 12. And it would protect workers' pay and benefits to ensure that a reduction in the workweek does does not cause a loss in pay. There is specific language in the bill calling that out, because, you know, how companies are in our capitalist society, if not specifically spelled out in the law, they would do it.

0:32:38 Thomas: For fuck's sake, well.

0:33:15 Thomas: They'll still do it, I think.

0:33:16 Lydia: They'll still try. Yeah, but it's all phased in. It's, you from 40 hours to like 38, 36, 34, 32. I don't personally see a problem with it.

0:33:29 Thomas: Resolved, we vote for this.

0:33:32 Lydia: Do you want to hear a little bit of this Liberty Vittert here? You know, I'm here from where there's woke. I have to throw in a little Bit of like this right nonsense. Liberty Vitert. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm telling you. So her brother, like I said, he was a correspondent with Tucker Carlson, Fox in 2021, and no one seems to know if he left or if he was let go. No one has said anything. So that's pretty interesting. And I moved over to News Nation. She visits her brother quite a bit on his show, which he calls out that it's her sister, but um, one of the things that I watched him do was like, piece with Tucker Carlson about how he interviewed a suicide bomber in Gaza that didn't end up detonating like correctly or something, and

0:33:39 Thomas: Vid that is absolutely an Atlas Shrug name.

0:34:16 Thomas: Is

0:34:17 Lydia: Said that like she wanted to date him, it was very strange, it was one of the weirdest things I've ever witnessed, but we're not going to watch that, um, so here we can hear from Liberty talk on her brother's show about

0:34:31 Clip: Things are as obnoxious as the empty assurances of people who claim they are more productive working from home. And they would promise they would be even more productive if they only worked four days a week. How about three days a day? We all know they're full of it. But It turns out the laziness of work from home finance types is actually not only hurting them, who cares, but it's hurting all of us. With us now, professor of data science at Washington university's business school host of MIT's data science podcast, Data Nation, Liberty Vitter. So all those people who say they're more productive working from home, now yeah, I mean, I think we would all like to get 100 of the pay for 80 of the work, that sounds pretty good to me, but study, study after study has shown that it simply doesn't work. All right, so you think about worker productivity, lowest levels

0:34:44 Thomas: Sure how about two yeah

0:34:55 Lydia: He's trying to be like a populist or something there

0:34:57 Thomas: What

0:35:19 Clip: In 75 years, currently stands at 3 .5 percent, down 2 .7 percent in the first quarter of 2023, five consecutive quarters of year -over -year decline, labor productivity declined in 37 states in 2022.

0:35:22 Thomas: 3 .5 percent of what

0:35:22 Lydia: I don't know mm

0:35:32 Clip: It'd be easy to blame lazy workers, but I think there's something deeper there. Well, I mean, it's not just lazy workers. We have a whole new generation. We have quiet quitting, we have bare minimum Mondays, and now we have this push for a four -day work week.

0:35:44 Thomas: Bare minimum Mondays.

0:35:45 Lydia: -hm No.

0:35:46 Clip: In places like Massachusetts and California, legislatures are trying to push bills on companies to get to this four - day work week, but we've seen that it doesn't work. They've done long -term trials In Japan and France that have clearly shown that productivity decreases over time. All right, so in the end, the people who get hurt the most are the people who still are working five days a week on the assembly line or at restaurants or anywhere else.

0:35:46 Thomas: I didn't hear about that.

0:36:10 Thomas: We have? No, because there'd be a four -day work week. I agree that if you don't get to benefit from the thing, then you wouldn't benefit from it. The

0:36:12 Lydia: Yeah, they get paid overtime

0:36:18 Clip: There's There's enormous job Insecurity that comes for people who are working full time, because all of a sudden, if you have people working four days a week having less productivity, you end up having part time workers come in, which is what both both Japan and France saw. And so then people who have these five day a week jobs have less job security because there's all these part time workers looking for more work. All right, so help us understand who really gets the advantage here. Is it the employers? Is it those sort of wealthier, you know, elite class of finance workers and office workers who are able to work from home? It's completely the elite class.

0:36:45 Thomas: Woke left.

0:36:46 Lydia: Yeah,

0:36:53 Thomas: Feeding you a few answers that will fit with

0:36:55 Clip: It's people, it's hardworking Americans who are losing out by this because they're going to have less job security, less Productivity, and there's not any more happiness. You know, a lot of people, the big argument is employees will have better well-being with this. But we've seen for the first couple months people might be happier, but then they become unhappy because they have less job security and because they are making less money overall as companies hire in more part-time workers. So we're sort of in a perverse sense, even though productivity goes down, do companies like it because in the end they know they can get to part-time work that they don't have to give benefits to, on and on and on? We haven't seen that play out.

0:36:55 Thomas: Our whole bullshit thing. Oh, man.

0:36:55 Lydia: Yeah.

0:37:32 Thomas: If that were true, we would be advocating for it because we're just trying to help the 1%, so

0:37:36 Lydia: Yeah.

0:37:37 Clip: That's That's What a lot of these sort of think tanks are saying to companies to try to get them to try this out. But that's not what ends up happening in Iceland, for example. They did a whole study on this for two years, and the government actually ended up having to pay out 40 million dollars a year to be able to make up for the loss of productivity. Wow.

0:37:37 Thomas: No.

0:37:55 Clip: Fascinating.

0:37:51 Thomas: What? Wow, that's fascinating.

0:37:56 Clip: All right, and

0:37:58 Thomas: Did anyone cite a single source on anything?

0:37:59 Lydia: No. So nothing was cited Right. And I was like confused by his productivity stats that he gave. Normally that stuff is cited.

0:38:05 Thomas: Yeah, so funny.

0:38:08 Lydia: Zero citations there. I.

0:38:09 Thomas: He said productivity is 2.3%. What is that? 2.3% of what, sir? What was going to guess is he's saying like the year over year increase was lower than it normally is or something because that number is nonsense.

0:38:12 Lydia: Yeah, maybe, maybe. But I did look up this Iceland thing that she was talking about. I can't find this 40 million dollars that the government had to pay? I don't

0:38:34 Thomas: Why would the government do that? That doesn't make any sense, yeah.

0:38:37 Lydia: Know. I've seen is that in Iceland, it has been a success. Long term studies. There was, you know, they started in like 2015. They started doing pilots of these things. And a major report in 2021 came out, an 80 page report and it's positive. It's all.

0:38:44 Thomas: Everyone There is, like, it's giving me more time to make sure I don't marry my cousin. Is that the place where they have to use an app to make sure they're not related because it's such an inbred, tiny population? Yeah. I think that's Iceland.

0:39:05 Lydia: I think you're right. I had totally forgotten about that. Yeah, so I just it's

0:39:12 Thomas: I don't blame it's an island, tiny island, you know, yeah.

0:39:15 Lydia: Just kind of shocking to me, you know, she She has studied data science like she studied statistics.

0:39:19 Thomas: From What You Would, from What would you think she cited? I don't know, well, not cited, but referenced. 10 to 20 just authoritative studies that Like, like the whole world is like, this sucks. And Iceland, the government was like, we feel so bad about this. We're going to pay 40 or something. I guess they would say like, that's like they had to help with assistance or they had, or like the took in that much less in taxes. I don't know what that would be.

0:39:25 Lydia: Yeah. Right.

0:39:43 Lydia: Man, I can't figure it out. I been trying to find it. Maybe I'll stumble on it eventually. But, yeah, I have not been able to confirm anything of what she's talking about there. And And so her biggest thing is like term. We don't have any proof that this is actually a good thing, even though Iceland is saying that it went well for them.

0:40:03 Thomas: Like, here's the problem with this. If you just don't listen to anything that happens and make up your own thing, studies show that it's actually bad.

0:40:11 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, I very frustrating. And her testimony at the hearing, she was saying that the that are prevalent on this, which, again, a lot of them, Dr. Juliette Shore, who's one of the leading scholars in this area, she's sitting like right next to her during the hearing. In a lot of these studies.

0:40:11 Thomas: Oh, so you're telling me this asshole was there for the hearings? Oh, great.

0:40:33 Lydia: So she's Senator Cassidy's one of his witnesses. So she could say, like, you can't do this, Congress.

0:40:38 Thomas: She could reference 10 million fake studies.

0:40:41 Lydia: Yeah. She was just talking about how all the studies that we're seeing now are flawed. Their methods are bad. And Juliette Shore is like sitting right next to her. And I just was very bothered by that. You an ideological, weird ideological position on this that is we have decided that 40-hour workweek must happen because FDR, a Democrat in the New Deal, made it a 40-hour workweek. I mean, I don't, I really can't track what's happening here. It's just, yeah, it'S this, this status quo. Well, it's been long enough that we've had this and change is scary, I guess. Yeah, I don't really know what's going on here, but I'm all for it. I don'T know if it's going to go anywhere, to be perfectly honest.

0:40:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, well, not Yeah, obviously, it won't pass the House or whatever. But, but, but it's important to note, people get tired of hearing that we need to vote for Democrats, and I get it, but we need, need to vote for Democrats. And that's what we have to do. And it's nice to have stuff like this to point to, to say, hey, we're- if we had x more people than this could pass, you know, and like, there's actually no reason we can't do that if we just convinced enough people to vote that way. Yeah.

0:41:32 Lydia: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I think another area that we need to look at is the points that happen here. Right. And being able to identify, OK, they're always going to rely on the stat. Right. And how do we push back on that?

0:42:00 Thomas: I just just saw today, people are sharing the "people don't want to work anymore," "people don't" WANT TO WORK AND IT'S IN NEWSPAPERS GOING BACK TO, YOU KNOW, 18 FUCKING 50. IT'S LIKE "PEOPLE DON'T WANNA WORK ANYMORE," "PEOPLES DON'T want to work." In it, don't you get embarrassed? People who make those same fucking arguments don't get embarrassed that you're making the same- all right, it's all- it's that- means it's not a good argument. It's just a thing you heard that think, like, anecdotally makes sense, but it's incorrect. It's not right. People do in fact want to. Work anymore, what?

0:42:06 Lydia: Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.

0:42:28 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like, if you go back to the history of the FLSA and its path, was it not an easy path at all. It Fair Labor Standards Labor Act that was tough to get through. And it it Was brought up multiple times and they had to keep adjusting and keep adjusting it. And randomly, one of the biggest proponents of this was Senator Hugo Black from Alabama, who actually wanted a 30-hour workweek. He was a Klan member.

0:42:38 Thomas: Was that again? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's like, I need more time to do Klansman stuff, guys. I'm working too hard to properly be a racist. I could use more time to, you know, sew hoods and, and, uh, you know, laundry is big with the clan, you know, there's white, you're wearing white, all the time. Yeah.

0:43:11 Lydia: You know, yeah, white gets stained very

0:43:14 Thomas: I spilled, you know, hot dog on my Clansman outfit the other day. I don't have time to clean that up. We need less of a working week.

0:43:15 Lydia: Easily. Yeah. But I mean, like, he- he was like, people are working too much, I need more time for my leisure, and Um, and he was a huge proponent of it, so, you know, um, in unlikely places, voices.

0:43:21 Thomas: Oh, man. You heard it here first, Lydia agrees with the clan on this policy, everyone, everyone. I think we should all work ourselves to death because I'm woke now, against the clan.

0:43:40 Lydia: Yep, yep, you got me. Yeah. I it's one of those things where if we just kind of keep taking note of, okay, what are their talking points? What are the ways that they're going to mislead here, here, and here? Then it's going to help unify on where we need to attack back, essentially, and correct that misinformation. And I think this is a prime example of where that's happening. And I imagine we'll potentially hear more of it as these conversations continue, because Fox has been accosting Bernie in the halls ever since he started this hearing.

0:44:17 Lydia: And say that he's, you his mind and screaming at Fox correspondents when they ask him about this.

0:44:16 Thomas: Good luck, man. Good Do you think that's like a bad look, because we're- in nowadays we're- out of time finally, we're like, if someone's just willing to yell at Fox News, we're not going to be able to fucking- a- that's awesome. I'm tired of pretending they're real. Like, it's awesome that someone would, would do that. So good.

0:44:32 Lydia: And Yeah. Yep. I mean, he went for it. He was- was like, "Who are you with?" And she was like, "Fox Business." And he was like, "Okay." And then she started asking her question, and in quotes, where she just, like, very loaded at the beginning, like, "You know, the socialists that believe in blah blah blah." And she's like, "All right, I'm going to stop you right" there. And just went off. And yeah it was great.

0:44:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, expert Lydia Smith, that's fantastic, uh, thank you for the breakdown. Um, yes, let's make this work week happen, and what we'll do is, uh, we'll all sit on our fucking office cubicles and we'll have one more day of the weekend and we're- the same amount of nothing done there.

0:45:06 Lydia: Yeah. Literally the same amount and people will be happier for it.

0:45:18 Thomas: You go. All right, everyone, uh, so much for supporting the show, check Lydia out over on Where There's Woke, and, uh, it's a new podcast, she's starring, rival podcast actually, go TP that podcast's house, no wait, that's- that's my house, don't do that. And, uh, thanks so much for supporting patreon.com/seriouspod Please, if you'd like to enable our eight day a week work week, uh, to make that happen, we are eternally grateful. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.

0:45:18 Lydia: Yeah.

0:46:03 Thomas: Like I need more time to do Klansman stuff, guys.