Re:Let’s hear it for the four-hour working day
by DonbunEf7 on Monday August 21, 2017 @11:08PM
(#15069425)
Since no other comment explicitly spelled it out fully: Why don't people work nine hours in the USA?
The answer is very simple: Benefits, overtime, breaks, and other bits of labor law are written around an eight-hour day. This coerces employers and employees alike into preferring eight hours over seven or nine, simply as a matter of optimizing the business's need to pay out overtime with the employee's need to secure FTE benefits.
If there were such a thing as a 20hr work week in law, not defined as part-time with no benefits, but defined as part-time with partial or full benefits, then I imagine that everybody's tune would change quite quickly and we would end up multimodal, with one peak at four hrs/day and another at eight hrs/day.
The answer is very simple: Benefits, overtime, breaks, and other bits of labor law are written around an eight-hour day. This coerces employers and employees alike into preferring eight hours over seven or nine, simply as a matter of optimizing the business's need to pay out overtime with the employee's need to secure FTE benefits.
If there were such a thing as a 20hr work week in law, not defined as part-time with no benefits, but defined as part-time with partial or full benefits, then I imagine that everybody's tune would change quite quickly and we would end up multimodal, with one peak at four hrs/day and another at eight hrs/day.