By not being tired on the fifth, not taking wrong orders and not dropping glasses. Same as a software engineer would.
I see your point tho, and it is very valid. I am just playing angels advocate here.
But, iirc, earliest research on the topic was conducted in a hospital, which is a services business, same as a restaurant. Increases in production (I said production and not productivity) were found. Research is not solid.
This is not an actual problem that needs a solution.
If you make labour 'reassuringly expensive', then the only way to maintain output is to invest in capital deepening.
Which is the only place productivity comes from.
Capitalists need to start doing some capitalism.
What kinds of capital deepening can one do for our tourism-oriented and increasingly public-sector-dependent service economy?
We can, of course, move all those operations to the Job Guarantee if that is your view of capitalism.
Personally I'm more optimistic about improved methods and machinery.
They don't have to justify anything, they're profitable. Out compete them, with your 80% workers, if you think it's a better way.
> Personally I'm more optimistic about improved methods and machinery.
The companies are optimistic about machinery too, as it'll help them achieve the elusive 0% worker. It feels like you're trying to devalue humans out of any possibility of employment, not help them.
Once there is a guaranteed alternative job available - to balance the power discrepancy - then competition can be turned up to 11. At which point these operations 'profit' will be seen as what it is - under bidding labour in a system that is systemically short of work.
Workers need that 'no deal' option adding. And businesses need the "what about the jobs, can I have a bailout" option removing. Then competition will be 100% fair - and effective. Driving forward the capital improvements we need to have a better standard of living.
Hell yeah. Welfare for business is bad.
> Workers need that 'no deal' option adding.
Well, yes. But to some degree you're supposed to build that for yourself. Without that requirement you have no incentive to save and work smart.
I don't think bosses should have the power (ie, society should disrupt it, you're right) to keep people on the edge of poverty so that they have leverage, but I also don't think people should have much say over their boss other than to refuse the job. Either unbalances the market.
The problem here is the effect on productivity. While there are some jobs where decreasing 20% of working hours while keeping productivity constant may be perfectly feasible, there are lots of jobs in Spain's precarious service-oriented economy where this is not possible.
For example, take all jobs depending on tourism: how is a waiter going to produce the same in four days of work than in five?
The same applies for Spain's public sector. Many public workers already have very good working conditions, but more importantly, the same effect described above also applies to them: it is not clear whether their working hours can be compressed without a significant loss of productivity.
To be clear I'm not against the idea, as there may be some merit to it if applied reasonably and on a tactical level, as part of much greater economic reforms. But I fear this is not what will happen; rather, populist politicians will take it and run with it because it sounds good, without any regards for its real implications, and without addressing the much harder and endemic problems of the Spanish economy such as the eye-watering unemployment levels and the lack of opportunities for our youth.