Perhaps for some reason that I don't quite understand people get more (or an almost equalivent) amount of work done in four days as they do in five, but if not, this is just going to result in lower wages.
At the risk of sounding trite, I suspect a hundred years ago some people were wary of the 5 day week too, and yet here we are, for the most part, enjoying <sic> the arrangement of two days off per week.
> Less production will result in less revenue.
I gather the intent is that there won't be 'less production', and consequently won't be less revenue.
And/or perhaps the reduction in production won't be linearly correlated with the reduction in revenue.
> Companies are only going compensate employees for value of their labour, so less labour will eventually mean less compensation.
As with any large multi-national organisation, examining the remuneration of the exec layer may reveal some disparities with how profit is shared, and there may be some interesting options to explore there.
> Perhaps for some reason that I don't quite understand people get more (or an almost equalivent) amount of work done in four days as they do in five, but if not, this is just going to result in lower wages.
Consider that Unilever, a company valued at around $150b, likely has people that have already thought out the implications and risks of this plan.
If Americans were compensated for the value of their labor, the minimum wage would be around $28/hr.
Labor is paid the 'going rate'. Whatever the employer can get away with. That's all.
Btw the work week in America used to be 6 days, 12 hours a day. Went to 5x8 - didn't change pay much.
Ironically, the free lunch, is an actual example of a free lunch in economics that does exist (The free lunch was in olden days, where bars would provide a free lunch. This endeared it to its customer base driving traffic back for evening drinks. The cost of the free lunch was much less than the profit from the extra alcohol sales, resulting in $$$ for the bar)
As far as a 4 day work week goes, there are tons of factors. Maybe the worker is happier with lower wages and more time off (i could make more money if i worked 80 hours a week, but i don't because the cost to me is more than the value of the extra mo ney). Maybe people have similar levels of production for 4 day work weeks. Maybe there's not enough work to employ everyone for 5 days but is enough for 4 and they think that is a better trade-off than laying peolle off. Maybe 4 day work week is non-monentary compensation that allows the employer to attract better talent. Etc.
My theory, at least with software engineering, is that we all struggle with burnout. You can spend 40 hours "in the office" per week, but as you get burned out, the amount of value you add in those hours decreases. If you take a day where you don't open Slack or think about work, then you reset some of that burnout, and your next 32 hours will be significantly more productive than 40 would have been. (You can probably measure it sometime. Look at the 40 hours before someone goes on a two week vacation, and look at the 40 hours immediately after that vacation.)
This isn't data, but my team has one person taking every Friday off. We do Thursday-Thursday oncall shifts, and outgoing oncall takes Friday off. I haven't noticed any change in productivity from myself or our team since we've implemented this policy. One person-day per week doesn't matter much; there is probably some tiny and low priority task that doesn't get done as a result. But the important stuff keeps happening, and the team is in a better mental state the rest of the time.
I don't think that 32 hours of software engineering per week would look a lot different than 40 hours of software engineering per week, averaged on the scale of months or years. 40 is an arbitrary number that has nothing to do with the mechanics of thinking about software, or even the typing-in of software. It's probably worth another look. (I have no idea how it translates to other fields.)
Don't be. Working time has been declining for a century (especially in Europe) while GDP grew.
Depends if you're talking per individual or per household.
Whether this is a net positive or net negative is basically boils down to whether you think people are better served working outside the home or better served doing household things.
Also, all your comments are dead by default. You might want to make a new account.
If you visit any Unilever factory you will find they are heavily automated. They really don't need many staff to run.
The value creation in these sort of businesses has been shifting to knowledge workers for some time now. It would be foolish if Unilever and similar companies didn't start questioning all their traditional working practices.
If you work a 6 hour day or 10 hour day instead of an 8 hour day, do you have more or less output as a developer? If you're a sysadmin, what's more productive, the admin who automates everything and sits there on call in case something breaks, but otherwise watching TV or riding a bike, or the person who spends weeks doing repetitive work which looks busy but leads to a far worse outcome?