The discussion of raising the federal minimum wage has me thinking why we use 40 hours as the full time work week standard. The 8-hour work day (which translated to the forty hour work week) came as a result of labor advocates pushing for a more humane labor schedule, down from exploitative 14-16 hour days, six days a week.
But for 100+ years, the 40 hour, “9-to-5” has been the norm. Why? Is it necessary? Can we be as or more efficient with less time working? What industries benefit from employees working 40 hours a week?
Many American salaried employees are probably working 10+ hours a day, not 8. I imagine that we definitely could be much more efficient with out time, and I imagine that most people working from home are able to get more work done in less time with fewer meetings and fewer distractions and interruptions. Don’t most Scandinavian counties work <40 hours a week?
I think about this sometimes. There are weeks where I can get all my work done in 30 hours. Because I have to log my time (it’s based on what projects I’m working on), I sometimes have to add hours to one code or another to get to 40 because the system won’t accept my time sheet otherwise. I am salaried, but that doesn’t matter.
There are also weeks though where I need to work 50 hours to get everything done.
In some industries, there kind of needs to be a set standard because it’s about staffing for the hours a business is open, like a restaurant or store.
I think there are plenty of industries that could cut back or change how they do business, but, like anything else, that can’t be universally applied. More than anything, I wish companies would be flexible about how people schedule their time. At my last company, I essentially worked four 10s and had Friday off. I miss that. It was so, so nice and made my weekends much more relaxed because I could get stuff like laundry and grocery shopping done on Friday, instead of spending my weekend doing it.
Post by aprilsails on Jan 23, 2021 21:52:49 GMT -5
I’m in consulting engineering in Canada and my company has a base 37.5 hour work week. However, all staff is paid hourly based on billable hours (although you accrue vacation like you are a salaried employees). So say one week I work 30 hours because I want to or because I don’t have that much work. That’s fine. They don’t honestly care down to 26 hours. Now it is assumed most people would use vacation or banked time to cover the gaps, but there is always plenty of work so everyone can easily get to 40.
My company pays time and a half once you exceed 42 hours in a week. You can bank the time for future or to add to vacation or get it paid out. Due to project workload I’m currently doing about 48 hours per week right now but I’m working flat out.
I like that it gives us some flexibility. It also means that if I have to attend to personal business I don’t have to worry too much about making up the time, particularly when working from home. It is a lot of effort logging and assigning our time but I think that is standard for any company that works off of billable hours.
Post by arehopsveggies on Jan 23, 2021 22:03:28 GMT -5
My husband’s workplace is open usually around 35 hours a week (more like 30 with covid but hopefully will pick back up)
I like him only working 35 because he can have a less rushed morning at home before he leaves.
I keep reminding him that his “40 hours” is 30-35 but when I go back to work my “40 hours” will be at least 50 and that we will have to really alter the balance of household chores.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately in terms of teaching. The pandemic has only underlined how much of schooling is providing child care. There is NO need for students, at least high school students, to have as much seat time as they are required to have to meet standards. Other countries seem to have figured it out (eta: I know that is because of a lot of other factors). Additionally, if they head to college, they will be in class what, 12-18 hours per week? To do more challenging work? Then to go to work for 40-50 hours per week after graduation? Something isn't right here.
I wonder how much of the long work week, low minimum wage, out of whack work-life balance is uniquely American.
36 hour weeks (3-12s) are common in healthcare (at least for nurses and techs, obviously this can vary widely). This is a 0.9 FTE. We get a lot of push-back from non-healthcare people because "it's only 3 days" but they don't understand it. You're worthless when you get home (if on a day shift) and no one is every staffed appropriately so it leads to a lot of texts and phone calls on off days.
My unit doesn't have anyone that works 40 hours, which would be 5-8s. It's possible to do that with a doctor's note but most people really don't like having to work 5 days after being used to the 3 days. For most people, the physical and emotional toll of the unit make it difficult to want to be there more than the required time.
Post by penguingrrl on Jan 23, 2021 23:01:42 GMT -5
It really is a weird standard. And no longer particularly relevant. Hs company considers lunch unpaid, so he has to work 9 hour days, not 8. My organization forgets we need lunch. We don’t have a break room, so we usually sit at our desks to eat, meaning we often eat while working. We are in 9-5 generally (unless we have an evening event).
The idea of a 40-hr work week is laughable to H and me given the disparity in pay vs how much we actually worked.
@@@teaching mentioned
I taught for 10 years. I averaged 9+ hour days plus time on the weekends, around 50-60 hours total for the week. H, who makes much more in software sales than I did as a teacher, averages 4-6 hour days when he works from home. Sure, there are days when he’s going from 8-6, or pre-Covid had travel, but he always remarked how teachers work way too much for what they are paid.
Many American salaried employees are probably working 10+ hours a day, not 8. I imagine that we definitely could be much more efficient with out time, and I imagine that most people working from home are able to get more work done in less time with fewer meetings and fewer distractions and interruptions. Don’t most Scandinavian counties work <40 hours a week?
I typically worked 9 hours per day in the office, typically eating lunch at my desk.
With WFH, I could get it done in 5 or 6 hours. Meetings are less likely to run over because there is no small talk. There is no catching someone in the hallway and having a conversation. On the one hand this is great for efficiency, but I definitely feel more disconnected from the overall company. We are also doing pretty heavy layoffs so morale would be low back in the office anyway. Friends in other industries are saying the same thing on hours (can do less now for similar productivity) but they aren't reporting the same detachment.
ETA: Colleagues in Europe have typically worked 35 hours/week, with around 8 weeks vacation, and I never remember they work less based on their output. They are paid significantly less, although in line with local salaries for the same jobs.
I face a version of this. I see patients about 2 days/week. I spend the other 3 days at home doing admin stuff and fielding phone calls from the office about patients. Yet somehow I'm "part-time" in the eyes of mostly male colleagues because I am not treating patients 5 days/week. Well I could spread out the patients over 5 days, but why? I'd have to commute more and increase my stress for the same amount of work. It's more efficient from a staffing purpose to book everyone's routine appointments into the fewest days necessary (besides emergencies, we are open every day for those). One of the benefits of this is my full time employees have flexibility on the days we don't see patients to schedule their doctor's visits and other appointments. I define full-time as 30 hours/week. If you are hired to be full time, you are allowed to work upto 40 hours per week, but currently none of my full timers do that. I only had 1 person at one point working to make sure she got in every minute of the 40 but @@@@@@ once she had a kid, she works less than 40 now.
my dh has a 37.5 hour work week(IT for banking). My sister had a 50 mandatory work week in the hotel industry (revenue mgmt). She was laid off due to Covid but I keep telling her it was bs to have to be "on the clock" and not get compensated for it. She fooled around during the day a lot since she didn't always have 50 hours of work to do. Also only a 30 minute lunch break in a 10 hour day.
Is 40 hours truly the standard? I feel like especially with Covid work has creeped into too many people's personal lives. I don't ever see people working *less* than that being accepted.
DH has always been a bit of a workaholic and works more than he probably has to but he has been working 6 days a week since December 1st. Of course he is only paid for 40 hours a week but he works more like 60. It's super annoying and not necessary.
When I worked retail management we had some weeks where there wasn't much going on and could have easily worked less than 40 hours. If our time clock showed even half an hour less than 40 hours though we would get in trouble. On the other hand there were many many weeks that I worked way more than 40 hours. Corporate didn't care about that.
Yes out of whack of priorates are just another area where we have a long way to go.
I’m a CPA who started in public so 40 hours per week sounds luxurious to me. Our rule was “you can work as many hours as you want as long as it’s more than 40”. Most of us averaged 50–60 a week.
Now that I’m on the private side I probably average 40-50. My work is cyclical so sometimes I need to put in more time than others. I absolutely don’t expect my staff to have their ass in a chair just to watch the clock run, but if we’re busy I expect them to stay until it gets done.
I don’t know what the solution is. I feel the work assigned to me and the work I assign to my staff is reasonable. If it takes them 70 hours one week to get it done I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s an issue if that happens every week. And if they don’t communicate the situation to me.
Really it's a 9 hour day with lunch unpaid. Are there people that have 8 hour days including lunch? I always see that in sitcoms, but have never heard of it.
I work for the government, so I've always worked exactly 8 hours plus lunch. Even with managers that are slightly more flexible, your work week must be 40 hours, but some days can be shorter/ longer.
Now that we are working from home, I get so much more done in a shorter amount of time. Like 4 hour days. Half my day at work is usually people asking me questions/ useless meetings, so it makes sense that I only really need half a day.
Really it's a 9 hour day with lunch unpaid. Are there people that have 8 hour days including lunch? I always see that in sitcoms, but have never heard of it.
I work for the government, so I've always worked exactly 8 hours plus lunch. Even with managers that are slightly more flexible, your work week must be 40 hours, but some days can be shorter/ longer.
Now that we are working from home, I get so much more done in a shorter amount of time. Like 4 hour days. Half my day at work is usually people asking me questions/ useless meetings, so it makes sense that I only really need half a day.
I’m in healthcare and for our hourly staff, yes it’s an 8 hour day. We’re open from 9-5 and the hourly staff clock out for 1 hour for lunch. So they’re supposed to get paid for 7 hours of work and then the 1 hour of lunch is unpaid. I mean sometimes patient care does run a little over for the hourly staff, but we do try to make the last appointment of the day no later than 4:15 so they can get out of there on time.
As salary staff, I often take meetings during lunch and I call patients outside of that 8 hour window, and sometimes am finishing charts. But overall for a job in healthcare the hours are reasonable and much better than residency lol.
At my 2 other per diem jobs, we just have to stay until we finish with patient cases. Last weekend I was there from 9-7.
Post by Jalapeñomel on Jan 24, 2021 9:22:40 GMT -5
I think the younger generation has pushed back a bit on the 40+ and/or overtime without pay hours.
My mom has complained in the past that her younger employees leave at 5 pm every day if their work is done or not. I’ve heard others in her field complain about the same issues (she was a government contractor).
My H is an accounting manager. His busy weeks he easily works 10 hours/day. His not busy weeks, around 7 hours/day. He's salaried so as long as his work is done on time his boss doesn't care how many hours he actually works.
When I was a preschool teacher I worked 32 hours/week. It was great. I loved it! Plenty of time to get errands done and fit in dr appts.
I like the saying "work to live not live to work". So 40 hours/week is enough. And people should be compensated for their overtime hours. Period.
I feel like these days “only” working 40 hours per week is a luxury. One of the reasons I work where I do is that except for very busy times I only have to work 8.15-5 (but often people don’t arrive at 815. We are salaried)
I have heard horror stories about people in my job (software developer) working 10-12 hours a day as standard. I could get more money elsewhere I am guessing but at what cost? I don’t want to work 60 hours a week.
I do think it’s a quite American thing, or at least in my home country (Ireland) if I were job seeking one of my first questions in the initial call wouldn’t be “what are the actual hours”. When I was job hunting two years ago I asked that question on a number of initial screening calls and declined to proceed when they admitted the hours can be quite long.
I feel like 40 hours is fair especially if the pay is decent. A long commute does make it a bit more difficult though, I used to commute an hour and then I’m really gone for almost 11 hours which isn’t “work” time on the clock but it’s still a lot of your day gone.
I think the younger generation has pushed back a bit on the 40+ and/or overtime without pay hours.
My mom has complained in the passed that her younger employees leave at 5 pm every day if their work is done or not. I’ve heard others in her field complain about the same issues (she was a government contractor).
My philosophy is that the work will be there in the morning and even if I stay late, there's no way I'll get it all done. Obviously this varies with field.
In my last job, I worked a lot with Asia and was expected to be in the office every day from 7 to 3:30. I also was leading meetings from 7-10 several nights each week and constantly answering emails in the evenings/early mornings. Working that job was a non-stop treadmill and NOT normal at all. Once I quit it took me several weeks to figure out what to do with myself in the evenings.
Post by breezy8407 on Jan 24, 2021 10:01:22 GMT -5
I read a book years ago called "I Know How She Does It" and the author talked about how sometimes our perception of how we spend our time is different than reality. She had people record what they did down to something like 15 minute increments for a week. When people paid attention to if they were actually working (And this was mostly salaried desk jobs) they weren't working 10-12 hours a day like they perceived. Pre-covid in the office there was a lot of wasted time with things like talking to coworkers, hanging out in the break room, etc. But, I often did (and still do) end up working a few hours in the evenings. Now working at home, my day is long but its broken up my distractions so if I had to clock in/out I am not sure it would be more than 9 hours. I am in the camp of as long as the work is getting done, I don't really care if someone has their butt in a desk for 8 hours a day.
@@@ Another point of the book was recognizing that working mothers spend more time with their kids than they think despite feeling guilty, and to value the mundane like mornings before work and school.
I think the younger generation has pushed back a bit on the 40+ and/or overtime without pay hours.
My mom has complained in the passed that her younger employees leave at 5 pm every day if their work is done or not. I’ve heard others in her field complain about the same issues (she was a government contractor).
I can understand wanting people to stay late if there is an end-of-day deadline. I can’t imagine leaving work if I owed a product to somebody and it wasn’t complete, but otherwise I’m going home and I’ll finish it the next day. If people routinely have more work than they can complete on time, or if the deadlines need to be reworked, then they need to talk to their supervisor about it, and either need to prioritize and potentially offload tasks, or get some tips on time management.
I work in tech but at a company that actually values people and recognizes that we have lives. Also I have been working remotely for three years. I routinely work 6-7 hour days, with occasional longer days. I find that 4-5 hours of focused work is about all my brain can handle, meetings take up the rest or taking breaks for tea, snacks, etc. Attempting to work longer doesn't usually mean I get more done, or it only works for a couple of days. No one at my company has ever given me crap for not working enough or not getting my work done. It makes me sad how many companies value facetime over actual productivity or who simply give their employees unsustainable workloads.
Really it's a 9 hour day with lunch unpaid. Are there people that have 8 hour days including lunch? I always see that in sitcoms, but have never heard of it.
I work for the government, so I've always worked exactly 8 hours plus lunch. Even with managers that are slightly more flexible, your work week must be 40 hours, but some days can be shorter/ longer.
Now that we are working from home, I get so much more done in a shorter amount of time. Like 4 hour days. Half my day at work is usually people asking me questions/ useless meetings, so it makes sense that I only really need half a day.
I work in luxury retail but I'm in the back. I'm a shipping and repair manager. I work 9:15-5:15 M-F with a half hour paid lunch. Sales people work Saturdays but the same schedule. Now, if a customer is there late we stay until they leave, but that's rare. My work could be done in probably half that time, though.
Post by RitzyHeifer on Jan 24, 2021 11:21:40 GMT -5
This is funny because I just saw someone post this on Facebook something along the lines of “the idea of the 40 hour workweek is outdated and came about assuming someone else would be taking care of cooking, cleaning and household errands. It wasn’t designed for you so if you’re struggling, you aren’t a failure”
I didn’t recognize the source and it definitely had a bit of a #bossbabe vibe but I thought it might be a valid point and has had me mulling the 40-hour standard the past few days.
Post by lilypad1126 on Jan 24, 2021 11:54:04 GMT -5
My job is 37.5 hours/week. Most days it does not take me a full day to complete all my tasks. Others are a full out sprint all day. But part of my job is customer facing, even if that means just being available from 8:30-5 just in case someone calls. In the before times, when we could travel, my hours were all over the place due to the travel. But when we aren't traveling, we are expected to be in the office/butts in seats for the whole 8:30-5pm day.
Even with that, there's a lot of "well, if *I* have to be in the office all day, *everyone* should have to be here" even if it's a day that you don't have anything going on. I'm hoping that the WFH due to pandemic has taught us some lessons, that will allow even some minor flexibility with WFH. I am just as (or more) responsive via my cell phone and zoom from home than I am some days in the office. And I don't mind working evening/odd hours (it's literally my job to do so) but I mind it a lot less when I'm not forced to be in the office for a whole day first.
Post by pinkdutchtulips on Jan 24, 2021 12:07:10 GMT -5
I have a 37.5 work week in a law firm. Most weeks I’m able to get everything done in that time frame and it’s a healthy work/life balance. A few times a year though I’m working 10d straight through 10-12h during the week plus time on the weekends bc of trial. Thankfully, it’s all paid overtime.
This is funny because I just saw someone post this on Facebook something along the lines of “the idea of the 40 hour workweek is outdated and came about assuming someone else would be taking care of cooking, cleaning and household errands. It wasn’t designed for you so if you’re struggling, you aren’t a failure”
I didn’t recognize the source and it definitely had a bit of a #bossbabe vibe but I thought it might be a valid point and has had me mulling the 40-hour standard the past few days.
I think that's a good point, but also one that is talking about a specific experience. It seems to me that the working poor have long had to deal with long hours and no household help (because everyone in the house works in some capacity). It's the middle/upper classes that had been used to a stay at home wife (who may or may hot have hired additional help). But now we have a large number of middle class households with two working partners, and pretending like that can be the same as having one working outside the home with the other working in the home is ridiculous and yet also what society seems to expect.