Because capital has realized that as long as there are bread and circuses to distract people along with convenient targets for the less well-off to blame for their misfortune (immigrants, trans folks) they can continue to vacuum up all of the wealth and power for themselves without lifting a finger to improve the lives of those whose labor makes it all possible.
Because nobody's TODO list is empty. Just because you can "accomplish" tasks in less time does not mean that the next task doesn't need to be started until next week. It just means you can close your tickets faster, not that there's nothing left to do.
Because the enterprise is not owned or controlled by you, and you don't get to set the rules. If you can negotiate better conditions, and nobody else on the market can undercut you, then you can have them. This isn't even an abstract consequence of capitalism, it is an axiomatic, defining feature. If you don't like it, you are rejecting capitalism.
AI has nothing to do with this. Worker productivity has already been shooting up and workers have been given nothing to match their efforts. As long as capitalism is the default economic system, any pro-worker change will have to be taken. Most corporations can't even allow workers to toil anywhere but under their direct supervision. Giving people more free time is clearly out of the question.
The workweek does shorten, in those quiet moments when workers are not doing much of anything. Lord knows that software engineers, who already spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing, are now doing even less thanks to improvements in AI automation. I’d bet that software engineers are down to about 3 day work weeks when you sum up all the time they spend actually doing something. It doesn’t feel like it for some people though because they are imprisoned in offices, where they are restricted from doing anything with their time that isn’t work. It is a cruel condition that leads to burnout and long term loss in productivity. It only gets worse as even more efficiency in automation results in having to perform even more office theatre to fill the down time.
My advice to would-be CEOs and managers is to just let people be, don’t try to squeeze blood from a stone. It’s good to have some slack in the workline for when you need it, because the workers who have been treated well are far more likely to jump into an emergency and dump massive loads of work all at once, since they have a lot in reserves. Those emergencies are moments that make or break companies.
You do understand that asking to work 32 hours rather than 40 is exactly the same thing as asking a 25% raise right?
I'm not against workers asking for more money in the slightest, they don't do that nearly as often as they should, but this sounds a bit like "big brain idea: give me more money lol".
Because employees compete to sell more or less of their time for more or less money, and it’s generally an over-served market where they have little pricing power.
As a business owner I’m using AI to hire fewer people for less time, massively reducing HR headaches. It’s great!
"This question is increasingly central to debates about the future of work" Nope. The only question my company is asking is how to get more efficiencies from AI so that they don't have to hire so many people.
32-hour workweek still is too much. For six-hour workdays would be a reasonable change. Specifically for the United States - also a mandatory 20-workday vacation (I live in the EU, heard Americans only have 2 weeks an that sounds nightmarish).
People need to have lives, not just jobs+recovery. Working for 5 consecutive days feels like living in the office and only coming home to sleep and do home chores - this doesn't even justify commuting.
Competition drives ever increasing growth. China uses the same AI and they aren’t decreasing their work weeks. Are you going to let China steam roll America like it already has in almost every major industry?
It would lead to people having more free time, which leads to self-determination and independence from corporate power structures, which empowers the middle class, which the owners and controllers of global financialized capital do not want.
Your job will continue to be at least 40 hours, the base pay adjusted for inflation will decrease, the "benefits" that are too complicated to understand and extract yourself from will increase, and you definitely will come back into the office one day. =)
Because for capital, shortening the work week is leaving money on the table! Leisure time for the masses does have technological requirements, but actually increasing it across the society is more of a problem of power and politics than of technology. It's been this way for a long, long time.
It was like this when we won the 8-hour day norm that we have now! The 8-hour day may have been enabled by technology in some sense, but it was won with a fight.
"If tractors and fertilizers lets us grow more food with less time - why not shorten the workweek?"
For instance the amount of people employed in agriculture in France dropped from 60% in the 1800s to 3% today, a 95% reduction. Assuming everyone worked 40 hour weeks back in 1800s, that means everyone should only have to work 2 hours a week today, right?
You also have to factor in the jobs that transport the food, parts of the jobs that make the roads/railways/airplanes (not all places are self-sustained food-wise, so this isn’t just about getting bananas from the tropics), jobs involved in refining food, and more.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 64.7 ms ] threadNo, they won't. They'll just spend more time on their phones watching cat videos.
There is no business in the world, except those already financially unhealthy, that would choose no-growth + reduced cost over growth + same cost.
It just goes against every business ethos except Arizona Iced Tea.
Work expands to fill available hours. We don’t get more leisure time. That’s not ‘allowed’.
AI has nothing to do with this. Worker productivity has already been shooting up and workers have been given nothing to match their efforts. As long as capitalism is the default economic system, any pro-worker change will have to be taken. Most corporations can't even allow workers to toil anywhere but under their direct supervision. Giving people more free time is clearly out of the question.
My advice to would-be CEOs and managers is to just let people be, don’t try to squeeze blood from a stone. It’s good to have some slack in the workline for when you need it, because the workers who have been treated well are far more likely to jump into an emergency and dump massive loads of work all at once, since they have a lot in reserves. Those emergencies are moments that make or break companies.
I'm not against workers asking for more money in the slightest, they don't do that nearly as often as they should, but this sounds a bit like "big brain idea: give me more money lol".
As a business owner I’m using AI to hire fewer people for less time, massively reducing HR headaches. It’s great!
You can just do things!
People need to have lives, not just jobs+recovery. Working for 5 consecutive days feels like living in the office and only coming home to sleep and do home chores - this doesn't even justify commuting.
We have continuously been able to do more in less time because of new technology for 250 years, since the Industrial Revolution since.
The increased productivity has benefited workers either by higher wages or shorter hours. Mostly the former.
I'm sure this trend will continue.
Your job will continue to be at least 40 hours, the base pay adjusted for inflation will decrease, the "benefits" that are too complicated to understand and extract yourself from will increase, and you definitely will come back into the office one day. =)
And they'll exhaust humanity, destroy ecosystems, and kill all the flora and fauna to achieve this.
It was like this when we won the 8-hour day norm that we have now! The 8-hour day may have been enabled by technology in some sense, but it was won with a fight.
For instance the amount of people employed in agriculture in France dropped from 60% in the 1800s to 3% today, a 95% reduction. Assuming everyone worked 40 hour weeks back in 1800s, that means everyone should only have to work 2 hours a week today, right?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-labor-force-...