With the advancements in communication technologies (video conferencing, cell phones, email, etc etc), we're at a point where we are tuned to be much more efficient in our jobs. I like Sweden's stance on this, rather than what seems to be happening in North America. Rather than tethering people to their jobs, they're pushing quality of life. Fact is - less time at work equates more time for the family and community.
Now that we have these tools (cell phones, video conferencing, emails etc), we can't !@#$ing escape work. Since the layoffs in Alberta really started to kick-off, a light day is 10 hours, a normal day is north of 11 and at the minimum once a week is a 12+ hour day. This doesn't even include emails that get sent back and forth after/before hours. With how our culture is, I even feel bad complaining about those type of hours because "people in other countries don't even have jobs".
Rock on Sweden, rock on.
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Originally Posted by Red Slinger
This might be okay for the typical office worker but a 6 hour work day would likely have negative repercusions for non-office type of work. I know when I worked at a jobsite I needed 8-10 hours every day, easily, to keep up with the workload. I imagine the same would apply at blue collar jobs like manufacturing. I suppose they could find a way to add an extra shift or something though.
The other problem, as someone above alluded to, is that wages would likely have to go down. So, you may have more time on your hands each day but you'd also have less money to use in your free time.
It'll be interesting to see what happens though. The Scandinavian countries always seem to be leading the world in these types of social experiments.
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I think this is just wrong. The truth of it is - just do the work tomorrow. Work your 6 hours, work them hard, and what you don't get done becomes part of tomorrow. It never ends. The work never ends, but your time is limited. If as a Nation, we understood this, the improvements that would ripple through society would boost quality of life incredibly. Nutrition would improve, divorce rate would decline, childhood education would improve because children would benefit from more time with their parents...it goes on and on.
Time is a much more valuable asset than money, although I don't disagree that we've been conditioned to think otherwise.