Wharton takes up the shorter hours discussion. I'll paste the beginning. Full at:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/40-hours-defining-modern-work-week/ Jan 28, 2015 • North America Is the traditional 40-hour work week dead? Today’s nine-to-fiver can only look at all of the alternative proposals being bandied about and savor the possibilities: the four-day work week, the 30-hour work week, the 21-hour work week, and even the no-day work week. With the advent of telecommuting, flexible hours, globalization and answering emails after hours and on vacation, the American worker has entered the era of the fuzzy work-home divide. Billionaire Carlos Slim and Google co-founder Larry Page are among those questioning the usefulness of the 40-hour work week. Advocates for change say society is on the cusp of nearly utopian conditions — a better work-home balance, and greater productivity and efficiency. But are we? “The notion of work is changing. The boundaries are blurred,” says Janice R. Bellace, a Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor. “When is someone ‘at work’ or ‘not at work’ when we are tethered to work 24/7 by our smartphones? It took many decades for societies to agree to the norm that people should work a reasonable amount of time per day.” The eight-hour day, Bellace noted, is Convention No. 1 of the International Labour Organization. “The call for an eight-hour day was a rallying cry in Europe in the late 19th century,” she added. “We have moved into a post-industrial society, the Information Age. We don’t have norms yet. It remains to be seen how long it will take for these norms to emerge.” But norms for whom? While white-collar workers may see new options emerging for how to structure work life, others may be fated to remain on one side of yet another manifestation of widening inequality. That is why some are calling for a universal reduction in the number of hours worked. Anna Coote, head of social policy at the New Economics Foundation in London, argues in a forthcoming report that a 30-hour work week across all jobs and sectors would allow more family time and blunt the endless cycle of earning more to buy more, while redistributing employment more evenly among workers. “Time is a vital resource in the core economy, and some people have much more freely disposable time than others.” –Anna Coote “The logic of this proposal for a move toward shorter and more flexible hours of paid work extends well beyond the workplace,” says Coote. “Time is a vital resource in the core economy, and some people have much more freely disposable time than others. Reducing the standard working week could bring a range of social, environmental and economic benefits.” < snip > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
