Imagine I manage a business where my employees earn $1000 a week, working five 8-hour days. Suppose my profit margin per employee is 10%, resulting in a $1100 return for each one.
Now, if a new law mandates that I pay my employees $1000 for a 4-day workweek, my operation could start incurring losses. The question then arises: where would the necessary additional funds come from? Likely, I’d have to increase my prices. I’m open to considering this arrangement, but I seek clarity on the strategies to mitigate such financial gaps. Should a 4-day workweek lead to a 20% hike in prices, I’m uncertain about the benefits of this change…
I’m all for a more healthy work/life balances, but typically businesses don’t like to incur extra expenses, so I would predict if workers are present 20% less, businesses would charge 20% more to make up the gap, which means workers would end up needing to earn more money, which may lead them to work more hours, making this change pointless.
If this came with some consideration from the federal government, like “we will give a 20% tax break to businesses that do this” I would consider the idea funded and I think it may work. Otherwise, this just feels like voting our way into price increases.
Do you think your overhead would also decrease if you only had a 4-day work week?
Look at it this way. Let’s say I run a widget factory. I have a worker, Joe, that I pay $1000/week to. Each day, Joe creates me a widget that I can sell for $220. That means at the end of the week, I have 5 widgets I can sell for $1100, yielding me $100 profit.
Now, we move to a 4 day work week. I pay Joe $1000. He creates me 4 widgets, still worth $220 each. I sell them for $880 total. I now lose $120 each week.
Under the current plan, it seems the guidance is that Joe will magically start working faster and produce more than 1 widget per day. If he does not, my other option is to increase the price of widgets or to decrease the amount of money I pay Joe.
So you won’t be able to steal as much of the value Joe creates from him and instead have to pay him a fairer share? Oh darn. You mean you won’t be able to live in luxury while others do the work for you?
Fuck off lmao
My boss just told us all how this will “remove our lunch and break times and take away all holidays” trying to scare us. Leeches, all of them.
