I miss working 4-10’s ( 4-12’s if you included travel time) when I was working at the mines in Nevada.
It was a necessity as you wouldn’t get back from work till 5 and there was no getting out of work early to go to doctor appointments or the like.
What it does give is a break from the grind.. allows you to reset and spend more time with your family.
The mining companies did a lot of research and found that there was equal productivity among salaries employees weather they worked 5-8’s or 4-10’s…but employees working 4-10’s were more likely to not leave the company’s d better able to deal with work stress.

Nah good way to destroy the oil supply though and the medical field.

Without the high total hour work weeks oil field hands would have rather small checks that wouldn't reflect the risk they take to perform their craft.

A 40hr work week I'm not getting out of bed for

Yep. Physical and outside jobs you have to factor in fatigue.

I'd like to see a study on long hours, fatigue, and the increase in job related injuries.

Hell yeah.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Why are you spending Fridays catching up on what you couldn't get done M-Th?

@swingset

How are you measuring productivity?  If you're talking about some kind of actual metric, like widgets per hour, then sure, productivity goes up as hours go down.  In fact, if you reduced hours to 10 a week, I'm sure productivity would absolutely skyrocket.  And you'd have really happy workers.  Of course, shit wouldn't get done, hardly anyone would be making enough, but hey, those are just quibbles, right?

Back in the late 80's I worked for a huge conglomerate that was on the tail end of still being employee oriented. We had a 35 hour work week. In the summer, we worked extra time Monday thru Thursday and had a half-day on Friday's. Worked out very nice for us.

We were taken over by another company and first thing they did was get rid of most of the perks including the summer hours. That was pretty much the end of corporate America having any interest in the people who worked for them.

It's only a layup if you ignore that individual productivity per hour can be improved while throughput is reduced with the assumption that the lost throughput can be made up for with additional staffing.

Nobody said widgets per hour was the metric. Nice strawman though.

Given my field and seniority, I can normally make my own schedule at this point in my life.

I tend to gravitate toward four on - 3 off work week unless I get greedy or lazy

I doubt it.

I’ve been working four 10’s for years.   It’s a great schedule.

It sounds like management dangled a carrot in front service workers.  If you can produce the same or better results in a shorter work week, we will keep your pay the same and let you have extra time off.  If a person can do the same amount of work in 36 hours vs the 40+ they worked previously, the question should be what they were doing with that extra 4 hours.  I would guess workers looked at their day and trimmed out the waste.  I would also guess good leadership knew when to get out of the way and let good workers dictate what changes needed to be made.  I bet meetings became shorter, if not eliminated, and people were happy to eat lunch at their desk looking forward to their 3-day weekend.  It was a win-win for everybody, but the reality was there was fat to be trimmed.

The same thing occurs everyday in manufacturing plants around the world as companies try and increase productivity with the same amount of labor.  The breakdown occurs when bad management tries to squeeze beyond a reasonable amount which eventually creates a distrust.  That distrust leads to less productive employees.  The bigger the divide becomes, the worse off a facility is.  Personally, I have seen plants with bad management spiral to the point where it's easier for a corporation to move the product lines to plants with good leadership, than it is to try and repair that broken trust.  

I used to work for a company that produced copper & brass radiators.  There were four plants supplying the truck and off highway market.  One plant manager saw the writing on the wall and knew everything was going to aluminum sooner or later.  His focus was to have the best quality, and productivity metrics in the division.  He challenged the people in the plant and they rose to the occasion. He also fought for capital to improve the plant and was effective in implementing capital projects.  The other three plant managers kept cutting employees and pushing them to do more with less. One by one the other plants were shut down and product moved until one plant was left standing.  Then that plant slowly started to convert over to aluminum as new product lines were introduced.  The only reason that plant is still open is because of strong leadership that built a strong production team.

Theoretically, productivity can all be broken down into a math equation if you understand all the variables.  That math equation becomes more complex as you tie multiple people and departments to complete tasks.  A service/cubicle worker may be able to trim non-value added steps easily because they may have more control over what they do.  A production/shop worker may have a harder time when they are limited by the up and down stream processes.  The kicker at the end of the day is, that everybody has a pretty good idea what it takes for them to become more productive, it takes good leadership to gather those ideas and put them into effective productivity improvements.  Less hours for the same pay is a great motivator as long as both sides hold up their side of the deal.

Are you done strawmanning?

The point isn't to reduce hours to the point where productivity and output destroys the company, for fuck's sake, it's to reduce it to find a balance that's good for both worker and company. If you reduce hours slightly, and productivity (widgets per hour....pick your measurement, I don't care), but it remains the same or increases, that has tangible benefits for a company who benefits from widget production.

Obviously, this can be warped through any number of scenarios to show that it might carry unintended consequences, but we're talking about productivity in a general sense, and how your worker's health, happiness, satisfaction, etc. can be as good or better if you aren't working them to death.

No shitty sherlocky.

4 day is amazeballs. With 5 day, you work 5 days straight. Fuck that. With 4 day, you can work no more than 2 days straight if you're smart about it. You have Wed to run errands which frees up the weekend. Right now I'm enjoying an IPA with zfg. Not that I gaf normally, let's not go too far here.

I've done both and 4 10s is infinitely better, provided you don't work for a slave driver and get adequate breaks.  Three day weekends are great, one day for chores, one day for the great outdoors, and one day to loaf and relax before work.  

Obviously this can't work for all industry in all instances. There are always going to be those that cannot, or in your case, will not adapt to the idea that working for more $$ and less hours is better than working longer hours for less money.

Considering my current job is 7 days a week, no days off, 12 hour shifts, I'd love a 4 day work week

The last time I worked security I convinced my supervisor to let me work 16-16-8 starting Friday night. 40 hours a week, but I'd get off Monday morning and not have to do anything until Friday again.

It was awesome.

If your productivity remains constant with a reduction in working hours, then your workers were inefficient or you have too many.

5am-2pm is 10 hrs. How is surveying kicking you're ass; you're not putting out many watts over idle?

Or your management was incompetent.

It matters though, what the metric is?  It's easy to say working less while getting paid the same feels good man.  Don't need any science to back that up for me.

But you're a farmer right?  Do you quit picking up bales because as time goes by you start slowing down?  Or do you go until they're all off the field so they don't get rained on?  Does it matter if you're more productive or efficient but only complete a portion of the job?  

That's the problem.  I need a guy who's 75% productive for 40 hours a week, cause that gets 30 units completed.  A guy who works 32 hours a week at 90% productivity only gets 29.  29 doesn't count.

Everyone should just get coke and meth from their employers and never leave. Productivity would be off the charts. You could even give them a pickle, a carton of smokes, and some coffee to make it even more better.

Worked 4 10's for many years, it was great. Really sucked when it ended.

Farming is a terrible occupation to use as a metric for hours worked per week. Sometimes it's 105 hours, sometimes it's 25. There's a reason I didn't bring in my own experience to this thread. It has little to do with the general pattern of labor in America.

That's where I am with my current employer.

Retirement is still several years away, but cannot come soon enough.

there you go, USA Today reports it, so it must be true.  No pay cut, hours worked cut to 35-36, sounds like a good plan if you are not an employer

Settled science

Don't ask me, ask the surveyor.

Pro tip...5am-2pm is 9 hours.

This more than anything. I'll still take 4 8hr days. Fuck you and your 10hr days.

Fuck these companies and their 12hr days. Your throwing your life away for some rich asshole.

You forgot the hookers secretaries.

rmakak doesn't believe it, so it must not be true. Attacks reporting source rather than actual source. No looking at the litany of other similar studies, no critical thinking, no looking at what benefits might help an employer with happier equally or more productive employees.

so the new employees were lied to.

I bet management does this anyway when they quit:

I was gonna ask if this study was sponsored by The Coalition For a Four-Day Workweek

then they need strong managers who hold them accountable.

Employees only get away with what management lets them get away with.

4 10s, Tuesday to Friday is my favorite schedule.

I get that some phones need to be answered 5days x 8hours every week.

But  why do some here equate "hours in the office" with productivity or work ethic?

Supposing I have a 40-hour/week job, and I find a way to automate it to reduce it to 10 hours/week of work?    Am I lazy, or am I innovative and efficient?   Am I "getting over" on my boss/employer?  Am I "milking the clock?"

If I'm now twiddling my thumbs for 30 hours a week because I have nothing to do, am I somehow more heroic if I were to toss out the automation out and start expending 40 hours of effort per week again?  

Or, assuming management knows what I've done, is management really the bad guy because they don't find a way to utilize my newly-available 30 hours a week of potential productivity?

If I owned a business and doing so made me more money, kept my employers happier, and kept them around longer, I'd pass out the needles dressed like the keyboard player from Prince's band.

But, of course, none of those things are even remotely similar to having a life and being rested and spending time with family and doing things that bring you balance and contentment...or how such a condition might make you a better worker.

Your list are demonstrable negative health behaviors. Having a work life balance is a proven benefit to someone's health and their ability to produce.

So, yeah, not sure where you were going with that hyperbole....but it made a whooshing sound.

I worked 4/10s for five years, then switched companies and was on 5/8s for a few years before we switched to 4/10s. Never been better. Scheduling appointments is easier, less stressful as we don’t have to take a day out of the workweek. Long weekend means we can actually do meaningful things with our time without feeling rushed.

When it ended I would find a new job!

That's completely opposite of my experience.  When management threatened to go to 5x8's there was damn near a mutiny.    Time with family & kids is entirely situational.  I have easily 2 more hrs. with my kids every work day evening than my wife does who works 5x8's and commutes.  I work in a 24/7 environment so there are a variety of work groups on alternating schedules.  Some of my coworkers have Tues-Thurs as their off days and they stay home with their kids instead of having them in day care those days.  If the schedule sucks it's probably because your management makes it that way.

Ive been drinkimg

We're talking about human beings, not a printing press with a speed control.

People, across the spectrum, are only so able to maintain a level of concentration, decision making, physical output and motivation. Where that tipping point is gets to the heart of what I started this thread to illustrate, but it's pretty demonstrably and empirically true that people are able to be more productive in shorter bursts than during long slogs.

Is it wrong to want to find that magic number and maximize the benefit for everyone? Too Eurofaggy to talk about it?

Shitbags did away with our 9/80 schedule.

We haven’t noticed being able to go home any earlier. Management routinely schedules all-hands meetings at times where they know we should be on the way home.

Shit.
We have a ‘part time’ crew- scheduled for 4/8’s.
They usually work 4/10’s & get first crack at VLO time.

We track it but it's not conclusive of anything. The majority of our accidents/incidents occur before 6th hour(day) or 30th(week).

Fuck that commie shit.  Let them buy their own damn coke, meth, pickles, cigs, and coffee.  What am I running, a fucking soup kitchen?

If productivity is the same or better, why would another country then get the advantage?

USA Today reports it, so it must not be true.

I'm an employer, and if I could pay my guys the same hourly or even a little more to get the same amount of work done in 35 hours I would ABSOLUTELY do it. Why would I not?

Depends, what daily tasks are required for the job that are necessary and repetitive but add 0 to productivity?

Let’s say your workers spend 10 minutes a day doing an essential function that adds no productivity, like booting up their workstation and getting files from a secure location, or say getting out tools and putting them away and cleaning up at the end of each day.

If that worker does that 5 days a week there is 50 minutes a week of required tasks that do not add to their productivity.  Now extend the day to 10 hours but only have that task 4 times.  Now it’s saving 10 minutes every day that goes into the potential productivity column.

I suppose there is some job that the second you walk in the door you’re producing 100% but most require some kind of set up and take down.