I would also like to try a 4-day workweek.
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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Knowing Japan, it’ll formally be 4 10-hour days rather than 4 8-hour days. Though in a culture where it is considered unacceptable to leave before your boss does, whether that’ll translate into people spending an extra 2 hours in the office is uncertain.
Japan works less than the usa.
Yeah - it wouldn't be surprising if in a lot of settings for the 4 days to have crazy hours from what is published about the work culture.
Hopefully that doesn't turn to 4 days with 24 hours each.
That's a dramatic change. Don't they have 6 day workweeks? Or was I told the wrong info?
Not only do they work Saturdays, in a lot of companies they work Saturdays for free.
Wtf
IIRC, 5 days is the legal limit, but there’s a culture of unpaid overtime.
Yo, fer real.
It's max 40 hours a week before it goes into overtime, but lots of companies do expect unpaid overtime.
The nice thing is that once you're a salaried employee it's almost impossible to fire you without extensive work on the company's side. People only do the unpaid overtime if they want to advance in the company. If you're in a comfortable spot you can just not do it.
Isn't there this whole culture where it the boss doesn't leave, neither do you? Even if you just sleep at your desk?
This exists but not to the extent it did in the 80s, and expectations aren't forced and are usually just part of the company advancement culture. "Expected overtime" is listed as part of the job description and the expectation that you stay longer than your boss doesn't exist much anymore. Also if you don't follow that culture, they can't fire you without showing that they don't have the budget to keep you on and they've tried every possible other avenue of remediation. At-will employment laws are nonexistent here.
Instead of fire you they usually put you in a room by yourself to just sit there for 8 hours a day. You still collect a paycheck.
Most young people with cell phones have figured out that this is awesome and have started "quiet quitting" by just doing the actual requirements for the job and going home or doing education on their own time.
However if you like your career and want to advance in your field you're still fucked and you're gonna be working a shitload of overtime
I mean no. Labor law in Japan in general is much like the West, only their culture basically forbids them from using it so they end up with the shitfest they have over there.
Work 4days then fuck for 3 days straight to see if we can make more workers.
Where do I sign?
Government: Have you tried having sex instead?
Hard working? Depends who you talk about, laborers like factory and construction workers sure and those kind of workers actually work pretty normal hours. But the stereo typical salaryman, who we all think of when we imagine an overworked Japanese worker, they don’t work hard. Japanese office workers are the most inefficient workers you will meet. Yes they work long hours but they need those to actually get shit done. Most of their day is wasted on socializing and performative work like wasteful meetings and basically just pretending to look busy.
They're also burnt out just getting to and from work/home.
Some sleep at their office to avoid commuting. While others will rent wall-coffins.
Imagine the efficency increase by removing all thay extra meeting and social bs. I wonder where else this was done...o yeah work from home.
It's completely optional for companies. If the government were serious, they would make it the law, not just a suggestion. They'd blast their entire population with a marketing campaign to make working 4-days a week cool or "kawaai". "work 4-days to get paid the same salary!", "be a good citizen and stay healthy", "help your family in need, say no to overtime!", "take care of yourself, say no to overtime!", etc.
They'd have a national hotline for workers to report their company for forcing overtime and create an investigative strike-force to show up unannounced at reported work places, then they'd take some kind of significant action e.g first a warning and mandatory training (paid for by the company), then another warning with mandatory training and a fine in the form of money disbursed to non-management staff, and finally a fine to the government, money disbursed to non-management staff, and a permanent presence of a government employee to monitor infractions.
Introduce something like that and I bet you in less than 5 years the attitude towards 4-day work week will change.