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.
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.
Japan works less than the usa.
Hopefully that doesn't turn to 4 days with 24 hours each.
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.
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.