As part of his Labor Day message to workers in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday re-upped his call for the establishment of a 20% cut to the workweek with no loss in pay—an idea he said is “not radical” given the enormous productivity gains over recent decades that have resulted in massive profits for corporations but scraps for employees and the working class.
“It’s time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay,” Sanders wrote in a Guardian op-ed as he cited a 480% increase in worker productivity since the 40-hour workweek was first established in 1940.
“It’s time,” he continued, “that working families were able to take advantage of the increased productivity that new technologies provide so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, educational and cultural opportunities—and less stress.”
I’m a programmer, and it’s very different from hourly work. Realistically, any programmer is coding for like 1-2 hours a day. There are meetings so we understand the problem we have to solve, and a lot of time thinking through the problems and architecture solutions. We’re not sitting there typing for 8 hours a day, or at least those are the ones getting burned out. Realistically I’m working like 30 hours a week already, with only 10 hours being real coding, the rest being talking, researching, learning, and pondering. Maybe I’m lucky I work somewhere that that stuff isn’t seen as slacking.
Ugh. I once did some independent programming and the guy insisted I do it in front of him because it involved his proprietary data. So much griping about the time I spent looking at documentation or referring to coding assistance sites like Stack Overflow. I quit on day two.