[PreludeSH]

Given that someone needs to work on all days to support activities, in different shifts etc, we need to have more employees for such positions. This applies to most fields. This leads to more cost and also if quality of living needs to be maintained, more salary. Even if we don't need higher quality cost remains.
If we are socialist, we can reduce salaries and give more employment

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

All in all working less for less money is a well established thing.

The reverse is not established, though. This whole debate wouldn't have happened if these leaders who advocated more work had come forward and guaranteed more money for those interested in working extra hours.

Originally Posted by PreludeSH

If we are socialist, we can reduce salaries and give more employment

The reduction has to come from the top.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by PreludeSH

If we are socialist, we can reduce salaries and give more employment

It has been done in numerous schemes around parts of the (western) world.
In times of high unemployment contracted hours were reduced so more people could work. It was often something like 2-4 hours per week. It did come with some reduction in pay quite often. But it meant people had an extra day of per month.

These sort of rules were typically agreed on the very large labour union agreements. It won't work well for small businesses of course. Anybody who works in the Netherlands might still have so called ATV days. Carry over from Sid scheme.

You might find yourself with a bit of gross salary reduction and 9 ATV days. Those ATV days were dealt with differently from regular holidays. You could not get them paid out, and they would have to be taken within a certain period or you would loose them. So they could not be accrued like regular holiday leave.

As a whole it was only partly effective I recall. But lots of folks got some extra time off by giving up a small part of their gross earnings.

At the same time we also had another scheme running, early retirement. Again same idea, get older folks to retire earlier than the mandatory 65 years and more young, unemployed, folks will get a job. So there were all kinds of fiscal and other mechanisms in place that would allow you to retire around 60-62 without hardly loosing anything on you pension.

This scheme was hugely successful, lots of people retried early!

Things have changed considerably of course. We currently live in a time of extreme low enemployant, there are actual considers le shortages of employees in almost all sectors and the retirement age has gone up to effectively 67 for folks my age. For younger folks it is unclear when they will retire. It is now coupled to life expectancy.


Jeroen