Russian parliament to consider 4-day workweek — RT Russian politics

The Russian Lower House committee for labor plans to discuss the International Labor Organization’s suggestion to switch to a 4-day working week without cutting workers’ salaries, the head of the body has told the press.

Popular business daily Kommersant on Tuesday quoted MP Andrey Isayev (United Russia) as saying that this week the State Duma will hold a roundtable to discuss the suggestion of ILO team leader Jon Messenger who detailed the benefits of the shorter work week in an article posted on the group’s web-site.

He claimed that a 4-day workweek would make people healthier and happier, create more jobs and increase the productivity of a single worker. Messenger also wrote that shorter working hours would help fight environmental pollution.

Earlier this year the head of the Virgin Group Richard Branson, Google CEO Larry Page and other prominent businessmen also voiced their support of a shorter working week.

Commenting on the proposal, Isayev said it was possible that Russia would introduce a 36-hour work week instead of the current 40-hour as this would allow to better regulate the process and prevent employers from forcing staff to work longer hours after the number of workdays in a week is cut.

Complete story at - Russian parliament to consider 4-day workweek — RT Russian politics

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Alienation of Work

The emerging economy is opening up new ways to reconnect workers to their work and the profits from their work.

One of the most striking blind spots in our collective angst over the lack of jobs is our apparent disinterest in the nature of work and how work creates value. This disinterest is reflected in a number of conventional assumptions.

One is the constant shedding of tears over the loss of mind-numbing manufacturing jobs. I doubt a single one of the innumerable pundits decrying the loss of "good manufacturing jobs" spent even one shift in an actual assembly line. There is a reason Henry Ford had to pay the then-astronomical salary of $5 per day to his assembly-line workers: the work was so physically demanding and boring that workers quit after a single shift. The only incentive that would keep people doing such hellish work day in, day out, was a big paycheck.

Henry Ford's $5-a-Day Revolution

After the success of the moving assembly line, Henry Ford had another transformative idea: in January 1914, he startled the world by announcing that Ford Motor Company would pay $5 a day to its workers. The pay increase would also be accompanied by a shorter workday (from nine to eight hours). While this rate didn't automatically apply to every worker, it more than doubled the average autoworker's wage.

While Henry's primary objective was to reduce worker attrition--labor turnover from monotonous assembly line work was high--newspapers from all over the world reported the story as an extraordinary gesture of goodwill.

Complete story at - oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Alienation of Work