Shrinkflation in the workforce
Are the working people now into quiet quitting?
I know that awhile back I talked about the concept of “shrinkflation” - a practice where the price of a product doesn’t change but the amount it buys is slightly less. One example: putting 7 ounces of chips in the size of bag that heretofore held 8 ounces.
Hold that thought for a moment while I hit you with this: for generations, American work routine has been the same: punch in at 8 in the morning, take an hour for lunch, then come back to work and go until 5:00 p.m. It’s a Monday-to-Friday, 40 hour a week job that most people do.
A proposal in the Maryland General Assembly, though, would set up a pilot program for state employees (and other private-sector employers who wished to participate with the sweetener of a tax break) to undergo workforce shrinkflation. This would reduce the workweek to 32 hours over four days - but keep pay the same. More pay for less work, who could object to that? Not employees, who the “4 Day Week Global” advocacy group pushing for this claim give support for the move from a vast 97% of their ranks, many of whom told the group they would never consider a shift back to a 5-day week.
Well, duh. As an April article about the experiment, which was done by a handful of U.S. and global companies last summer, claimed, “Most companies reduce the workweek to 32 hours over four days, rather than maintaining 40 hours within four days. The nonprofit calls this a 100-80-100 model: Workers receive 100% of their pay for 80% of the time and maintain 100% productivity.” They might for six months - maybe - but color me skeptical that you’ll get sustained productivity gains.
I’m in one of those professions which has played with the 5-day workweek for awhile. In my full-time working life of nearly three decades I have done the following:
8 a.m to 5 p.m. with an hour lunch, Monday through Friday. That’s still fairly prevalent in the industry.
7:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. with a 45-minute lunch and two 10-minute breaks, Monday to Thursday and 7:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. (same lunch and breaks) on alternate Fridays, with the other one off. (Except for clerical staff who had a “normal” schedule, we worked with a different half of the staff every Friday.) Honestly, I think the 10-minute breaks were for nicotine purposes since it was a no-smoking building. One expectation with this system: personal appointments were to be made on the Friday off.
8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with an hour lunch, Monday through Friday. Office was open 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., employees could choose early or later start/finish time - I chose later so this night owl could roll out of bed at 7:30.
7 a.m. to 5 p.m. with an hour lunch Monday through Thursday and 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Friday. (Culture shock! This was right after my 8:30 gig.)
Of course, this doesn’t count the various moonlighting side hustles I have done in that period which have seen me work evenings and weekends from time to time.
I suppose an enterprising person could take advantage of the shorter hours now being prescribed to pick up an outside job and give themselves a significant raise, but I suspect the vast majority of those who are all for this are contemplating the extra night at the bar and binging Netflix or playing Madden with their “extra” day while bringing home the same take-home pay. Thursday will become the new Friday.
Yet the people who are really productive and own businesses? They’re still working their 70-80 hour weeks and now will have to deal with either closing one day a week (meaning less revenue) or juggling staff to serve the public who still expects offices to follow a standard five-day workweek. And since it would be government offices taking the lead on this, it’s likely service will suffer. Perhaps it’s already difficult to talk to a real person on Friday when it comes to a state office, but this will get worse. Granted, in theory an office could assign its staffers a different day off, but given a choice the people will want the three-day weekend and not be stuck with a midweek day off. Think of how you feel waking up to go to work on Friday when Independence Day falls on a Thursday and you wanted to go to see the fireworks in person.
We have this buzzword these days: “work-life balance.” Yet the trend in this era is that of people holding down multiple jobs and side hustles to make a living, which compounds when there are working spouses involved. The era of my union card-holding job dad putting in his eight or nine hours every day and making a sufficient wage to own a house and a couple cars in the garage while my mom stayed home is long gone, replaced by a couple who has to have three jobs and maybe a side hustle or two and depend on school to be a babysitter for awhile until the kids can get to day care.
But I don’t think the same money for less work is quite the answer we’re looking for because someone still has to pay for it. It’s doubtful we’re going to expect the people who suddenly get a four-day week to be 25% more productive at their task while they’re at work to make up for the 25% raise they would get. This may be a “pilot program” to make it sound good to the legislators who are on the fence, but once put in place we all know government programs never die. Once they get it through they’ll just remove the sunset date in the next session.
Even as a “pilot program” I don’t expect the legislation to pass this year, but this is the kind of thing they’ll just keep reintroducing annually until the resistance breaks down. So consider yourself warned.