If Spain’s socialists have their way, from 3000 to 6000 Spaniards will soon be working 32 hours a week but getting paid for 40. There’s one catch: the tab for the 8 hours that they don’t work will be picked up by taxpayers.
“…the pilot program is intended to reduce employers’ risk by having the government make up the difference in salary when workers switch to a four-day schedule.”
“Switching to a 32-hour workweek would mean “putting mental health at the center of the political agenda,” Iñigo Errejón, a leader of Más País, wrote on Twitter over the weekend.” You may not feel so good when the federal government declares bankruptcy and/or boosts your taxes to the moon, but reality seems to be a dispensable concept to this bunch.
“The experiment is expected to cost about 50 million euros ($59.5 million) and last three years.” Any takers for prop bets on when this budget is exhausted?
Coming to a town near you!
Let’s see how long Germany goes along with funding another debtor EU nation’s slackers. Perhaps Spain can sell Germany some of their excess Solar power, eh?
I assume Spain is simply trying to squeeze out the last €€€€ possible before the the EU collapses. Thank you, BREXIT!
It’s called the Public Sector
It’s why I’m subtly coxing my boss everyday now into laying me off………….
A former acquaintance of mine, who turned into a hard-core communist, bragged about the benefits of socialism. “Look at Europe,” he proclaimed, citing its reduced work weeks, high wages, and long vacation periods. I was unemployed at the time, so his idea was that, if we all became good little commies, society’s cornucopia would deluge us with good fortune.
I was convinced that he had finally flipped his wig. I haven’t spoken with him in more than 35 years.
Ita funny, Im not happy if I work any less than 50 hours a week. If I take a week off, I get some sort of depression. I bet I am notnthe only one this way. Anyone else?
Not me, my current assignment since Nov 2020 has me on 95 – 100 hours a week (Out of country). Of course I’m 55 years old and have more than enough to retire at this point, well at least a Netflix retirement to be sure.
Trudeau can piss off, I’d love a lay-off, plus 25 year package from my International company, and then another year of EI beyond that. F*ck paying into this BS globalist system anymore than I need too………………..
Paul. I did that at freedom 57. Now 64, with no regrets, and no regerts tattoo. Not.
Ensconced in the lovely Okanagan, with no Netflix even, just a fine old Martin guitar, good wine, and my wife, who loves me ( most times). Simplify, as Thoreau opined.
Peace. Oh, and kill your TV. Dreck Flicks on all 57 channels.
I like books.
Books are good. When I do Facebook, it is when a book falls on my face while slumbering off to a good story.
Books!
The original “random access” device, the batteries don’t go flat just at the “good bit” and they are not normally prone to atmospheric interference of “cable outages”.
Watch out for creepy-crawlies that eat them, however. See also the “other” creepy-crawlies” who burn them.
@ Stevie,
Congrats to you and your wife, yes we’re ready as well, seriously see no point in paying into this corrupt system anymore when we already have enough to get by.
My job is based overseas and will be replaced by an American not a Canadian, less high income tax dollars into Canada to be sure, and I’ll collect EI for a year after my lay-off and severance runs out.
I’m currently on my 14 day home quarantine again, having been shuffled into a COVID prison hotel in Vancouver for 24hrs last week. Well actually I had a nice Hilton suite with a private walkout courtyard area, but that’s besides the point heh. My company had to pay for three nights although I was only there one night. Anyway sick of all the BS this country and it’s third world decline has become – not paying in anymore.
I worked really hard in my 20s and 30s but have dialed it way back in my 40s. Giving 50% of it to the government is bad enough but everything has a cost (even if it doesn’t have a price) and I realized at some point the marginal compensation benefit of the crazy work weeks was surpassed by having more time for my own health, family, friends and life in general.
Working hard is fantastic and smart and people should do it but, at least in my industry, there is a glorification of the 80-hour work week and being on call 24/7. What they don’t tell the young’uns is that 99% of those people have absolutely awful lives that end in craters.
This Spanish thing is insane but the continentals are right in general that the North Americans work way too hard.
You said it @ slaw!
36 years of “paying in” with BS hours and conditions to my health & lifestyle was a choice, but giving 50% of that away to commies is enough. It’s time they paid back a little of the loot they stole and wasted over the years.
“There’s one catch: the tab for the 8 hours that they don’t work will be picked up by
taxpayersthe workers.”Idiotas.
Dumb bastards!
No shit!
This from people who fought communists in a bloody three year long civil war, who fought mooslimbs for centuries, who at times held the largest colonial empire in the world. Depressing.
Poor Spain, if only they were as progressive as the Liberal party. They coulda had UBI.
Why do people who want more for less have power and influence in the western world?
Its illogical and perverse.
Because “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” ~ Benjamin Franklin.
Take away peoples’ liberty and they inevitably get eaten.
32 hours? Suckers.
In Ottawa, after a year of Wuhan flu hysteria, civil servants now feel put upon if they have to get up before noon or stay sober enough to do anything resembling work for more than a couple of hours a day—and they are still paid for 37.5 hours a week.
Re: “For years, advocates for a four-day workweek have argued that a compressed schedule could lead to more productivity and a better work-life balance ..”
Sorry, but a compressed schedule would have people working longer hours per day during the four day work week. This is a shortened schedule which, as has been noted above, will be paid by other taxpayers. I’m sure the Chinese will be impressed.
I worked at a smaller company, and during one economic downturn they tried running a 4 day work week (they didn’t want to have to lay anybody off).
Most guys were thrilled at the idea of always having a 3 day weekend. A number of them changed their tune when their paystubs came in 20% lighter.
Good news folks, the government has agreed to pay you for 8 hours of a 40 hour work week, and increase you taxes so that it will take 16 hours to earn enough money for the government to pay you for the 8 hours you don’t work, and in the interests of equality, that 8 hour payment will be limited to a fixed amount, no matter how much money you made in your job previously.
/coming to a SMRT country near you soon
Reminds me of the old concentration camp joke:
“Today, you will have a change of underwear”
(muted cheering ensues)
“Block “A”will change with Block “B”, Block “C” will change with Block “D”, und so weiter…”
P. J. O’Rourke was right when he decided that, ultimately, “Government” can DO NO GOOD”.
I think it was either in “Republican Reptile” or “Parliament of Whores”, both pretty good reads, speaking of books.
Great reads indeed, as are “All the Troubles in the World” and “Peace Kills”
How much higher will their productivity will be with a three, or two day “work” week? One day a week would be super productive?
Reminds me of the joke about the airline passenger remarking – upon hearing announcements that one, then two, then three engines were out, so they would be late one, two and three hours – that if another engine goes they’ll be up there all day.
There is no “government” to pay for any of this. As pointed out, that would be taxpayers, the ones working 5+ days a week.
I’m self-employed, so have no temptation to pad my hours, given it would do no good, be questioned and is unethical.
Yet I’m required to subsidize others’ sloth who would likely be just as lazy and unproductive with three or four day work weeks?
We are not part of government, it’s a part of us. Arguing otherwise would be like saying parents were part of their children.
Like guaranteed income, people pretend to earn and we pretend to compensate them, in reality all of us ending up unemployed.
We can always make our livings doing each other’s wash, mowing each other’s lawns and taking in each other’s children.
Watch for barter to take a big jump in the light of ever increasing taxes and the upcoming cashless society, ripe for picking.
This is glorious. Money can never, ever, run out as long as we have ink and printers (or their 21st century equivalents). LOL. Viva la revolution, comrade.
Workers of the world, relax!
Socialists go through the damnedest contortions to try to make money appear out of thin air, but like attempts to build a perpetual motion machine they always fail. You just can’t get more out of a system than you put in but than will never stop them from trying.
Yup. Folks who don’t know where value comes from, who think that labour is a benefit instead of a cost (why use one haul truck when you can hire 500 men with baskets at $.50/hour, go labor!), will never understand why central planning won’t work. See Allan S upstream “I’m adding value working over 50 hours a week! Who’s with me?”
Time with my kids is far more important than time at work. I want them to be humans, not programmed drones. Being efficient at my work means I can spend more time doing what’s important.
Más
PaísHamacaPeople fail to learn from history. This kind of thing was tried in 1973 by the Heath government to deal with Britain’s out of control inflation, soaring energy costs and being held to ransom by NUM (the national coalminers union). Britain’s GDP sank like a stone immediately. Heath’s failure was followed by Callahagn’s abject surrender to NUM and their extortionate demands. It only came to an end when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, and crushed NUM controlled by an outright Communist and Soviet agent Arthur Scargill.
I would not expect Spain’s experience to be any better than that of Heath and Callahagn.
I was part of a project in Spain in the early 90’s. It was an uphill battle to get 32 hours of work out of a Spaniard at that time. Looks to me like they are just legitimizing the status quo.
Taxpayers pay, the people who get the days pay will be paying for their own pay.
Don’t forget that the tax to pay yourself with your own money will be 100% of the amount the government says they need to pay you.
But, when they give your own money back to you for the day you didn’t work, it will be the same amount MINUS income tax…..