• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    All that would have to happen is the workers now average out to 4-day weeks, with a similar level of pay (which is what the 4-day week advocates are asking for).

    You’re forgetting that retail and most service workers aren’t salaried in the US. They’re paid hourly. And most are living paycheck to paycheck-or very close to it.

    In order for to not loose on pay, either the company has to increase their rates (lol. Not gonna happen,) or they have to work more hours across the four days to make up for the lost day.

    And many retail workers are already do 12’s and 16’s to eek out overtime.

    Edit: To put this another way, OT starts at 40 hrs. Most retail/service managers do everything they can to keep their employees at less than 40/week. OT is a very big sink, it’s cheaper to hire more employees than, if one can, than it is to pay staff OT.

    If you reduce the threshold to 32, that’s still going to be true- on the 5/2 week day-weekend rotation it only helps the weeked- moving hours to them. It doesn’t matter to managment whose working that shift- only that it gets worked.

    So, now, you’ve got an entire sector’s worth (and the largest economic sector at that) of people who are being shorted hours- and we all know that corpos are not going to be increasing wages to match: that would be a 25%increase in wages- and not just for the full time employee. Most large companies will dictate the wages for everyone at a given position.

    Alternatively, they can just pay time and a half for the last 8, which might be only a 10% loss.

    Regardless, retail/service sectors won’t really see any changes. This is probably true because many are working 20+ hours of overtime at low wages anyhow. Those companies have already decided paying adequate wages, and attracting employees is “too expensive”