Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
Nah, workers who want to sit and do nothing are easy to replace, or face a major pay cut at the least. American workers are not as special as you want to think. Add value through your work and commitment, not by trying to have an easy life.
Too many Americans just want to be lazy and have it easy. It’s time for a reckoning.
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American productivity is pretty similar to other developed countries. The U.S. is literally smack dab in the middle of productivity when it comes to OECD-tracked nations.
Now, different countries have different work systems. In Germany the norm is to not put in a lot of hours at the office, but work very hard while you're there (and not take work home with you). In Japan the norm is to work long hours in order to impress the boss, but get very little done. But even these two startlingly different ways of doing office work lead to comparable productivity (in $$$ generated per hour) - and the bottom line is generally what's important for businesses.
In general, I would concur though that white-collar workers actually work much less than blue collar workers. There have actually been studies that suggest the eight-hour day does not work for office work - that a six hour day would be better. Essentially it has been found that on average, productivity in the office drops to zero after six hours, regardless of how much time people are at the "office" and how much overtime they do. While there are of course outliers, I don't think the average person is capable of dealing with constant heavy workloads of intellectually taxing work for the entire time they are in the office. Not to mention of course how much time is wasted on useless meetings in the average office environment.
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. Businesses can save money and increase worker happiness, which means productivity will also increase. Or "let the market decide", which is now dominated by those looking for work/looking for better benefits.
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