South Korea U-Turns On 69-Hour Working Week After Youth Backlash (theguardian.com) 118
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: South Korea's government has been forced to rethink a planned rise in working hours after a backlash from younger people who said the move would destroy their work-life balance and put their health at risk. The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines. But protests from the country's millennials and generation z prompted the president, Yoon Suk-yeol, to order government agencies to reconsider the measure and "communicate better with the public, especially with generation z and millennials", his press secretary, Kim Eun-hye, said.
"The core of [Yoon's] labour market policy is to protect the rights and interests of underprivileged workers, such as the MZ generation, workers not in a union and those working in small and medium-sized businesses," Kim said, according to the Korea Herald. Yoon, a conservative who is seen as pro-business, had supported the raise to give employers greater flexibility. Union leaders, however, had said it would force people to work longer hours, in a country already known for its punishing workplace culture. The plan has also been criticised as out of step with other major economies, including Britain, where dozens of companies last year trialled a four-day week that campaigners said resulted in similar or better productivity and increased staff wellbeing. "South Koreans worked an average of 1,915 hours in 2021 -- that's 199 hours more than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development average, according to the most recent OECD employment outlook, and 566 hours more than workers in Germany," notes the report.
"The core of [Yoon's] labour market policy is to protect the rights and interests of underprivileged workers, such as the MZ generation, workers not in a union and those working in small and medium-sized businesses," Kim said, according to the Korea Herald. Yoon, a conservative who is seen as pro-business, had supported the raise to give employers greater flexibility. Union leaders, however, had said it would force people to work longer hours, in a country already known for its punishing workplace culture. The plan has also been criticised as out of step with other major economies, including Britain, where dozens of companies last year trialled a four-day week that campaigners said resulted in similar or better productivity and increased staff wellbeing. "South Koreans worked an average of 1,915 hours in 2021 -- that's 199 hours more than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development average, according to the most recent OECD employment outlook, and 566 hours more than workers in Germany," notes the report.
Damn right, fuck that! (Score:5, Insightful)
If any government pulls a move like this today we should all raise hell. The only reasons we're working more than 24hrs a week at all today are to support a bloated professional-managerial class and produce more passive income for the ownership class.
Re:Damn right, fuck that! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Damn right, fuck that! (Score:5, Insightful)
I tend to agree. With all the productivity gains we've had over the decades, a 40-hour working week is looking more ridiculous every day. Add to that the diminishing returns after a few consecutive working days, and the 40-hour work week becomes counterproductive.
Re: Damn right, fuck that! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Damn right, fuck that! (Score:5, Interesting)
Something's not right here. Not at all.
Since 1979, our productivity rose by 65%. The average work day barely changed in length, if anything, it got longer. Now, one could understand if our compensation went up by 65% as well, but it didn't. In 1979, you could sustain a family of 4 on a working paycheck. That hasn't been possible for at least a decade now. And don't gimme that everyone needs cellphones and computers today, we're talking about people who can barely make ends meet because inflation outpaced consistently at the very least since the 1970s.
The myth that wages drive inflation is that. A myth. Hell, wages don't even follow inflation.
Re: Damn right, fuck that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad but true.
In the 80s, my dad worked as a letter carrier, and my mom in retail, and they could afford to own a 2 bedroom house, have two cars and other life luxuries, while raising 2 kids, and putting us in activities, like soccer, scouts, hockey, etc.
When they bought their house they paid $40,000 and minimum wage was $3.70 an hour.
Today, their house is worth close to 10x what they paid for it, but minimum wage is only $13.70 per hour.
10x inflation
4x wage increase
In 2000, the cost of a pack of butter was $3.11 per 454g pack. Today it's 5.67. Eggs were $1.77 for a 12 pack, today they are over $3.80
In the last 20 Years, the cost of groceries has basically doubled, or more in every major category with meat being the most expensive increase
Life is unaffordable for a lot of people due to escalating costs
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Today, their house is worth close to 10x what they paid for it, but minimum wage is only $13.70 per hour.
10x inflation
4x wage increase
And there's been no change in their city at all right? I mean no growth what so ever? Same population?
Home value is largely driven by desire. The issue is not that housing is unaffordable, it's that we've designed our society to depend on living in increasingly unaffordable areas. Yeah my parents had a similar example to yours, but when they bought their house they lived in a small town. Now their house is in a city a short walk from the centre of a bustling business district that never existed, in a place
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> I'm sure you can still find a house for $160000. But you're going to have to live in the conditions that your parents did. I.e. move to a smaller city.
"11 Cities Where You Can Buy A Home For Under $150,000" - https://www.moneyunder30.com/1... [moneyunder30.com]
Seems reasonable. But then I checked the following. Taking inflation into account, home median prices are nearly double the cost of what they were in 1980.
"Historical US Home Prices: Monthly Median from 1953-2022" - https://dqydj.com/historical-h... [dqydj.com]
Eggs are a terrible metric - Avian flu (Score:2)
In 2000, the cost of a pack of butter was $3.11 per 454g pack. Today it's 5.67. Eggs were $1.77 for a 12 pack, today they are over $3.80
In the last 20 Years, the cost of groceries has basically doubled, or more in every major category with meat being the most expensive increase
Life is unaffordable for a lot of people due to escalating costs
Eggs skyrocketed due to Avian flu. They're about 3-5x the cost from a year ago. The prices will likely go down soon. Also, please don't forget your meat prices, especially beef, rose due to globalization. The Chinese and many others LOVE American beef and it's been quite profitable for American farmers and the meat industry. If the trade war continues, that will likely go down as well. Americans make great beef, but so do many other nations that can supply China.
Inflation is bad, but you're cherry-
Re: Eggs are a terrible metric - Avian flu (Score:2)
https://modernfarmer.com/2023/... [modernfarmer.com]
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Since 1979, our productivity rose by 65%. The average work day barely changed in length, if anything, it got longer. Now, one could understand if our compensation went up by 65% as well, but it didn't.
By the 70's & 80's the rest of the world had recovered from the world wars, and the upper class had more options than the US middle class to satisfy their labor needs. This ended the strong bargaining power US labor had in the 50's and 60's.
There was also diminishing returns on educating the populace any further. Much of the gains in productivity in the mid-20th century came from educating the work force. This made labor more valuable than they had been before. Arguably most of the gains in productivity
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That's not even remotely the case. The 80s were, though, the moment when the redistribution of money towards the top took off like mad. Up until the 80s, the average person could actually afford a fairly comfortable life and do what he needs to do in our economy: Consume. An average income was high enough to keep our service industry in employ. And inertia allowed that to continue well into the 90s, simply by virtue of credit.
When people started to default on their credit cards and couldn't consume anymore,
Fun fact (Score:5, Insightful)
And to your point productivity has been outpacing wages since the late 70s. This means categorically wages aren't driving inflation. We're making more stuff for the same or lower wages.
Inflation is when prices go up. People tend to think of it instead as "Inflation is when prices go up because X" and then replace "X" with whatever they're told to by Wall Street. But that "X" isn't actually part of the definition.
It was a brilliant slight of hand on Wall Street's part that they managed to get us to define inflation on it's cause in one breath, and then supply us with that definition. That way we never think of any other reasons for inflation besides wages, low unemployment and maybe Unions. We never consider monopolies & trusts and price gouging...
Re:Fun fact (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you mean "as if", inflation has NOTHING to do with wages. That higher wages would mean higher inflation is a myth perpetuated by a supply side that doesn't want to understand that the demand side is what keeps them in business. An increase in wages could drive an inflation if, and only if, demand already outstrips supply. Which it doesn't.
"But everyone wants everything, so demand always outstrips supply!", I can already hear the battle cry of those that don't understand economy and don't understand the difference between want and demand. Want is always present. I want a Ferrari. Or a house at the beach. Unless I also have the means to afford that, there is no demand. Demand requires both, the want to have something and the means to afford it. If either is lacking, there is no demand.
We currently have a surplus (and quite a considerable surplus) of supply. Especially in services, that one commodity that is so great, so awesome, because all it takes is workforce to supply it. Awesome commodity. Can be multiplied at will (almost, at least). Imagine an infinite demand for restaurant dining. Or haircuts. Could you supply that? You could, as long as there is workforce available. The problem is that the demand for services is also the first demand that vanishes if the means to afford it cease to exist.
Wages going up would not drive inflation. But it would drive employment up. Not only because more people would want that work because of the better pay, but also because people who have money can demand goods and services, and you need a workforce to provide that.
Re:Damn right, fuck that! (Score:5, Interesting)
The myth that wages drive inflation is that. A myth. Hell, wages don't even follow inflation.
It's worse than a myth; it's a lie. It's propaganda designed to discourage people from asking for higher wages, and to turn public opinion against organized labour.
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Something's not right here. Not at all.
I think it's called "wealth concentration".
Since 1979, our productivity rose by 65%. The average work day barely changed in length, if anything, it got longer. Now, one could understand if our compensation went up by 65% as well, but it didn't. In 1979, you could sustain a family of 4 on a working paycheck. That hasn't been possible for at least a decade now.
Indeed. It would be interesting to seriously look at all the factors and crunch all the relevant numbers. I'd be interested to see how closely that productivity increase, when added to the effective decrease in middle-class-and-lower net income, tracks with the increase in wealth of everybody at and above the one-percenter level.
And don't gimme that everyone needs cellphones and computers today, we're talking about people who can barely make ends meet because inflation outpaced consistently at the very least since the 1970s.
And inflation is even worse than we've been told, because of the way the government has gamed the CPI [youtube.com].
The myth that wages drive inflation is that. A myth. Hell, wages don't even follow inflation.
Yup. Corporatocracy and oligarchy w
Re: Damn right, fuck that! (Score:3)
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Some of that inflation is difficult to deal with though... for instance, everybody wants their sick child to get access to the best, most effective new treatments. But those are expensive. If you treat everybody with medicines and treatments from the 1970s, medicine would be fantastically cheaper.
Plus, I know you don't want it, but here it is: there are parts of the current lifestyle that are massively better than the 1970s. Food safety and availability of produce from all over the world being an example. A
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So we managed to improve and streamline the production of electronics, which are not only cheaper inflation-adjusted but which are actually cheaper (the first TV my dad bought cost like 500 bucks and was about as large as a flat-screen you get today for about 300) but not food? Please.
And when I look at cars, the price of a car went up about the same rate inflation did, but the safety went up from being basically death traps to being able to survive almost any crash as long as you don't get sandwiched in be
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I feel like you missed the main point, which was, "Be cautious when comparing." Now you want to delve. Okay, enjoy it, but I'm unwilling to defend an argument I didn't make,
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Meanwhile, the millionaires became billionaires, and companies are starting to hit trillion dollars. Aramco just posted the largest petrochemical company profit in history.
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Something's not right here. Not at all.
And it never will be, because the objective of the game is to concentrate all the wealth in the hands of that handful of people who rule the game (the famous 1%).
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Something's not right here. Not at all.
Since 1979, our productivity rose by 65%. The average work day barely changed in length, if anything, it got longer. Now, one could understand if our compensation went up by 65% as well, but it didn't. In 1979, you could sustain a family of 4 on a working paycheck.
Why does outright FALSE bullshit like this get upvotes? You're right in saying that the compensation hasn't gone up 65% since 1979. Only because it has gone up much MUCH MORE.
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Compensation went up about 18 percent [epi.org].
You're invited to present a rebuttal.
Nope. You are the one who is wrong. (Score:2)
In fact, wages went down, and kept going down for quite a while, only recently managing to creep back to 1974 level. [weforum.org]
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Is it possible that these productivity gains are diluted across the global population? Take farming in South Korea. They are super productive with self driving tractors, highly efficient irrigation, pest control, weather prediction, etc . But then there are millions of people in developing nations who are regrettably not able to be much more productive. Still sowing seed by hand, harvesting by hand. So is that 65% productivity really encapsulating both these extremes (hyper productive and low product
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My guess is that the US BLS [bls.gov] would concentrate on the productivity gain of the US. Also, the statistic explicitly excludes the farming sector, probably for exactly this reason.
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I don't really know if they choose that or if they just don't have the means to avoid it.
Besides, kids are only cheap if you don't give a fuck about them. Which... you basically admit.
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Fixed it for you.
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I respectfully disagree regarding money-printing (in all its forms) being the root cause of the growing disparity between productivity (company income per worker) and compensation (worker income).
Productivity has gone up because companies have relatively fewer workers due to international outsourcing.
Compensation has stayed relatively flat because the same offshoring disproportionately impacts lower paying jobs. That means workers (labor supply) are chasing a smaller number of on-shore jobs (labor demand).
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Show the oil company profits in the last year. Show the supermarket parent company profits in the last year.
Show your work. Then shut up. It's price gouging.
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If there is a labor shortage, you can either raise wages or close shop anyway. Fully independent of any inflation.
American don't have a 40 hour work week (Score:2)
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Before I was retired I think my working week (in Japan) was 38 hours. That was my official working time. However my only significant paid work since retiring involved lots of hidden working hours... The hourly rate looked impressive, but in reality it was probably worse than minimum wage. Two years of that was sufficient. I spent too long learning to work smarter, not longer.
However I was looking for Japan to see if there was any linkage to the Korean leader's current visit to Japan. One of the problems the
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But the deadlines, people! Won't somebody please think of the deadlines! Some middle manager's bonus could be at stake!
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If any government pulls a move like this today we should all raise hell.
TFS says it's a "cap" of 52 or 69. How many hours does a South Korean typically work?
I don't believe in the U.S. there is any kind of cap on the hours we can work, but 40 hours is considered full time.
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And before that, working 7 days a week possibly up to 12 hours a day was the norm, children included. And before that, it was fairly common for people to be enslaved. What's your point? How is it lazy to not want to have to spend 2 more days a week working for no reason other than to make people higher up the chain rich?
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40 is too much, it doesn't provide for a good work/life balance in almost all cases. If a household has 2 adults, both are working in most cases. Highly likely both are commuting and spending 10+ hours in the car simply driving to and from work each week. I'd buy 32 hours, 24, well that's gen lazy coming up in the world. Things have changed. The 40 hour week originally only had one parent working and the other at home, raising kids and tending to stuff around the house. Now few people have time for ho
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South Korea is going extinct (Score:3)
And its because of their work week. Sure business cant meet deadlines but when the market dies off without producing the next generation the profit margin drops to 0
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And without people having time and money to consume, that profit margin drops to 0 because producing doesn't make you rich. Selling does.
The ruling class doesn't really care (Score:1)
Put another way, did the King care if you bought his hamburgers and video games? Hell no, he was king. He needed soldiers, but with modern militaries you don't need nearly as many of those. Remember Bayonets & Horses?
The only real problem South Korea has is the lack of Nuclear weapons. Like any country without them they're prone to invasion.
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You can have kids under any circumstance, small homes, long hours, it all doesn't matter. Where there's a will there's a way. Where there's no will, there's no way. South Korea is near the end of the road, but most of the west is on the same road.
There is no easy solution. For liberal societies genetics will have to evolve and regain it's dominance over memetics, it will be extremely intellectually dysgenic unfortunately. China will likely be a bit more draconian in solving the problem.
Or maybe singularity
69!? (Score:5, Funny)
How were they to expect to 69 without turning around on that!?
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I see what you tried to do there.
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How were they to expect to 69 without turning around on that!?
Much less have a whole hour of it every workweek.
Re: 69!? (Score:1)
Q) What's a 6.9? A) A good time interrupted by a period.
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Q) What's a 68?
A) You do me and I'll owe you one...
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MMM, fresh blood! The annoying cup troll here should like that!
Can't meet deadines? (Score:5, Insightful)
The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines.
Let me translate:"Business groups complained that their unrealistic deadlines intended to make themselves richer are being sabotaged by laws that don't allow us to work them to death. Please fix that so our political donations do not need to be cut to keep profits where we want them."
But protests from the country's millennials and generation z prompted the president, Yoon Suk-yeol, to order government agencies to reconsider the measure and "communicate better with the public, especially with generation z and millennials", his press secretary, Kim Eun-hye, said.
Good for them.
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This is why slavery has been abolished. You have to buy, feed and shelter slaves. You're carrying that enterprise risk. By renting your slaves, you put that burden on your slave. The wage-slave gets sick or dies? Not your problem, master, just rent a new one and kick that one to the curb.
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You forgot: "We don't want to reduce our benefits having to hire more people when we can work-to-death the current ones. How much black money would that cost me?"
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They're already taking advantage of you and you keep saying (more or less) "Thank you sir, may I have another". WHAP!
Re:Can't meet deadines? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I wouldn't want my employer restricted a maximum number of hours. I want the business to succeed and if takes a 70 hour week once in a while, I'm in it to win it.
(Take advantage of me, of course, and I'll go find another company that I want to see succeed.)
Unless you have considerable equity in the business, you've been fooled. The only business worth working excessive hours in is one where you have ownership in or a charitable enterprise. Otherwise you're just willingly enriching someone else for no benefit to yourself. Whilst promotions and lil wage rises are nice, they're still pidginfeed, they can and will be taken away the moment the market hits adverse conditions.
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Thanks for that insight, CubicleZombie.
That's just silly (Score:2, Funny)
You're opinion of yourself is entirely too high. If you're such a bad ass why are you working for other companies (and paying them a huge cut of your incredibly valuable time)?
As the saying goes, if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?
Where do deadlines come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
'business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines'
Which being translated means: businesses are not planning their workloads properly and expect their workers to save the day. The answer, of course, lies in making work above 40 hours expensive for managers to expect; 40-50 hours at 150% of basic pay, 50-60 at 200% of basic pay etc. 60-70 at 300% of basic pay etc.
I used to work in the public sector in the UK in IT; despite our professional status, we still clocked in and out. Despite having been introduced as a means to control the workers, clocking in now became a means to ensure we got paid for what we did...
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Which being translated means: businesses are not planning their workloads properly and expect their workers to save the day.
Workload is based on demand. Demand is driven by pricing your product so low that you need one person to work the hours of two. Government regulation means that company B doesn't have to increase their working hours to compete on price with company A. Both companies are capped and the playing field is somewhat leveled.
Re:Where do deadlines come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Which being translated means: businesses are not planning their workloads properly
Some Korean sectors are trying to compete with China on price for similar work.
Parts of China treat their workers like shit and Korea demands higher quality culturally.
Managers are trying to do the near impossible - produce better products at an equivalent price in a freer society.
Only productivity can do that but they need to focus on output-per-hour, not hour-per-worker.
Increasing work to 69 hours won't fix it - better tools will.
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No amount of money can offset the damage done to the employee by working 60+ hours a week. It just needs to be banned, full stop, with very few exceptions like military personnel.
Have you noticed how the C level guys all have bonuses and big salaries to encourage them to be more productive? Instead of trying to force people to work 65 hours a week, why not offer them more money to be more productive in the standard sub-40 week?
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What that translated to, in my mind, is: "Our project managers are incompetent. But instead of holding management accountable for their screwup, firing the PMs, and hiring competent ones; we're going to try to cover up our own failures by abusing the rank and file." It's not unique to Korea, though this particular claim is uncommonly brazen. I've seen that attitude plenty of times right here in the US.
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'business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines'
Which being translated means: businesses are not planning their workloads properly and expect their workers to save the day.
So I've got to ask the free-market question. If this is so bad, why haven't workers quit and found new jobs? Is that the work conditions for literally every company in the country? Why hasn't some company popped up with competent planners who don't require 70-hour death marches?
My guess is it's cultural. I don't know much about Korean culture but I'm guessing there's stigma associated with quitting or telling your boss this plan is nuts and I'm not going to cooperate. You can try to use labor law to fix a
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"Why hasn't some company popped up with competent planners who don't require 70-hour death marches?"
That's why these businesses were going to the government: to prevent any competitors from offering a shorter work week.
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That's why these businesses were going to the government: to prevent any competitors from offering a shorter work week.
Were they? I didn't get the impression this was going to make working 69 hours per week mandatory or forbid paying someone over time at, say, 50 hours. It also doesn't explain why some company hasn't popped up with a recruiting pitch of "come work for us -- we plan competently and don't routinely have death marches!"
Deadlines... (Score:3)
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A poor performing person working 69 hours is still cheaper than two working 40. The industrialized nations are running out of workers because there literally aren't enough people. When you export to the whole world but only want to employ domestically, that can happen. It's the opposite of the problem of clothes being made cheaply overseas. Industrialized countries are currently overemployed and impoverished countries are underemployed.
There are no semiconductor plants in Africa. You could say that p
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A poor performing person working 69 hours is still cheaper than two working 40.
Perhaps you didn't get the gist of what I wrote above: Working too many hours slows workers down to the point where they spend more time dealing with mistakes & exhaustion to be particularly productive. In other words, as the number of hours increases there's a turning point at which overall productivity starts to go down. The recent pilot schemes with the 32 hour working week are an illustration of this turning point, i.e. workers produce the same or more value in 32 hours than they do in 40. At 69 hou
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I said it was cheaper. I didn't say it was equivalent.
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A poor performing person working 69 hours is still cheaper than two working 40.
Depends on the job. For some jobs (e.g. white collar work), I'm pretty sure productivity drops to near zero at around the 10 hours/day or 50-ish hours per week point. Some people can do it but few can sustain it for long.
If we're talking about working assembly plants, I don't know. Assembly mistakes can be terribly disruptive to a production line output. It doesn't take many errors before you're a net loss. You'd think anyone who had studied Japanese methods (and I'm thinking Toyota Kata here) would have me
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Indeed. At 52h/week they are already in an area where productivity per week is significantly lowered due to people being overworked. If they want to increase productivity per week, they need to _reduce_ the workweek to something like 30...35h, which is the known optimum. Of course the "look how many hours I work" virtue-signalling assholes are not on board with that, but they should be ignored because all they do is damage.
Longer work week is a paycut (Score:2)
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If you want people to work longer hours, offer to pay overtime and some will take you up on this. By mandating a longer work week legislators robbing workers of time to give it to businesses for free.
I'm quite sure hourly workers get paid for the extra time, but the summary doesn't clarify if we're talking hourly or salaried workers. If it's hourly, we're really talking about whether they get paid overtime (which I'd leave that between the worker, the employer, and any union which might be involved). If salaried, well, that's part of the whole salary package: you pay me a fixed rate and I can use as many or as few hours as needed to get my job done. At least, that's the US agreement, I don't know about
Ouch (Score:3)
That doesn't leave a whole lot of time to stay out all night drinking soju and singing K-pop karaoke. Something has to give!
Samsung? (Score:3)
I wonder what percentage of those business groups was Samsung? Samsung is the largest employer in the county, with a large percentage of the countryâ(TM)s GDP depending on the business.
They have a .80 birth rate (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, what's the point of having kids and then letting someone else raise them while you work 70 hours a week?
Re:They have a .80 birth rate (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no pragmatic individual benefit to reproduction. Evolution cannot select for individual over species benefit. The individual must be expendable so it is.
Instinct, not intellect, drives reproduction in societies where a large family is not required for tribal survival. Low/zero empathy societies work serfs to exhaustion so serfs see even less point in the fundamentally vain and sadistic act of inflicting life (which is suffering) at great cost to themselves. That's trading misery for inflicting misery on a new creature.
Viewed objectively most of life is either suffering or avoiding painful stimuli. That's why humans had to invent gods to justify the horror.
As they realize there are no sky fairies and only mental weaklings believe in those that carrot no longer appeals more than the corporate stick they're driven with. The only way to reduce human suffering is reduce the number of humans.
Realizing life only has imaginary individual purpose was natural for sentient beings. Not perpetuating the system makes perfect sense and has tangible economic rewards as breeding expendable offspring once did.
I always wonder why (Score:2, Flamebait)
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At least elect left wing conservatives.
We tried electing neoliberals. It turns out that doesn't actually help with the economics part, because they are fiscally indistinguishable from conservatives. i.e., thieves.
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I'm not even sure what a "neoliberal" is anymore, the word has been used as a slur for "anyone I don't like" by the right for so long. But, presuming you're talking about the Obama years, by what metrics exactly do you think the economy wasn't doing well? Because when I look at the numbers... GDP, GDP growth, the Dow and NASDAQ, unemployment, investment gains from real estate, the CPI, and the like; the Obama years, once the 2008 troubles were over (Which, admittedly, did take a couple of years.), look pr
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I'm not even sure what a "neoliberal" is anymore
They're people with conservative fiscal policies, but liberal social policies. e.g. they support both expansion of the MIC, and access to abortion.
But, presuming you're talking about the Obama years, by what metrics exactly do you think the economy wasn't doing well?
"The economy" doing well doesn't mean that The People are. Obama facilitated upwards wealth transfer [nypost.com], so while Obama-era policies did preserve GDP, they did nothing whatsoever to alter the overall trend of falling wages. Lack of action on that issue is largely the fault of senate Republicans, so I don't blame Obama for failing to increase wages for example, but t
Left wing conservative aren't neo-liberals (Score:2)
The right wing in most countries likes to hide behind the word "conservative". I know, it's confusing. The way you know they're radicals is that they'll do whatever it takes to get what they want and they do it without hesitation.
Actual conservatives will rely on well understood and well tested policy. So you get guys like Bernie Sanders pushing Medicare for All because we have 70+ years of
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Since this is South Korea, they merely need to look North to see what happens when the left wingers get into power.
Was a grossly stupid move anyways (Score:3)
Worker peak performance is around 8h/5d per week for physical work and 6h/5d (or 8h/4d) for mental work. No, there are no "exceptional" people that can do significantly more. There are just a lot of delusional ones. Require people to work more and productivity per week drops. Has been well-known for a long, long time but there are too many idiots virtue-signalling with the number of hours to work so it has to be discovered time and again due to their ignorance.
Lastest example are the 4 day workweek experiments in the UK, which completely unsurprisingly did not find a drop in productivity per week in most cases.
Re: Was a grossly stupid move anyways (Score:4, Funny)
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That nicely sums it up.
So stop committing to unreasonable deadlines. (Score:2)
There, fixed that for you.
They don't want to hire more people (Score:3)
Doesn't work (Score:2)
Lake K-begon (Score:2)
"South Koreans worked an average of 1,915 hours in 2021 -- that's 199 hours more than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development average, according to the most recent OECD employment outlook, and 566 hours more than workers in Germany,"
Yeah, what's up with that?!? Everyone should work less than the average!
Three things... (Score:3)
1) Open Book Tests
2) Curving the Grade (in Korea, you get what you get... doesn't matter if the whole class gets "F's")
3) A 40-hour work week.
35 years later, she STILL works 70 hours a week plus. I can't get her to slow down.
Way to go, South Koreans! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Any government that gets involved is, by definition, fascist.
anarcho-capitalism is a helluva drug. must be nice to just glaze over any and all power dynamics and other actual issues in reality. priciples and paper theory is all that matters right?
it's funny how they actually share so much in common with the wackiest of communists.
Re: (Score:2)
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If a government is democratically elected to get involved in labour laws, it is, by definition, NOT fascist.
There are likely some exceptions I don't know about, but every fascist government in the 20th century I'm aware of was elected into power. They just didn't allow themselves to get elected out of power.
(I don't agree with the AC, but I also don't agree that being democratically elected excludes a government from being fascist)
Re: (Score:2)
every fascist government in the 20th century I'm aware of was elected
Except for the two most famous and prominent ones...
March on Rome [wikipedia.org]
Beer Hall Putsch [wikipedia.org]
Night of the Long Knives [wikipedia.org]
Enabling Act of 1933 [wikipedia.org]
Germans voted in an atmosphere of extreme voter intimidation perpetrated by the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) militia. Contrary to popular belief, Hitler did not win an outright majority in the Reichstag as the majority of Germans did not vote for the Nazi Party. The election was a setback for the Nazis; however, it was insufficient in stopping the ratification of the Enabling Act. In orde
Re: (Score:2)
Except for the two most famous and prominent ones... March on Rome [wikipedia.org] Beer Hall Putsch [wikipedia.org] Night of the Long Knives [wikipedia.org] Enabling Act of 1933 [wikipedia.org] Germans voted in an atmosphere of extreme voter intimidation perpetrated by the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) militia. Contrary to popular belief, Hitler did not win an outright majority in the Reichstag as the majority of Germans did not vote for the Nazi Party. The election was a setback for the Nazis; however, it was insufficient in stopping the ratification of the Enabling Act. In order to guarantee its passage, the Nazis implemented a strategy of coercion, bribery, and manipulation. Hitler removed any remaining political obstacles so his coalition of conservatives, nationalists, and Nazis could begin building the Nazi dictatorship. By mid-March, the government began sending communists, labor union leaders, and other political dissidents to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. Fascists don't actually believe in democracy so they are not exactly keen to play within the system. Not to say people don't sometimes elect dictators into power but it's usually not so clean cut either. Much like Crimea "voted" to join Russia but a vote held after an army has invaded your home isn't exactly what we think of as democratic.
So learn some history, you ignorant nonce.
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It's also wrong for corporations to do it. You're still choosing between the two, not increasing your personal choice.
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Read the article. They are not "mandating" anything. They are raising the allowable maximum. I believe it is then up to companies and their employees to decide if they want to increase their working hours. There's no real shortage of jobs in Korea. Unless every company plays along, people will just migrate to companies with more sensible policies. This isn't the turn of the last century where there is no sharing of information about what's going on in the next town/province/country.
need to have more unions or it's 80H with no OT (Score:3)
need to have more unions or it's 80H with no OT