As Covid has likely forever changed the work landscape for many companies, more and more institutions are even starting to experiment with a four day work week.
Awin Chief Executive Officer Adam Ross, who made the change at his company, allowing his workers to leave early on Fridays, recently told Bloomberg: “We firmly believe that happy, engaged, and well-balanced employees produce much better work. They find ways to work smarter, and they’re just as productive.”
And its not just Awin. It’s a trend that is growing much larger around the globe. For example, according to ZipRecruiter, postings that have mentioned a four day work week have tripled over the last three years, to 62 per 10,000 postings. Major companies like Unilever are even experimenting with the four day work week. Spain’s government is looking into whether to subsidize the idea and it is even catching on in Japan.
Will Stronge, director of research at Autonomy, said: “The four-day week is picking up momentum. For the large majority of firms, reducing working hours is an entirely realistic goal.”
The question is will the new schedule catch on. Six or seven day work weeks have been the norm since the late nineteenth century, Bloomberg notes. Even nowadays, popular billionaires like Jack Ma have hailed a six day a week work week as “vital for long-term success”. Bloomberg also noted that “in the U.K., the Labour Party lost the 2019 general election even as it campaigned on a pledge to trim the standard workweek to 32 hours within a decade.”
The push to change workplace environments has been pronounced coming out of Covid. And the four day work week is showing improved productivity, according to a study from the University of Reading. There has also been a push to move to a four day work week to “rethink working patterns, and reduce energy consumption.”
Germany’s 2.3-million-member IG Metall proposed the idea when Covid started to wreak havoc on the auto industry, as did a group led by former U.K. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. Renault SA is giving about 13,000 of its workers Fridays off until mid-August as it looks to cut costs.
Ross said that at his company, he has an 80 employee task force helping with the transition — which includes deciding which employees will be off when and figuring out the logistics of having his finance department work five days a week.
“The experience has been so positive that he can’t imagine going back,” he told Bloomberg. “Companies used to make provisions for people’s physical health but never their mental health. I see that changing, and we want to be a driver for it.”
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,
Doing daily commentary on world power dynamics feels a lot like staring up at the sky watching clouds. Sometimes you see a three-legged pony up there, sometimes a gargoyle, sometimes a laughing baby, but really you’re only ever watching tiny water droplets being moved around by atmospheric winds. They can take on any number of different shapes, but no matter how long you lay there staring up at them you’re really only ever seeing one dynamic play out with different appearances from moment to moment.
The daily news is very much the same, except most consumers of news media aren’t aware that they’re watching clouds. They really do think they’re looking at a three-legged pony, a gargoyle, a laughing baby.
“Ooh, there’s a doggy!” they squeal and clap their hands. “Ooh! Ooh now it’s a kitty cat!”
They don’t see the real underlying dynamics, they just see the forms those dynamics are taking from moment to moment. They don’t see the water droplets being moved around by the breeze, they just see the shapes.
Just as clouds are always water droplets in the air no matter what shapes they take, news stories are only ever one dynamic playing out with different appearances.
There is only ever one news story on any given day, and it is always the same news story: wealthy and powerful people seek more wealth and power, and narratives are spun to advance these agendas.
That’s it. That’s all you’re ever seeing when you read the news. There are sports scores and the occasional celebrity death mixed in for entertainment, but when it comes to major political and governmental events you’re only ever seeing the effects of wealthy and powerful people working to obtain more wealth and power and narratives being spun to promote these agendas.
Today it’s the Democratic Party killing the $15 minimum wage, protests in Haiti, US electoral shenanigans in Ecuador, bombings and sanctions on Syria, China bad, Russia bad. Appearances which taken individually at first glance look like breaking news stories, but when examined closely and integrated into the big picture are actually the exact same dynamics that were playing out yesterday with slightly different shapes. Tomorrow those same dynamics will play out again in different appearances. The shapes are different, but it’s always water droplets in the air.
It’s the exact same news story playing out over and over and over again, day after day after day. Alarm clock goes off at six AM, Sonny and Cher sing “I Got You Babe”, and Bill Murray wakes up to Groundhog Day once again.
“Well it looks like Jibby Jorpson is set to be the new leader, somehow staving off an early challenge from the popular socialist candidate,” reports the news man. “In other news, the ostensibly left-wing party will be unable to help the working class due to bliff blaff bloffa reasons, a dangerous dictator in a crucial geostrategic region urgently needs to be removed from power because widdle diddle doodad, and coming up: do we need more internet censorship to prevent wakka dakka dingdong?”
Next morning. Alarm clock. “I Got You Babe”, Bill Murray, Groundhog Day again.
“Well it looks like Miggy Morpson is set to be the the new leader, somehow staving off an early challenge from the popular socialist candidate,” reports the news man. “In other news, the ostensibly left-wing party will be unable to help the working class due to wing wang wappa reasons, a dangerous dictator in a crucial geostrategic region urgently needs to be removed from power because kooka kakka keeka, and coming up: do we need more internet censorship to prevent yope yap yimmy?”
Over and over and over again. And over and over and over. The excuses change, the narrative spin changes, the component parts of the agendas change, but it’s only ever the same one story: wealthy and powerful people seek more wealth and power, and narratives are spun to advance these agendas.
Once you see the clouds as clouds, you never again get confused about what those shapes in the sky really are. You see different iterations of the exact same dynamic where you used to see individual breaking news stories.
When you have this insight and realize it’s always the same story playing out over and over again, there’s a common temptation to give in to despair and bitterness. Maybe you keep fighting, but you do it with a bored, jaded and entirely uninspired mentality.
It doesn’t need to be this way though. Just because the fight isn’t happening the way you used to imagine doesn’t mean it’s hopeless or tedious, it just means you need to look at it differently. You don’t have a 50-fight career against 50 different opponents who you fought for 10 rounds each, you have a one-fight career against a single opponent who you’ve been fighting for 500 rounds.
Just because the fight is longer than you once thought and the opponent much more resilient than you once thought doesn’t mean that one long fight is without end, or that it is unwinnable. It just means it looks different than it used to. It was ponies and doggies, now it’s clouds. You still bite down on your mouthpiece and throw leather with all your strength.
But it’s important to do it with focus on the whole. When we oppose ruling power structures and the narratives that they are using to advance their agendas, it’s important to also zoom out and point to their place in the whole.It benefits no one to treat any of the manifestations of the recurring one news story as separate from all the other arrangements: you’ve got to tie it in to the greater dynamics of empire and oligarchy at every opportunity. Otherwise you’re just feeding into the illusion of doggies and kitties in the sky.
That’s all we’re ever doing here: trying to point to the recurring Groundhog Day story over and over again from as many different angles as possible to help people see the clouds. We can use individual news stories as illustrations to show people the bigger picture of what’s really going on, but really all we’re ever doing is helping them see it all as water droplets arranging in different shapes from day to day.
Help enough people see the big picture, and the fight is as good as won. Then, and only then, does Bill Murray awaken to a new day.
* * *
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Many Americans are asking themselves: Is double making offering more protection against COVID-19 than a single mask?
To answer that question, we ask readers: Does anyone wear two condoms?
The answer is probably no. But members of the Biden administration and at least one state governor are touting the extra benefits of double masking.
Last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the president and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, initially said, “there’s no data that indicates that that is going to make a difference.” He then flip-flopped, saying that the CDC is investigating “whether two masks may be better than one” and added that “it makes common sense”… and added that the reason they have not recommended it until now is that “they are a science-based organization.”
Fauci then added, unscientifically, “if one mask serves as a physical barrier, it makes common sense, and certainly can’t hurt and might help to wear two masks.”
This week, California Governor Gavin Newsom also doubled-down (literally) on double making following Texas and Mississippi actions to go maskless.
“We will be doubling down on mask-wearing,” said Newsom on Thursday, “not arguing to follow the example of Texas and other states that I think are making a terrible mistake.”
According to Reuters, science doesn’t bode well for the folks pushing double masks.
A Japanese supercomputer simulation showed this week that wearing two layers of masks provided minimal benefit in blocking the virus.
A study released by scientific research institute Riken and Kobe University on Thursday contradict Fauci and Newsom’s recommendations that double masking is “common sense.”
“Researchers used the Fugaku supercomputer to model the flow of virus particles from people wearing different types and combinations of mask,” according to Reuters.
They found a single surgical-type mask had 85% effectiveness in blocking particles if worn correctly, and a polyurethane mask was around 89%.
Researchers said wearing two masks doesn’t help because it builds air resistance and causes leakage around the edges.
“The performance of double masking simply does not add up,“wrote lead researcher Makoto Tsubokura.
In this presentation slide supplied by the Riken Center for Computational Sciences. Red is a loosely fitted non-woven mask. Green is a fitted non-woven mask. Green and brown are a non-woven mask with a polyurethane one on top. The bar graph illustrates the “droplet collection efficiency”. The blue bar shows the results of wearing loose-fit non-woven (surgical) mask. while red shows a fitted non-woven mask, and purple shows a fitted non-woven mask plus polyurethane mask.
“Wearing two masks does not make them twice as effective but only slightly more so,” Tsubokura added cited by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
“Wearing one nonwoven mask is enough, and make sure it is put on properly without leaving a gap between the fabric and the nose.”
As JapanToday notes, the findings in part contradict recent recommendations from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)that two masks were better than one at reducing a person’s exposure to the coronavirus.
So if two masks don’t work, proven by a Japanese supercomputer, then what is the underlying agenda by US government officials who parade themselves around media outlets touting double making is “common sense”?
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