Support your local unions

2 hour of commute + 8 of work is basically 10 hours away from home

Forgetting the hour lunch that isn't paid, so to get your time you spend 2 hours commuting, 8 hours working, and 1 hour "on break", so that's 11 hours of your day gone just because of work. With sleep, you are already down to 5 hours to do literally everything else your life requires. Grocery shopping, home/car/lawn maintenance, budgeting/planning bills, etc. God forbid you have kids and you have to figure out how to keep another human alive in that 5 hours on top of keeping yourself alive...

8 hours of work is too much

If you feel strongly enough about that, you need to do what the organizers did to get to that 8 hour day: organize workers to form powerful unions, then go on strike, survive confrontations with the police where many people die, keep battling for several decades, and then eventually your shorter work day will maybe become a reality.

Getting to an 8 hour work day required a lot of blood to be spilled. I personally doubt that today's workers are motivated enough to put in the work and sacrifice required.

See, the commute is meant to be counted into it... xD

Yes, it's funny how a labour uprising in the US on May 1st ended up becoming the most important holiday in communist countries. Meanwhile, the Haymarket Affair is basically forgotten in the US.

It's also ridiculous how people today think that an 8-hour work day is some natural thing that happened because everybody agreed it made sense. The reality is that the bosses thought that a 12 hour work day made sense, and it took protest and violence to convince them to change their minds.

Anybody who wants a 4 day work week or a shorter work day needs to be aware of their history, and know that the only way to get there from here is massive union organization, and probably violence (mostly violence inflicted on the workers by the powers backing the status quo).

The idea that people should be getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep is a bit of a myth.

Sure, a lot of people don't sleep as much as they should, but it's not like 8 hours is a magic number, or like interruptions haven't been a factor in sleeping since proto-humans first climbed down from the trees.

In the past in England it was normal to have two periods of sleep in a night. In hot countries a period of sleep during the hottest part of the day is normal.

Idunno, I actually sleep more than 8h often. Today was ~9.5 (from 23:00 until 8:30) The thing that makes it possible for me is (1) WFH so no commute, (2) no kids, (3) "white-collar" job so I can just sleep in and start working a bit later.

I realize that this is incredibly privileged and not everyone can sleep like that. But it is definitely possible too.

Did you get holiday pay at least? I dont think I got holiday pay even when I worked retail. My husband got 8 extra straight hours, and was paid time and a half for the shift he worked yesterday (unionized labor).

I dont think retail does anything like this. Fuck retail. I know exactly what you went through, and it is why youll never see me shop on a holiday.

And the "lunch in your own time" means I'll be at work for 9 hours anyway

Yeah, life was a lot simpler when your wife/servant prepped all your food and work was a fifteen minute walk away.

You didn’t mention unpaid lunch time, making sure you get there before clock in, any phone calls or emails that happen after hours, taking kids to daycare, and all the little things that you wouldn’t be doing if it wasn’t for your job. I guess that comes out of the “8 hours of sleep” time.

Don't worry you have the weekend for those, which you spend 8 hours in bed, 8 hours for chores, 4 hours feeling tired, and 4 hours doing whatever you want while feeling tired.

We can do what we want to. We decide. If we want that, that's what we get. The only ones who don't want that are the land/production system owners and the system of capitalism.

There is nothing inherently "normal" or "natural" or "good" about the system under which we toil and slave, except you would be hard pressed to believe it when you speak to people because they are so deeply indoctrinated in that mode of thinking that they will fight to keep it. For some fucking reason.

It's also non-consecutive. 8hrs split over morning & eve feels much shorter

Tell St. Peter I can't go,

I own my soul to the company store.

Someone should do an actual artwork for that. I really like the idea, but the ai slop gives me mixed feelings here