Sweden Is Shifting to a 6-Hour Work Day

[Bubu]

Despite research telling us it’s a really bad idea, many of us end up working 50-hour weeks or more because we think we’ll get more done and reap the benefits later. And according to a study published last month involving 600,000 people, those of us who clock up a 55-hour week will have a 33 percent greater risk of having a stroke than those who maintain a 35- to 40-hour week.

With this in mind, Sweden is moving towards a standard 6-hour work day, with businesses across the country having already implemented the change, and a retirement home embarking on a year-long experiment to compare the costs and benefits of a shorter working day.

http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/sweden-is-shifting-to-a-6hour-work-day/

[WhiteLove]

This is not so wide spread yet here in Sweden, but the most left wing political party here - Vänsterpartiet (Left Party) - run by Jonas Sjöstedt, has a number of these modern reforms on its agenda which is sending a signal that it's time to stick the head out of the sand, so they thought 6 hour work days without reduction in salary per day is a good start. Vänsterpartiet has other very good political ideas as well, e.g., it wants minimal military activities and wants to downsize/get rid of all of those kinds of engagements, which is very good line of thought towards world peace. It is a modern new thinking party that is also becoming popular abroad. It is aiming for repairing the core layer of society, by building a society where the weak are being helped, where old people get the service they need and where society strives towards equal and good conditions, focusing on the group rather than on the individual - making it more human friendly. The Social Democratic Party has many of these ideas as well, but is a bit more conservative when it comes to policies about things like defense, life style etc. it is simply put a bit more externally oriented, a bit more manipulated by the powers that be, so there is some weakness there that has more to do with the overall context and the fact that the party needs to mature some more to be able to see through the deception. It is much based in creating a soft rat race, while Vänsterpartiet is asking tougher questions because it wants to heal the core by ending the classical trends that come with conservative thinking. Both parties though are driven towards making things better, this is a new Social Democratic Party and things can turn out good from here, so let's hope...

The 6 hour work day agenda is to some degree a result of the Social Democratic Party which is currently the leading party, which has tons of focus on creating a climate that is good for people, so lots of investments into infrastructure, healthcare, social support etc. This party came to power not so long ago, but I'm already seeing good progress since "Moderaterna" lost their power, which was a period of disaster making huge parts of Sweden incredibly harsh since all of their policies were built on focusing on self realized individual economic empowerments towards individual success and richness at whatever the cost of that might be, causing huge divide between people and widening gaps between classes. Sweden is still recovering from this period, but since the people realized it cannot work to just focus on the self and design whatever ****ty conditions for certain classes to make the higher classes take advantage of that, they lost in the election and now Sweden is starting to get into better shape again. There are some dark clouds on the political arena considering the fact that "Sverigedemokraterna" (SD) the Swedish right wing party has got some added support lately, their policies make me sick, they are incredibly hateful.

But it's good news to have 6 hour work days slowly becoming the new norm...

The right wing here in Sweden, it does not like it when things that previously have helped to separate people, such as borders, unions, national pride etc. becomes challenged. It wants to create a strictly controlled society based on race, it wants to make it more difficult for people that have moved to a different country, to integrate, whether the people suffers or not as a consequence, that it does not care about, because all it cares about is for the self pride and the collective of a particular race to become strong, especially in terms of economic and military strength. It finds absolutely nothing wrong with using that power then to build its empire stronger until it reaches its ultimate goal which is global control. So the right wing party here in Sweden is very much focused on division, hate, power, separation and unequality, although officially the language used is a political one. The underlying intensions are to create selfish hateful individuals that group together as a common race and collective in order to then advance to the next level, which is what Hitler did... Incredibly deceptive...

Here is a very fresh debate between the right wing (to the left) and the left wing (to the right), at the end of the debate Jonas (the left wing) says this:

"This is about people and people destinies, it is about having sympathy and compassion for those who have the deepest needs and flee."

I think that tells something about how great Vänsterpartiet political party (the left wing) in this country is...

F4lGzFFVOKQ

[muxfolder]

It's just the opposite here in Finland. More working hours for the poor and middle class people.

[Aurelius]

soooooo nice to see there are some progressive nations out there

thx for posting this thread

[Lunesoleil]

I went to the Denmark on vacation and I noticed that many stores close to key 6 p.m. prettyamazing.

Except the large commercial chains whose schedules normal closing between 19 and 19.30 hoursin Franc e

[Demeisen]

It feels like the development of ethical and spiritual values of Finnish political arena comes a light year behind Sweden.

[Carmody]

3 way hockey fight with Norway.

[amor]

Longer working hours are especially hard on women who are single mothers or head of household, as they must also be head housekeeper, bookkeeper and perhaps wife/girlfriend, etc. Exhaustion can be the only outcome, shortened life and health and inevitable poverty at retirement if she gets there.

[sigma6]

a shorter work day without clawing back any money, means a redistribution of wealth back to workers in the most valuable commodity, time, which all the technology and economy of scales to do this, has always been there for decades... someone is thinking in terms of a real understanding of economics and wealth distribution over there... very interesting...

the other way of people working 40-50 hours, and the corporation reaps huge profits from the increasing productivity gains which in turn gets transferred to the top of the pyramid, and all the technology gains, improvement and efficiency that brings in the increasing profits bypasses the very people who make it happen... and instead goes to a privileged elite class that know how to manipulate the system... which is essentially what government is becoming today... a manipulative elite class being groomed by the bankers... who are the original manipulators of the system...

this was suggested back in the 50's by BF Skinner, a famous behavioural psychologist, he calculated that if wealth were equally distributed people would only have to work approx 20 hours per week (if memory serves correct)