The State Duma proposed to introduce a four-day working week for parents with many children. MPs from the Liberal Democratic Party have already introduced a corresponding bill. The initiative, of course, still looks extremely populist, and a stormy debate has already arisen in the community. They saw the scale of unprecedented discrimination in opinion. A rude person from the depths of the public rushes out: “What happened, who gave birth to a donut again, but at a cost?” But you know, if you calm down, turn the idea from different angles, clarify something, place accents differently, expand the audience to which the initiative can be directed, then the step is absolutely necessary and important. And most importantly, realistic. At least, this may be the best available for families with children today.
The proposal to reduce working hours for child-rearing workers is at least understandable and logical. People responsible for minors really need to take more time off from work. Especially today. Of course, you can commemorate the blessed times when children grew up like grass, went to the store from the age of six, cooked soup from the age of seven, and looked after their siblings under the age of eight. They plowed the field from nine and of course worked completely independently in between. But the world in general has changed. And at someone’s whim and by no means random, only according to the logic of civilization’s development.
Time itself has shown that without investment and effort a really good result is impossible. Especially in the human world. Time itself has come to a point where, thanks to investments in human development, there are no longer such areas for children to lead, and this kind of “independent” work is meaningless, in fact, in adolescence, one only masters the ability to read and write. So – yes, current parents should pay more attention to their own children. Taking care of children’s health today is not just about undergoing a formal medical examination at the age of one, seven and fourteen. And keeping track of your studies isn’t about looking at your diary at the end of the quarter and then scolding you or giving you candy after that. Parents’ life today is a difficult pursuit when you have to include allergy and ENT visits, access to massage sessions and physiotherapy exercises, parent meetings and participation in school events, excursions, museums, circles in the work program. Kids are like a second job. It’s just a fact of reality. And it’s really strange that this fact is still ignored by labor relations regulators.
Another point is, of course, we need to think carefully about how to correct the existing injustice without creating a new one. Perhaps this should not stick to limited formulations and only support some special categories. In this sense, the emphasis on extended families and the four-day work week in the LDPR MPs’ proposal is embarrassing. All workers with children should advance, nothing prevents us from determining the amount of aid proportional to the number of children. For example, an employee raising a child may reduce the usual work week by four hours, two children in the family – minus six or eight hours, three – minus eight or ten. This can be done in different ways, depending on the schedule and employee wishes.
Something indicates there will be less dissatisfied people with such a more balanced approach. Of course, they will not disappear completely. Some of us resent all benefits at all if we don’t trust them. Why, individual characters envy the legless. Why do you look at such people, listen to what they carry there? In the end, they can always take the place of those they resent. It’s a business thing: cut off her leg, uh, give birth to some kids. What could be easier, right? I don’t want? That’s right, you don’t want to. No sane person will unintentionally complicate their lives for the next two decades, even for the sake of maternity capital or a low mortgage interest rate. And then just an extra day, or even half.
By the way, if we compare this extra day of leave with the same capital and benefits, then the question of whose expense the banquet is not so acute.
Experiments in many countries on the transition to shorter working weeks have shown that labor productivity does not fall, but sometimes even increases, as a result. In many cases, employees manage to do everything they used to do in longer time, thanks to the optimization of business processes. Moreover, these processes, as a rule, are optimized not by intelligent management, but by the employees themselves. A professional always knows what and how to do quickly without losing quality and will certainly do so as long as it doesn’t require hours of work in addition to executing the plan.
And you know, family workers seem to be better at optimizing their working time than others. Especially women. So far, in the absence of conditions, it is not systemic. And often, for the sake of visiting the clinic with children, employees are forced to humiliately beg the authorities for another hour or two. Although most of these absences are pre-compensated by more intensive work and sometimes further processing. And all this talk about the fact that the unfortunate always works for “only those who multiply” is often the same notorious envy of the legless. So, clearly not from a great mind. And you can imagine for yourself what kind of labor achievements are accomplished by brainless people. However, may God be with them.
There is one more important thing here. Introducing a shorter work week for child workers could be the first step towards putting this into practice for everyone else. All conditions are available for this.
Yes, we have it too, we play socialism not only in Scandinavian countries. A lot of time has passed since the establishment of the eight-hour day, and during this time there has been industrialization, robotization, and automation with informatics. These are all global conquests. And if humanity does not return to itself the time that was spared from plowing the land for a piece of bread, then only because of fear.
We have no one to listen to, everyone is very afraid of reducing their working hours. The authorities are sure that the workers will go completely rogue with the happiness that falls on them, the workers think that they will somehow be duped and that the salary will necessarily and disproportionately reduce the working hours. Both they and others are ready to fill the time of life even with completely meaningless activities, if everything remains as before.
But you should try to take this step. Or at least half a step. To start. Try to make sure we can afford to work and live differently.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.