Vox Sentences - Why stop at the four-day workweek?

Friday, November 10, 2023

Hey subscribers, here’s what we’re talking about to close out the week: 

UP FIRST: Why stop at the four-day workweek?

CATCH UP: In the West Bank, Israeli settlers are on an anti-Palestinian rampage

—Rachel DuRose, Future Perfect fellow

Why stop at the four-day workweek?

Hoi Chan for Vox

Efforts to institute a shorter workweek (at least in the US) have been around since at least the 1930s, when the transition to widespread manufacturing jobs was in full swing. Today, however, most employees still work five-day weeks.

The lowdown: In a post-pandemic world, workers are once again broaching the topic of shortening our time at work, writes Future Perfect fellow Oshan Jarow. 

• There are a couple of different ways to institutionalize a four-day workweek. Either the government could lower the overtime pay threshold from 40 hours a week to 32 hours a week, or individual employers could choose to shorten their working hours.

• Four-day workweeks seem to benefit the employer and the employees. The world’s largest trial of the schedule produced results showing greater satisfaction and well-being from employees and greater retention rates for employers.

• “To design an economy that both sustains and spreads the option of more free time to all, we’ll need a political movement that gathers power,” writes Oshan. Empowering workers — by giving them leverage to make demands — is the key to this transformation.  

• Unions are great, but they’re not enough. While these organizations give workers a stronger voice, other resources (such as guaranteed income, baby bonds, or universal health care) would give workers greater control of their lives, writes Oshan. 

The stakes: In the last half-century, worker power has declined and inequality has increased. Today, though, the tides are turning. Wages are rising and the White House established a task force to federally support workers. 

This all means there’s an opportunity to push what Oshan calls a “leisure agenda”: an organized effort to secure more free time for everyone. 

“A useful way to orient the leisure agenda is to ask what it’s for. If the point is just to keep workers refreshed and happy enough to continue their productive contributions to economic growth, then maybe things are already on track,” writes Oshan. 

But, if leisure means increasing people’s control over their own lives, “then the present trajectory needs to angle toward power. Without more bargaining power, leisure will always have to justify itself in terms of productivity, placing a cap on how far the leisure agenda might go.” 

Read Oshan’s full story on the four-day workweek here.

In the West Bank, Israeli settlers are on an anti-Palestinian rampage

Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Escalating violence in the West Bank could spread fighting across an already strained region. Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza and the Israeli government’s increasingly dangerous rhetoric have created the perfect conditions for settler violence to erupt in the West Bank. 

• The West Bank is critical to the future of a Palestinian state. Located to the east of Israel and the west of Jordan, the West Bank is home to 3 million Palestinians (approximately 700,000 more people than in Gaza). While the land is internationally recognized as being Palestinian, Israel has been claiming more and more of the territory: More than 700,000 Israelis now live in the area.  

• Israeli settlement of the West Bank began after the 1967 Six-Day War with Jordan. For the Israeli government, settlements helped create a security buffer between Israel and Jordan. For religious radicals, expansion fulfilled a biblical promise to the Jewish people of the land of Israel extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

• Today, the same security concerns do not exist. Israel has a formal peace treaty with Jordan, and aside from non-state actors (such as Hamas and Hezbollah), the country has little to fear from its other neighbors, in part due to its strong relationship with the US. Nevertheless, settlement construction has only escalated.

• Since October 7, at least 15 Palestinian communities have been displaced and at least 130 Palestinians have been killed. Last year was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in almost two decades, with approximately two attacks on Palestinians by settlers per day. In 2023, the average has been three attacks a day; after October 7, it has reached seven attacks a day. 

• The Israeli government assists settler violence against Palestinians. Israel has enlisted at least 360,000 reservists due to the war with Hamas. Some of these reservists are settlers themselves and have now gone from terrorizing Palestinians as civilians to using their military status to inflict more harm. “Settlement, in short, is not merely isolated acts from individual radicals; it is a wholly owned project of the Israeli state,” writes senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp.  

Read Zack’s full story here. 

If you have questions about the ongoing war, let us know here. And here’s where you can keep track of all our developing coverage.

• Israel’s bombardment of Gaza threatens the oldest Christian community in the world. Israeli attacks on Gaza have damaged and destroyed the Church of Saint Porphyrius and the Anglican al-Ahli Arab Hospital, and threatened the already small Palestinian Christian community of Gaza. [Al Jazeera]

• Today marks the start of Diwali, the Indian festival of light. Celebrated by billions of people annually, the five-day affair involves feasts, fireworks, oil lamps, and more. [AP]

• A United Kingdom judge ruled that Prince Harry’s lawsuit against the Daily Mail publisher can move forward. Harry, Elton John, Elizabeth Hurley, and Sadie Frost are among the celebrities who filed a lawsuit last year alleging they are victims of criminal invasions of privacy. [ABC]

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Today’s crossword

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