9 Comments
Apr 27, 2023Liked by Diane Francis

Nice..but for much of the working population life is a drudge of making ends meet holding down several lousy jobs...you are speaking to an entitled millennial segment who view work as but an interruption to playtime.

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Apr 27, 2023Liked by Diane Francis

I’m a retired boomer who has returned to work on two occasions at the request of my former employer because of shortages of qualified workers. For my last term, I worked a 4 day (10 hour days) work week and found it was a welcome change from a 5 day week. Better productivity IMHO and the resulting 3 day weekend was a great reset.

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Apr 27, 2023Liked by Diane Francis

Hi Diane - I need to point out some historical inaccuracies. As with female suffrage, New Zealand had the jump on the rest of the world in labour reform also. The first strike for an 8 hour working day was staged successfully by Samuel Parnell in 1840 in a new colony short of carpenters. The first public celebration of the achievement of the 8 hour working day was held in 1890 (50 years from Parnell’s famous ‘strike’) and in 1899 New Zealand legislated it’s first non-religious public holiday, ‘Labour Day’, to celebrate the event and mark progress in labour reform. In 1936, via the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Amendment Act, New Zealand enacted the 40 hour work week. Where New Zealand leads the rest of the world follows. For those readers interested in understanding more of New Zealand’s colonial history (our post colonial history is only now being forged) I would recommend Pulitzer Prize winning American historian David Hackett Fisher’ s most excellent text ‘Fairness and Freedom’ - a history of New Zealand and US democracies through those twin lenses.

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author

Better let the Aussies know.

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Apr 27, 2023Liked by Diane Francis

Very interesting

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A 3-day off is really a good idea - wish it was available when I worked. Always dreamed of having more time for leisure (work on personal projects like art etc.) while still holding a job.

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Apr 27, 2023Liked by Diane Francis

Some dream of a 6 day work week

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wow - define 'some'. - lol

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3% of the fisherpeople catch 97% of the fish

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