[krickkrack]

If workers were more productive working less hours you wouldn't need the government to do anything - businesses acting in their own interests would do this automatically.

The government doesn't know how to run businesses better than the businesses themselves.

[bloqs]

Well many private businesses are already, take MSs pilot recently. Do you know how the 40 hour 5 day week was initially established in the US?

The postwar era status quo of people travelling hours each way to their job, then to spend most of it in meetings or in an open plan office (chosen for managerial oversight, not productivity, which is a clue we will come back to) with too much noise to be productive are being challenged (cv19)

The research is clear, most white collar workers report much less productive work time compared to their work hours.

Reporting and data collection in this ever increasing era of cognitively demanding work is becoming far more accurate. In previous times, people's fear of redundancy has caused false overreach of business hours, and competitive presenteeism. Between this, and micromanagerial institutions like the open plan office, there is plenty of activity that doesn't accurately report productivity up to the business. Assuming the business has perfect information here is the fault. There are forces shaping these standards that are beyond the reach of produtivity, cultural normalisation of unhealthiness is rife. Look at China.

[dahfizz]

Assuming that a person will always be productive for X hours a day, regardless of how long they are in the office, is naive.

The reality is that people spend some percentage of their time being productive. During the day they take coffee breaks, chat with coworkers, check Twitter, etc.

Assume people are productive for 20 hours now. If you reduced the work week to be 20 hours, productivity would go down. There would still be meetings, coffee breaks, etc that eat into those 20 hours. Now people are only productive for, say, 15 hours a week.