What's more important? A higher minimum wage, or a 40 hour workweek?

I personally care more about the wage than having 40 hours. If I can work 30 and make enough money that sounds good to me. Flexibility in the work schedule is most important to me in terms of schedule, sometimes flexibility isn’t possible. When possibly why not? Why not let a parent change what time they start working when their 5 year old starts going to kindergarten and now school start time dictates the morning routine? Why not have 4 day work week with a 10 hour day to cut down on fuel costs and traffic and encourage family weekends. Wouldn’t it be nice to get a lot of the chores done during the week so your weekends with your kids are free from some of the chores and errands?

One of the biggest obstacles to work week hours has been being able to get health insurance at work. If we get rid of health care through our employers that whole part of the equation disappears.

A higher wage. Working 25 hours for a $300 paycheck at $12 an hour beats the hell out of working 40 hours for a $290 paycheck at $7.25 an hour.

At least with the shorter hours you can work a second job or (horrors) see your kids once in a while.

Neither.

I would favor more economic literacy among all workers, so that they understand the fundamentals of where “jobs” and “wages” come from in the first place. Especially I would like to see this taught at a very young age. Not that “people should learn how to be a cog in a wheel” or “how to conform and fit in and sit down and shut up”, though some will read this and attribute that meaning to it. I can’t help those folks.

If I had a dollar for every time in my career I’ve heard “This is a rich company, surely they can afford… {whatever; fill in the blank with anything you like}.” then I could have retired to a private island ten years ago.

People need to understand that their wages and benefits – their jobs, in every sense – depend upon their “economic value” to an employer. It’s not magic to receive higher wages – to be “worth it” as the Clairol commercials proclaim – and it’s not exploitation to be paid low wages because the value to the employer just isn’t there. No employer has a purpose to “create jobs”; that’s totally meaningless political drivel. Beyond that “hours” and “wages” are costs to employers that they understandably want to limit as inputs to their productivity as much as any sane person would.

So few understand this most fundamental concept that it’s personally sickening. People could and can make themselves more economically valuable to their current and any future employer – if all they want is “a job”.

So beyond that, the second thing I would favor is to instill in people a desire for independence from “an employer” and to create their own job, their own company. I wish that I had learned that lesson myself ‘back in the day’. I’m far too lazy to raise that ambition now. That way they could eventually cut their own work hours and increase their economic benefit at the same time. How sad that this is so seldom grasped.

Because remember, Peasant Scum, your only purpose for existence is to provide labor for an employer – at their whim, at their rates, and if your kids can’t go to the dentist then you should have thought about that before you didn’t start your own company.

Well, come on over, @CWOTUS!
I used to keep the grounds for a church for $1 an hour.
If you bring your own supplies, I can easily afford to pay you $3 if you put a hustle on it.

I guess I would favor more social literacy among all employers. That what’s good for the worker is good for the company’s bottom line. That a worker invested in a company is a good investment for the company.

A great local example is the Pepsi route.
Not long ago, running the Pepsi delivery route was a career. Physically fit, friendly, no-nonsense guys stocked the Pepsi route for years, decades, at a stretch. Even if you didn’t know them personally, they were a familiar face.
No longer.
Now I seldom see the same Pepsi worker twice. They’re young, largely clueless guys that seem to spend the majority of the time wandering around. Used to be, if you saw the cart, within a minute or two, you’d see the ‘Pepsi guy’ and you could ask if he had Diet Dr. Pepper on the truck. Now, not only can you wait forever for the Pepsi worker to re-appear, but chances are he has no idea what’s on the truck.
Frito-Lay is the same way.
I can’t believe that those companies didn’t get better value from valued employees.

I would think that society in general would benefit if a 30 hour work week became the norm. With only a limited number of positions available, more people could have a job thus improving their economic outlook.

10 industrialized nations with shorter work weeks than the US

Neither. Contribution related to compensation is more important to me.

I’m with @JLeslie and @Seek

Ideally, the whole objective is to work smarter, not harder and up until the recession threw me over the cliff I had always had flexible, relatively well paying work that allowed me flexibility and extra time. I have always been a choose time over money type but now I must choose the money, any way I can get it, even if that means I might not have a day off for weeks on end. Bah Humbug.
At least I am making $17.50 – $25.00 an hour for what I am doing, sometimes more, but I pine for the good old days when I worked at something I truly loved, and could make enough to carry me for an entire month for putting in about 36–40 hours in 3 days.
I did home staging and interior design work and might work three 14 hour days to complete a project but then I was as free as a bird for weeks after.

Staging 2 homes a month, plus a 1% sales commission on the home sale set me up just fine.

A living wage is more important because you don’t need to work more shifts if your wage is high enough.

@CWOTUS Your little sermon rings hollow. Conveniently, you have ignored the fact that one needs capital to break free and create one’s own job. So if the only jobs available to some people are ones that keep them just barely on the edge of survival, breaking free is not a viable option. But it’s cute that you think people want to be dependent on their employers. Reminds me of the old “black people are naturally slaves” rhetoric.

I just want to point out that for many people, multiple part-time jobs are not feasible because the part-time jobs are at inconsistent times… sometimes even robo-calling people in the morning to let them know if/when they are working that day. That makes multiple jobs very hard to manage. Add in that they are not guaranteed health care or other benefits, the impossibility of consistent daycare, etc. and the full-time job is more stable and desirable.

Scheduling consistency and benefits need to factor into the equation.

Considering people as ‘units of economic value’ is the problem with capitalism. These ‘units of economic value’ are also citizens, parents, voters, members of society and human beings. It is difficult to imagine a system that holds ordinary people in greater contempt. The minimum wage should be enough for a worker to live on and he, or she, shouldn’t have to work excessive hours to earn it

Both but I put wages ahead of hours .

It was the labor movement of the early twentieth century that enabled us to institutionalize the idea of a 40 hour work week, the minimum wage, overtime, and the novel idea of the weekend. The idea is that a person should be able to earn a living wage in a reasonable amount of time in a week, and still have time and energy to pursue other things, like family, recreation, etc.

Higher minimum wage at this time in our history.

I had a pretty skate job at a liquor store, just bagging purchases. The bad thing was I only got weekend work.
I quit that job to make less per hour, but tripled my work hours at KFC. The downside was that was much more physical.

An even better question is “What is better, a higher minimum wage, or more jobs?” Not going to ask that, though, because I don’t have the energy for the debate right now.

@Yetanotheruser It isn’t exactly a surprise that the overwhelming majority of Americans have scant if any knowledge of the labor movement in our history. This is very much deliberate, and once again we should ask “who benefits from it?” CWOTUS is correct as well. Of course people would be better off if they understood what was happening to them and the underlying reasons for it. But such exercises are apparently not encouraged and it might be interesting to know why. The topic is worthy of its own question.

A 40 hour workweek may have benefits.

@Rarebear A higher minimum wage. Plenty of people right now are working three shitty jobs. A fourth shitty job isn’t the answer to their troubles.

A higher wage, but if I were a negotiator there is no way I’d have these to items on the table at the same time. These two are not connected and require entirely separate, independent discussions.

There are a lot of people, @Irukandji, that can’t work 2–3-4 shitty jobs because they need some sort of stability due to family or medical issues. And for every job you add, add 2x-3x-4x transportation cost and expenses, like laundry.

@Espiritus_Corvus That is a great point.

@ibstubro Right, but that’s just another reason why “a higher minimum wage” is the answer to @Rarebear‘s question. I certainly wasn’t endorsing the “three shitty jobs” model.

We live in a skills based economy and the more demand there is for your skillset then the more negotiating power you have when looking for work. With out that to bargan with then asking for a better wage and more favorable hours is not much different than panhandling on the street. Another side is the amount of responsibility you are willing and able to take on. I have to completely agree with @CWOTUS that there is this lingering sense of entitlement where people seem to think that jobs and wages are something that can be conjured on command or through new laws. Most of us in America fail to see just what we are allowed to do here when it comes to our own work and autonomy. Nobody can stop you from doing your own thing and making your own way here. That said we do have a somewhat large problem here with the size and power of corporations. There is also the fact that money is being sucked out of the economy and is being concentrated in specific areas or shipped into foreign markets but that is another discussion.