the work week

[starbuck]

just my personal opinion but today's 40hr work week is very hard on the family unit. The reason I say this is because a couple raising a child each working 40hrs a week is in the bad position of having baby sitters, grandparents and daycare's having as much or more influence on the child.
I think the work week should be lowered to 32hrs a week. anything over 32 should be overtime. I know they did this many years ago when the work week was like 48 hours, it may be time again.
for instance most days I seem my girl for about 6 hours while she is awake. there are days my wife see's our little girl a total of 2 1/2 hours while the sitter is seeing her for 8 hours while she is awake.
we wonder what is wrong with the family unit and kids today, well I think this is one of the big reasons we see some of the things we see now. Companies wanting more and more while giving less and less to the employees. They want our world to be work first and family second.
I remember when places of business were closed on Sundays.

[Jason]

[ QUOTE ]
just my personal opinion but today's 40hr work week is very hard on the family unit. The reason I say this is because a couple raising a child each working 40hrs a week is in the bad position of having baby sitters, grandparents and daycare's having as much or more influence on the child.
I think the work week should be lowered to 32hrs a week. anything over 32 should be overtime. I know they did this many years ago when the work week was like 48 hours, it may be time again.
for instance most days I seem my girl for about 6 hours while she is awake. there are days my wife see's our little girl a total of 2 1/2 hours while the sitter is seeing her for 8 hours while she is awake.
we wonder what is wrong with the family unit and kids today, well I think this is one of the big reasons we see some of the things we see now. Companies wanting more and more while giving less and less to the employees. They want our world to be work first and family second. All companies want production and could care less about anything more.
I remember when places of business were closed on Sundays.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree 100%! My work place almost didnt let me off work this week coming to be with my wife while giving birth to our 3rd daughter.

[burton2019]

I work four tens during the week. From 8am-7pm. I rarely see my family. I get up when they are asleep. By the time I get home my kids are ready for bed. Its real rough on the family. The only good thing, I can think of is that I, fortunately, make enough money that my wife can stay home and watch them. But taking care of two kids, ages 2 and 6 months, is no easy job itself.

[R0cketer]

I tell you, this is really something that some of the European countries do better than us

[smarty]

we're runnning into the same problem with Blue's sister she works a 40 hour week usually tries for some overtime too and is a single mom raising a 2 month old son... so it's like if she doesnt' work she can't afford anything for kid and when she does the dad is telling social services she doesn't spend enough time with her son it's a no win situation. Plus she works at Sykes where missing work b/c of a child is not really a good enough excuse. I babysit as much as I can but I mean Blue works full time too and then I'm doing summer classes/part time. It makes it really hard.

I usually work enough so about 40% of my income is from OT- I don't see how folks with young children stand to be away from them so much. I quit several jobs for this reason. But it hasn't been that long ago that we didn't even have the "Family Leave act". It is good for about 6 weeks , but you must have been with the company for a year and use all your paid time off first. At least that is what I recall, things may have changed, been awhile since I was involved with anything like this. It will let you get time off to care for children, parents and I think, siblings if there isn't anyone else or other way. It is hard to force some companies to comply, NLRB will help you, but they can't stay with you and as long as we have the "Right to Work" law, you can pretty much be discharged by just a poor evaluation. [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/007.gif[/img]

Know what you mean guys. When raising my son i missed some times that i can't get back. It was work or don't get paid.
Don't want some to take this wrong. But one thing that hits me about those who use and abuse the systems, their home and yet still some let their kids run wild. They got the best of both worlds but don't see it.
I missed a p-nut game that was special one time. I decided then. I have to work. But i love my son also. And he was more important. He needed me and i needed him as much as he needed me.
We do need to fix a few things. Families are overworked and over stressed.
Then you have those i mentioned who have the best situation and don't see it.
I know it's hard sometimes and were not always right or correct. But sometimes we have to say something. I think it's time our government actually looked at some of what the general public see's as a problem.

[imported_yomama]

In my income tax class we discussed how (and this will probably sound really sexist) in a lot of cases tax wise you are better off to have one spouse work and one take care of the children and house. When you take two average incomes and tax them, and then add in the costs of day care you will get a lower total income than you would if only one spouse worked and was taxed and there were no day care costs. Of course you can play around with the numbers and see that that isn't always the case. But the fact that you could be better off when just one person working was amazing to me.

I interviewed with some fed govt jobs this past fall and they do flex time- you work 9 hours a day 9 days every two weeks, so you essentially get every other Friday off. I would be all for that plan if another company ever offered it to me.