Nearly all countries are trying to reduce unemployment. Some have this topic in their constitution, in others politicians promise solutions to their constituents every few months. Simple and obvious rule is that if we could reduce the number of working hours while keeping the wage at similar level we could automatically free time and offer jobs for other employees. Simply speaking reducing work week from 40hours to 20hours would double the number of jobs - assuming the need for that work is actual and it really needs to be done. But this could make the country’s economy less competitive. Global Hash Village proposes solution to this problem by following concept.
In Global Hash Village each citizen has its own electronic ID. We propose DLT system (Distributed Ledger Technology like blockchain or hashgraph) to record hourly wage and working hours. Before starting the job employer and employee sign the contract and store the agreed hourly wage in the system. Employee is obliged to use this system to record each hour in the job.
Now we need to discuss the values. Most people value their time differently but usually we treat our night time or weekends more valuable and we would rather, if possible, not work at that time... Therefore citizens could agree for example by debate and voting in Liquid Democracy system about their shared values and assign common, agreed multiplier factors that would automatically increase some of the hourly wages for all employees. For example (in a simple solution) we could distinguish early morning/ late evening/ night and also Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. We could decide how many hours per day, week, month and year we assume as “normal” work and which we treat as overtime and paid additionally. All the above definitions and related indicators are used together to calculate final hourly wage for each hour.
For example we could agree that new “normal” would be to work 5 hours a day, 20 hours per week and 80 hours per month. Working before 8 or after 19 is considered as unpleasant and paid a little extra while night shifts from 22 till 6 are treated extra special. We would also consider that Saturdays should be free for most citizens and Sundays would be extra paid for necessary work. And finally we could treat Fridays somewhat special as a new extended weekend concept. Let's assume that John agreed to a wage of 20€/hour and that we treat all above mentioned situations equally difficult(same multiplier) +10% to the wage. John starts work at 8 on Monday. If he agrees with his employer to stay longer than 5 hours (after 13 in this case) each additional hour over that 5 each day would earn him additional 10% (22€). He works 6 hours per day from Monday to Friday. On Thursday he starts getting additional 10% (up to 24€)because of over 20 hours allowed (unpenalized) for week work time and on Friday even more (up to 26€) because we treat Friday as extended holiday. Next week he has evening shift (from 15 till 21) and starts on Wednesday therefore his hourly wage for each hour after 19 is increased by 10% plus over 5 hours another 10% (24€). On Friday he starts getting additional 10% because of Friday new longer weekend, and on Saturday he gets additional 10% and another 10% for Sunday - its all cumulative! Also on Saturday he starts working more than 20 hours for the week so he gets another 10% to his pay. All factors increase the maximum hourly wage for Sunday to 32€ for Friday+Saturday+Sunday+weekly overtime+daily overtime+evening shift. This way all slight abuses of our shared values regarding how much time we should spend in work, when we work and how much holiday we have is simply added as a penalty to the hourly wage - incentivizing employers to consider hiring more people and giving enough holidays.
Side note: we could either define Saturday shifts as +10% comparing to the early-weekend-Friday shifts +10% or as +20% to the base wage - what matters is that the more “abuse” of our regulations there is, the higher the penalty and it is highly cumulative and it should be easy to spot and calculate!
To protect employees (especially for the gig economy), their wages could be put into some escrow system in advance. Just after signing the contract and/or in the beginning of each month. If there is no complaint from employer regarding the work that was done the escrow is automatically released to employee in the end of the month. This way there is no chance that, if the work is done, there will be no pay - no matter if we talk about full time employee or gig. Most modern DLT systems allow such escrow to be easily made by smart contracts. Of course the dispute in case of misunderstandings would require some 3rd party negotiator or judge or at least contract renegotiation and mutual agreement but the money is protected in escrow until the end of the dispute so the delays do not benefit the employer as it can happen now.
The base hourly wage could be negotiated together with contract to specify clearly if employee should expect evening and/or night shifts, over time hours, working weekends etc. But to give real power to employees there should be some, guaranteed by law, minimal wage or even better, as Global Hash Village suggests UBI (Universal Basic Income). This would balance the powers of employers and employees and give the latter the right to say “no” to unpleasant conditions. Individual contracts could also increase the above mentioned exemplary factors but on the state level there should be a minimum set.
As already mentioned such system would effectively increase the costs of manpower. Self governance requires responsibility. If we want to work less then this benefit would cost our society/economy and we have to expect price increase proportional to the change. Exactly the same as it is in the case of environmental protection regulations. In modern world of highly competitive global economy where capital is easily moving from country to country it might reduce competitiveness of a state that would like to decrease the number of working hours and/or increase the wages. Especially if citizens would naturally start buying cheaper products manufactured outside - killing the economy even further. In Global Hash Village the system requests renegotiation of the current World Trade Organization agreements and allows special excise taxes to protect values and economy. It would be probably quite easy to calculate what is the level of excise tax needed to balance state economy compared to others that still enforce their people to work “overtime” (up to the new definition what is normal and what is over). As in other cases such taxes could be easily avoided by corporations that provides certification that their manufacturing processes protect their workforce and do not allow (or penalize on similar level) overtime. The other countries (their citizens) would also see the benefit of implementing new rules to increase their happiness and level up to the countries which already implemented new rules - effectively removing the penalty of such new excise tax.