Scrutable

Twitter has just pointed me to an interesting illustration of in how fake news spreads
https://newsnowfinland.fi/politics/how- ... opes-media
What seems to have happened is that, at a party shindig last summer the current Finnish PM Sanna Marin (who was then Minister for Transport) mentioned that she thought it would be nice if people could work a four day week, or six hour day, and still earn enough to have a decent standard of living. She followed this up with a tweet that ends (at least according to Google translate) by saying that

A 4-day week or a 6-hour day with a decent wage may be a utopia today, but may be true in the future.

This didn't get much attention at the time, but earlier this month the Brussels based newspaper New Europe reported this with the headline "Finnish PM Marin calls for 4-day-week and 6-hours working day in the country", turning Marin's utopian daydream into a concrete plan (and her "or" into an "and").

This version of the story got picked up by UK papers across the political spectrum and the Guardian, Mail, Independent and Metro were all reporting it as fact - although, to be fair to them, both the Guardian and New Europe have now corrected their articles, and you have to use the Wayback Machine to see how the story originally got reported (or read the print versions of the articles).

What's interesting is that none of the outlets involved seem to have set out to deceive. The fake newsery was driven by newspapers uncritically quoting stuff that has appeared in other newspapers without doing the - not particularly arduous - job of tracing stories back to a primary source. It is a trajectory followed by countless stories that appear in the mainstream press. A few years ago - back in the term days when "Fake News" was generally an accusation directed at Donald Trump rather than one used by him - I had hoped that the MSM might sharpen up their fact checking in order to create distance between themselves and less reliable outlets, but that doesn't seem to have happened.

The Graun were taken in, and have now amended it:

This article and its headline were amended on 6 and 7 January 2020 to remove the suggestion that a four-day working week was Finnish government policy under prime minister Sanna Marin. Last August, before she became PM, Marin was reported as having floated the idea after she said during a panel discussion that a four-day week or six-hour day could be the next step in our working life. On 7 January 2020 the Finnish government tweeted that there was no mention of a four-day week in its programme.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/short ... -happiness

GeenDienst wrote: Tue Jan 07, 2020 4:04 pm The Graun were taken in, and have now amended it:

This article and its headline were amended on 6 and 7 January 2020 to remove the suggestion that a four-day working week was Finnish government policy under prime minister Sanna Marin. Last August, before she became PM, Marin was reported as having floated the idea after she said during a panel discussion that a four-day week or six-hour day could be the next step in our working life. On 7 January 2020 the Finnish government tweeted that there was no mention of a four-day week in its programme.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/short ... -happiness

New Europe also amended their story online. Unfortunately the print version of the Guardian still has the original false claim (and I would guess that's also true of New Europe). It is to their credit that they were reasonably quick of the mark, but it would have been more to their credit if they had checked the story in the first place. You will, I am sure, be shocked to hear that the Daily Mail have not yet corrected their reporting.

Perhaps the online media should ( be mandated to) have publicly accessible change logs, much like Wikipedia articles?

Pucksoppet wrote: Tue Jan 07, 2020 4:34 pm Perhaps the online media should ( be mandated to) have publicly accessible change logs, much like Wikipedia articles?

I doubt that they could be mandated to do it, but there could perhaps be some sort of kitemark scheme, where an outlet only gets the kitemark if they comply with certain standards, such as change logs. I would want that to include a requirement to link to primary sources where they are available, and to explicitly state that they are relying on secondary sources in other cases.

snoozeofreason wrote: Tue Jan 07, 2020 3:56 pm
What's interesting is that none of the outlets involved seem to have set out to deceive. The fake newsery was driven by newspapers uncritically quoting stuff that has appeared in other newspapers without doing the - not particularly arduous - job of tracing stories back to a primary source.

Classic churnalism.

The ABC (Australian BBC) is reporting today about an Australian company which closes it's office on Wednesday each week and works 4 days a week, in two mini-weeks (Mon, Tues & Thurs, Fri), with staff working 37.5 hours a week. It's reported an increase in profits of ~30%.

All of the "well, it won't work in this industry!" comments are being brought up, and it may not work in something like teaching or entertainment, but the office spokesman was saying that everyone initially thought it wouldn't work for her company, but once imposed it's been well received.

They mentioned that the two two-day stints meant that there was no 'Hump-day', and Friday was treated as a full work day, with no-one slacking off on Friday afternoons. It also gave everyone Wednesday to book things (medical appointments, workmen, etc).

Of course, if *everyone* had Wednesday off, it'd no longer be as easy to schedule doctors appointments, etc.

Martin_B wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 12:16 am
Of course, if *everyone* had Wednesday off, it'd no longer be as easy to schedule doctors appointments, etc.

Well, obviously. The doctors wouldn't be at work.

For some types of work a noticeably longer day would be a problem because it would be too exhausting, so people need to spread their work out over 5 days.

In the tech industry people increasingly set their own hours and have regular days working from home where nobody's checking what you do as long as long-term projects land in a reasonable amount of time and you're available when you commit to be for on-call duties etc..

I think people actually end up working more hours when they're allowed to do that and as long as it's an interesting job because they can see a reason to.

I tend to be a bit suspicious about claims that changes increased profits or productivity by X%.

There could be a variation of the Hawthorne effect, whereby people working in companies that radically change working hours are more motivated because they know they are taking part in a novel experiment.

It would be good to see a long term assessment of the effects, in case everything gets back no normal once people get used to it.

If "normal" was the same weekly productivity as before on a day less, that would still be a good thing.

GeenDienst wrote: Fri Jan 10, 2020 10:56 am If "normal" was the same weekly productivity as before on a day less, that would still be a good thing.

Or even slightly lower if it lowered some other costs associated with staffing, heating buildings, etc.

I don't know how generalised it is, but I certainly know a number of US companies that finish the working week at lunchtime on Friday - but then again, their holiday entitlement is/was only 10 working days + public holidays

GeenDienst wrote: Fri Jan 10, 2020 10:56 am If "normal" was the same weekly productivity as before on a day less, that would still be a good thing.

Probably best to measure productivity in terms of output per hours worked. If that increases (eg the same weekly output for fewer hours) then that is a good thing. At the very least the company might find recruiting easier if employees work fewer hours for the same annual pay.

Gentleman Jim wrote: Fri Jan 10, 2020 2:44 pm I don't know how generalised it is, but I certainly know a number of US companies that finish the working week at lunchtime on Friday - but then again, their holiday entitlement is/was only 10 working days + public holidays

I've not heard of that, but then I work a 40 hour week for a semi-Federal agency. We do have the option of "Alternative work schedule" - i.e. a 4x 10 hour day work week instead of 5x 8 hour days. Our team in Hawaii use that extensively, as their work involves an hour and half drive from the office to the mountain top and an hour drive back every day, and that saves 2.5 a week as well as giving more time to complete tasks before the telescope has to be back on the sky each night.

The company my wife contracts to has unlimited paid leave. This seems to result in less leave being used that a 15 or 20 day a year leave allowance would.

I'm currently at 19.5 days a year plus Federal holidays paid leave allowance, which will at some point rise to 25 days a year, btw.

They are all big pharma companies so I expect there is some sort of conspiracy and/or cover-up