Advances in technology and automation have reduced the need for manual labour. Therefore working hours should be reduced. To what extend do you agree or disagree?

The modern world with machinery advances and automation technology have made a significant impact on the labour force nowadays. Many ideas have arisen around this issue and some believe that the demand for manual labour has been decreasing together with the progress, leading to the reduction in working hours. Consequently, to my way of thinking, the suggestion of the cutback should be implemented and the reasons for this may come from a wide range of plausible justification.

First of all, the technological improvement has increased the productivity and accuracy in the contemporary work, hence the need for physical workers decrease. For example, in the past, the cashier, bank teller and other similar occupation had to serve and perform the task for every individual customer; but nowadays, thanks to the technology and computerization, most of the tasks has been replaced by machine. They are automated and the employees can have redundant time that needs to be reduced.

Furthermore, working less provide blue-collar workers with the opportunity to obtain a higher degree in their field. For example, they can optimize the superfluous time to read more books, papers or attend an online course to develop skills and knowledge. From that point, they can convert the surplus time of working manually and physically into that of controlling and supervising the machine mentally and intellectually.

Another explanation for those who hold the point in favour of this ideas is that it could lead to the growth of residents’ happiness by spending more time on family gathering and self-interest pursuing. An extensive diversity of experiments has also indicated that employees are motivated by reducing the number of working hours. This can also result in addressing health improvement by stress relief and relaxing.

To conclude, the opinion may sound reasonable due to several reasons. Therefore, I believe that there are clear indication that the working hours should be minimized correspondingly with the technological breakthrough.