What the article doesn’t mention (or I haven’t seen it when I skimmed through it):
This is only a pilot project for half a year, after that it’s probably back to the grind, unless the company decides otherwise
Only 45 companies are testing it and around half of them are very small (10-49 employees). So this is not the big thing this article is suggesting.
Craftsmanship and industry only make up for 6% of the companies doing this test. The biggest labour shortage is currently in these areas, so this is a slap in the face to young workers, because it implies that companies in these areas still don’t care about better working conditions, like they’ve done for the past few decades.
At least they’re doing one thing right this time: They reduced the amount of hours to 80%. So if you’ve worked 40 hours a week before, you’re now doing only 32 hours. This is a real four-day-workweek, which honestly surprised me. Mostly, companies try to just shove the same amount of work into four days, which is really stressful.
From personal experience, most companies are not adopting the four-day-workweek out of principle, especially when older people are running them. I have the privilege of a 32h week with Fridays off, but I’m also working at a very young and very small company. It’s not the norm and we still have a long way to go.
What also doesn’t help is that major conservative parties, our finance minister and bosses of big companies and banks are openly against it. When you go into mainstream media, there’s a new article almost every day telling young people to start sweating because they’re “ruining our economy”.
What the article doesn’t mention (or I haven’t seen it when I skimmed through it):
At least they’re doing one thing right this time: They reduced the amount of hours to 80%. So if you’ve worked 40 hours a week before, you’re now doing only 32 hours. This is a real four-day-workweek, which honestly surprised me. Mostly, companies try to just shove the same amount of work into four days, which is really stressful.
Source
From personal experience, most companies are not adopting the four-day-workweek out of principle, especially when older people are running them. I have the privilege of a 32h week with Fridays off, but I’m also working at a very young and very small company. It’s not the norm and we still have a long way to go.
What also doesn’t help is that major conservative parties, our finance minister and bosses of big companies and banks are openly against it. When you go into mainstream media, there’s a new article almost every day telling young people to start sweating because they’re “ruining our economy”.
That won’t go away that easily.