Corporations that do not want 4 days workweek

I’ll start this post with companies that in some way stated that they do not want 4 days workweek

Sadly it’s not easy to find such. Most of the corporations I found were in favor of 4-day workweek. Well at least on paper. [1]

What I’m interested in is a less positive outcome

So for this particular study, 5 companies stoped the pilot program and went back to their 5 days week. I cannot find which companies are those as it’s not mentioned in the document. Still, it’s a fact that such corporations exist

What I’m interested in is what are the basis of their claims. Why even though research finds that we can work 4 days a week and productivity does not drop, there are still companies that do not want to opt in this change?

I’ll start this section with one Twitter post that made me write this post. Here it is. The shit-storm of the week on Polish social media. MBank Research Twitter post. [2]

MBank Research decided it’s good to ask workers about their opinions about 4 day working week. To simplify process they formulated bunch of questions and answers

The question asked of the workers was: What are you the most afraid of in 4 workweek? and the answers followed:

The bomb was dropped. People started to write comments in response. No one was injured but some people got offended. People like me.

What are MBank arguments? I tried to find research from it but I could not find one. What I found though is research made on workers of different industries that what I see share the worries of corporations. [3]

This research is a survey made for workers of different industries like manufacturing, education, healthcare, finance, IT & Telecoms

The picture seems pretty clear here. Manufacture workers, teachers, and healthcare workers. They all are pessimistic about 4 day workweek

Where is this pessimism coming from? They are worried that it’s not possible to fulfill the demand for their work in reduced time. This makes sense but we already reduced the workweek to 5 days right? Like the week has 7 days and most people work only 5 days. At least in Europe. Why not 4 then?

In further chapters, I’ll present my analysis of 4 day workweek origins and I’ll present my opinion on it. I’ll also mention how we can fight for 4 days a week or any other right

Have fun reading!

Origin of 7 days week

I’ll start my research by asking a simple question

Why the f&#* do we have 7 days in a week?

Well, it sounds silly, right? It’s something your kid can ask and you could probably answer to it right away. Right?

For me, it was not obvious. I was never good when it comes to history. There are people though who researched this topic and found the answer [22] [23]

The number of 7 day week was introduced by Babylonians

But it’s good to keep in mind that other cultures used different numbers to represent how long this period lasted

You might now ask Dear author of this post, why we should care about this?

And my answer is This is a basis from which other rights were made. If not Babylonians picking more or less random numbers that represent period of time we call a week we would not have 5 days working week.

And when I mentioned that it was random that Babylonians picked 7 and not for example 10. Here I present you a quote from a publication I found

Origins of 5 days working week

Let’s stop with Babylon and focus closely into burning it

5 days a week. When this concept was born?

Apparently, there is no single origin. [6] We can see that it started to be introduced around the year 1900

What is certain though is that it was developing and increasing. From one day per defined period up to two days. The system changes needed laws and in various countries different dates of such laws are applied

In USA it was standarized in 1938 [8] [9]

And in the UK it happened in 1998 [10] [11] for workers below 18 years old. Wait what? What about adults? Well from what I read UK follows the law of UE [12] and now it’s no more than 48 hours

To conclude this chapter usually you work hours a week and not days a week. In Europe, you cannot be forced to work more than 48 hours a week and usually, you work 40 hours

Also These laws were influenced by labor unions and strikes [10]. Probably without them, employees would be in destination F

Origins of 4 days working week

Now, we know that 5 days a week workday or 40 hours a week was something that was granted by law and was opposed by corporations. We also know that weekdays are kind of artificial and just by luck we have 7 days a week and not 10

What about working 4 days a week? Who came up with this?

Again just as with 5 days workweek there is no simple origin but we can see different origins combining into something bigger. [7]

4 Day Week Global seems to be currently the biggest organization that proposes this change. [13] It was created in 2019 and it has since that time they created multiple pilot programs in various countries. Their pilot programs were mentioned in the first chapter of this blog post

The biggest goal of this organization is to:

I’m not gonna go through all the arguments behind the benefits of 4 days workweek. To mention a few of them it’s proposed that 4-day workweek will positively impact workers' physical and mental health without compromising to quality and value of their work

Origins of law

I think we can all agree that after removing all worries about reducing the impact, value, and revenue of corporations, 4 days a week would be pretty lit. I would love to work 4 days a week and not focus on the value of the company I work for

Here are some author notes:

What is law?

Since I’m not interested right now in philosophy of law I’ll just focus on ways to change it

The system change depending on the country is tedious and long. Here is an example [15] from UK. It consists of 13 steps from person idea to actual law act

Before that, you probably need to put some pressure on lawmakers. You could do that by: [16]

or you can also pick some of the more drastic ways that worked through history

How to fight for rights? Example of women’s voting rights

As for any controversial topic, 4 days weekday will be hard to introduce. This case study is I assume good example of how even the most cultural and civilizational norms can be changed

Every time I think about fighting for some rights I see the prohibition of slavery and women’s rights to vote. Both used to be controversial in Europe and both laws were granted by the hard work of people who sometimes dedicated their whole lives to fight injustice

The history of women’s rights to vote is complicated and for US got visualized in the form of a timeline on this website [19]

Key points which you can take:

Corporations which introduced 4 days a week

There are already corporations that support 4-day workweek. In the USA the list starts with many IT companies but not only. [20]

What we also seen in first chapter of this post the benefits for employees are huge. In research I shared [1] it was shown that

Keep in mind that there are different ways to introduce this 4 day workweek. For more information please check sources [1]

Conclusions

I hope I did not bore you with my writing and that you learned something new

To conclude, a fight for 4 days or 32/34 hours workweek is happening and I don’t think it can end without system changes. We need workers' influence and a new set of laws

I think it’s natural that we don’t want to work till we die and the sooner we get more free time from work the better for everyone. It’s sad that the current system is built in a way that grants me more or less financial freedom when I’m old and grumpy. But this system is something we can change. I don’t think we can escape capitalism. It’s too idealistic. Probably we will work and die for many more centuries. Or maybe thanks to corporations we will all die due to global warming

What it’s good to know is that people who already tasted freedom do not want to take it back

Also keep in mind that there are already countries where working 32/34 hours a week is acceptable by employers and society

AI is slowly taking our jobs and corporations gain more and more money. I think right after 32/34 hours workweek we could start fighting for minimal wages for everyone regardless if they work or not. If we are being replaced by AI maybe AI owners should pay taxes just as we humans pay for our living

Ok, that’s it for now. I’m going to drink some Leffe beer and play Borderlands. Have a great day everyone!