Jun 19, 2023
Portugal has just launched a government-backed four-day work week trial, generating more buzz around the debate regarding the future of work.
Over the next six months, 39 private-sector businesses in the country — ranging from professional and scientific firms to manufacturing and retail companies — will participate in the experiment.
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Weekly hours will be reduced and workers will receive full pay. The aim is to analyze the impact of a shortened week on reducing employee stress and burnout as well as the economic, social and environmental implications.
The program is being run in partnership with 4 Day Week Global, the nonprofit behind several prominent four-day workweek experiments around the world.
If Portugal’s program is successful, it could add more fuel to the discussion around a four-day workweek in the U.S. and force more eyeballs onto a bill that progressive lawmakers believe could be the starting point for a major cultural shift in the way Americans work.
Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act
On March 1, Rep. Mark Takano of California reintroduced the ‘Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act’ in the House.
If passed, the law would reduce the standard work week from 40 hours to 32 hours by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and lowering the maximum hours threshold that triggers overtime compensation for many employees.
“For too long, our country has prioritized corporate profits over working people and Americans have been forced to work longer hours, sacrificing time with loved ones,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and co-sponsor of the bill, said in a news release.
“While policies enacted by President Biden and Democrats have finally started to raise wages for workers across multiple industries, it’s vital that health, well-being, and basic human dignity are valued over employers’ bottom lines. Establishing a 32-hour work week would go a long way toward finally righting that balance.”
The majority of workers impacted by the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act would be nonexempt, hourly workers, but some salaried workers would also fall under the scope of the bill’s provisions.
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Takano views the bill as a turning point and said he’s already seeing the 32-hour workweek discussion “in certain sectors of the economy.”
“Panasonic went to a 32-hour workweek. Kickstarter is a company that has explored this and one of their executives is a cheerleader for this whole movement,” he told the Washington Post. “What we need to examine is how this can become the norm across the various workforces in America.”
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What are the bill’s chances?
The previous iteration of the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act failed to get out of the blocks. It did not get a hearing in committee last year and it faces an equally challenging path to the floor this time with a Republican-controlled House.
But Takano remains hopeful about the bill’s potential. It piggybacks on a successful U.K. program involving more than 3,000 employees working four days a week for the same pay. Many participating firms kept up with the four-day workweek schedule after the trial, while 15% of workers said that “no amount of money” could convince them to go back to a five-day workweek.
The idea of a four-day workweek for the same pay in America has some high-profile support from the likes of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders,
As for Takano’s bill, which focuses on workweek hours and overtime, it has been endorsed by 4 Day Week Global, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
“Workers across the nation are collectively reimagining their relationship to labor – and our laws need to follow suit,” Takano said in a news release. “We have before us the opportunity to make common sense changes to work standards passed down from a different era.”
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Bethan Moorcraft is a reporter for Moneywise with experience in news editing and business reporting across international markets.
