A long-running trial of a shorter working week in Iceland has been hailed an “overwhelming success,” as the vast majority of the country’s workers have since secured contracts to shorten their hours.
A report analyzing the impact of the trial found that by June 2021 some 170,200 union members from Iceland’s working population of 196,700 were now covered by shorter working hour contracts.
This means that 86% of workers were now either on shorter hour contracts or had “new mechanisms made available to them through which they can negotiate shorter hours in their workplace,” according the report, published Sunday by think tank Autonomy and research organization Association for Sustainability and Democracy (Alda) in Iceland.
Iceland ran two large-scale trials between 2015-19, cutting working weeks to between 35 and 36 hours from a 40 hour-week for many, with no reduction in pay. The trials, which eventually included 2,500 workers, were initiated by the council in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik and the country’s national government.
The trials included normal 9-5 workers, as well as those on non-standard shift patterns, and took place in a range of workplaces such as offices, playschools, social service providers and hospitals.
Following the trial, Icelandic trade unions and their confederations secured permanent reductions in working hours for tens of thousands of members across the country.
Autonomy and Alda’s analysis of the results found that a reduction of working hours actually maintained or increased productivity.
Read more at CNBC.
{Matzav.com}
Who wouldn’t want to work less for same pay! Who’s paying for it though? And the lost production?
Dumb אדם לעמול יולד
You sound like a typical tyrant boss. Never ever give the hard working employee a break. Keep beating him down until, either he quits or has a nervous breakdown.
50 years ago I was the Administrative Supervisor of a large military unit in Bangkok, Thailand. I supervised 90 clerk typists and secretaries in one big office. In those days we had no computers only IBM Selectric and Remington typewriters. I was responsible for reviewing all the investigative reports that were typed in my office. Everyone had their daily workload and most finished their work at the end of the day which was 5:00 pm. As I reviewed each and every report I made sure that there were no typos nor any grammatical errors. If there was one error in a report I would have them correct it but two or more errors on a page and I made them retype the entire page. I was really tough on my crew. One day I decided to experiment, I instituted a new policy. I had a sign put up in the office that read “IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO, DON’T DO IT HERE!” I told my crew that they can go home as soon as they completed their daily workload no matter what time they finished as long as the reports have no errors. Most of my crew completed their work 3-4 hours earlier than they had previously done, without any errors and left the office early. I was able to leave early too.
So were you around at the time the Titanic went down?
In a white collar job which require intelligence and creativity, a productivity per hour is inversely proportional to the hours already worked. That means that there is a certain amount of hours in a week when a total productivity is maximized and any additional hours are just an unproductive waste of time. This amount of productive hours in a week is different for each person, but about 35 a week sounds about right for an average person. Again, the purpose of work is to produce, not to torture people, and not log 70 hour weeks. So, if people can produce the same in less hours, then why shouldn’t they get paid the same?! Instead, in the northeast there’s a prevailing senseless culture of basically living in the office, which only hurts the total productivity in the long term. Another reason to move down south, where people are given time to live.