This European country is paying for companies to switch to a four-day work week

RockedBuzz
By RockedBuzz 2 Min Read

Spanish companies with fewer than 250 employees have one month to apply for a government pilot program within the framework of which they can reduce the working week to four days with full pay, the Spanish government announced.

The €9.6 million program will focus on small and medium-sized industrial companies, according to plans around 25-30 percent of employees will work at least 10 percent fewer hours with full pay. For employers they are partially compensated up to a maximum of €200,000 per applicant the costs of creating new work schedules.

The government will decide by November which companies will enter the program from among the applicants, and the companies must operate the experiment for at least two years, after which the results of their performance will be checked.

In parallel Testing of the four-day work week in the city of Valencia lasts for a month, for this purpose, the city council arranges for the entire population of the city of 800,000 inhabitants so that the local public holidays fall on four consecutive Mondays. The city will study the effects on fuel emissions and people’s well-being, and the results will be published by July.

The paper notes that In the world’s largest four-day week trial in Great Britain, employees of 61 companies worked an average of 34 hours over four days between June and December 2022 with full pay. Most of the participants decided to keep the shortened back.

Cover image: Getty Images

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