IAcross Europe there are pushes for a 32-hour week. IG Metall is currently calling for this reduction in working hours with full wage compensation for workers in the north-west German iron and steel industry. Initiatives in other countries are also calling for a four-day week. In Great Britain, for example, there have already been individual attempts – and the battle over interpretation has broken out.
In Scotland, the left-wing government is now preparing a pilot project for civil servants and public service employees, as various media outlets have consistently reported. Prime Minister Humza Yousaf from the left-wing Scottish National Party (SNP), which is in coalition with the Greens, wants to start it soon. The pilot project is scheduled to start at the end of 2023 and last twelve months, writes the SNP-affiliated newspaper “The National”. Officials from several ministries and state agencies are expected to take part in the pilot project of a 32-hour work week. The trial aims to measure “well-being, environmental and productivity benefits,” says Yousaf’s government program.
Even before it starts, there is criticism. The catering industry has already complained that too many Scottish administrative officials were working from home and not going to their offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow. As a result, the city centers are empty. The majority of Scotland’s 22,000 state bureaucrats have worked partly from home since Corona and until today. The latest figures show that in sixteen of the largest state administration and ministries office buildings only around a third of the desks are occupied, in others around half. Some in business think civil servants don’t overwork themselves anyway.
Experiment with after-effects
Another pilot experiment with a four-day week in England is currently being hotly contested. The Liberal Democrats in government in the South Cambridgeshire district are defending a pilot project of a 32-hour week for the administration that has been running since the beginning of the year. Despite headwinds from London, they have extended it until April 2024. It is now being expanded to include garbage collection. The project is a thorn in the side of the conservative government in London. This week the Secretary of State for Local Government, Lee Rowley, wrote another warning. “We do not support a so-called four-day week in local government, and I once again call on them to immediately end their experiment with taxpayer money.”
The pilot project in the district around the university city of Cambridge has caused an international stir. The locally governing Liberal Democrats relied, among other things, on a report from the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Institute employees surveyed the 450 participating administrative employees in the first three months and came to predominantly positive results: In parts of the administration, performance had improved, in a smaller part it had stagnated or declined slightly. The district council took the report as confirmation. Through less fluctuation, more well-being and motivation of employees, you can even save money because you don’t have to hire expensive staff from temporary employment agencies, said district manager Bridget Smith. Joe Ryle of the 4 Day Week Campaign hailed the “historic experiment” as an “undeniable success.” Some media in Germany also reported on the experiment in this tenor.
Researchers in Germany are skeptical
However, through a request from the Tax Payer Alliance, it emerged that the district had asked the institute to delete parts of the results. They were also allowed to change wording in the study – “tinkering with it,” as it was said in an internal email. The Bennett Institute insists its study is independent. Local State Secretary Rowley criticizes that citizens have to wait longer if they have concerns because of the four-day week. There is a significant deterioration in processing times. John O’Connell, of the Taxpayers’ Association, said: “We have seen elsewhere that this experiment results in poorer services and taxpayers are left to foot the bill.”
In Germany, too, researchers from the Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research (IAB) of the Federal Employment Agency have expressed doubts that it is possible to be as productive in four days a week as before in five days. To achieve this, productivity would have to increase by 25 percent, calculated IAB researcher Enzo Weber. He sees no scientific evidence that this is possible.
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