Spain details plan for 4-day workweek trial

OVIEDO, Spain

The Spanish government detailed its four-day workweek pilot program in the state gazette on Thursday, outlining the conditions for companies interested in applying.

Spain is setting out €9.65 million ($10.56 million) for small- and medium-sized industrial companies interested in seeing what happens when they allow their employees to work fewer hours.

Participating companies must cut at least 25% of staff’s working hours by at least 10% for two years to get the subsidies.

Government sources told El Pais that the plan is to start with small industrial businesses like shoe, canning, clothing, or car factories and use the results to expand to other business sectors.

In the UK, one of the world’s biggest four-day workweek trials recently ended. Its results were positive for proponents of a three-day weekend.

The study found that the 60 companies involved in the program saw business revenue stay broadly the same. Meanwhile, employees reported 71% less burnout and took 65% fewer sick days.

More than 90% of the businesses involved in the trial said they would continue with the four-day work week, as they noted productivity remained the same but staff retention and well-being improved.

Between 2015 and 2019, Iceland also conducted a four-day workweek trial with similar results. Meanwhile, the company Unilever said a pilot project in New Zealand was so successful that they would expand it to their Australian offices.

Last year, full-time workers in Belgium won the right to decide whether they wanted to work the same number of hours over five days or four days.

“With the four-day work week (32 hours), we’re launching into the real debate of our times. It’s an idea whose time has come,” said Inigo ErrejoAn of Spanish party Mss Pais on Twitter in 2021, when the government agreed to his idea for a pilot program.

Last year, the Spanish region of Valencia also launched a four-day workweek trial.