This topic lends itself to fostering illusions—or, conversely, to dispelling them. Dialogue is useful, as it leads to a discussion of the major challenge facing Greek society and the economy: low productivity and the need to increase it.
But which dimension are we talking about? Work measured in working days, weekly working hours, total working hours over a career, or wages?
It is internationally established that longer working hours are associated with lower productivity per unit of labor, while shorter working hours are associated with higher productivity.
“Experiments” and 4-day workweek initiatives have been implemented and are becoming more widespread. In recent years, in high-productivity economies (including the EU), options for more flexible work arrangements have been explored, driven by employees’ desire and/or companies’ pursuit of increased productivity and flexibility, and “pilot” implementations of the 4-day workweek are being tested in various forms. Such as:
- primarily a 4-day workweek without a reduction in pay and without a reduction in total working hours, with the option of a 4-day workweek of 10 hours per day. This is now permitted in Greece, Belgium, etc. Even in rapidly developing India, which has lower productivity, the 4*12 model is in use (4 days – 12 hours per day, as the 48-hour workweek applies there).
- Implementation is determined at the company level. Thus, for example, NOKIA —back when one out of every two cell phones we held in our hands was theirs, that is, twenty years ago—implemented in Finland, through an agreement between management, employees, and the union, the option of a 3-day workweek with 12-hour workdays. There have been other examples since then.
- There is the 100-80-100 rule (100% of pay, 80% of working time, 100% of productivity), meaning an increase in productivity.
- in labor-intensive businesses, sectors, or services—such as healthcare, social services, etc.—where it creates a need to compensate for reduced hours through hiring, thereby increasing costs (see experiments in Sweden and Iceland).
The critical factor is who can do it. Just as critical factors are overall productivity and labor productivity. Which depend on technology and human capital. And on which industrial revolution you are in: as a society, as an economy, as a business, as an employee. Who you produce with, who you’re organized with.
Productivity is the critical factor in the success of the 4-day workweek, which is why it is easier to implement in businesses with high and growing productivity.
The history of industrial revolutions shows that the technological revolution, the revolution in the organization of work, increases productivity and raises the prosperity curve. And this productivity is distributed in the form of higher wages, shorter working hours, and profits that become new investments, in order to further increase productivity, jobs, and employment...
The Second Industrial Revolution is associated with the eight-hour workday, the six-day workweek, and the definition of overtime.
The Third Industrial Revolution in the 1980s brought changes not only to the dimension of time and the organization of work—as every industrial revolution does—but also touched upon and opened up the dimension of the workplace: remote work, telework. What we are experiencing now, around the world in the wake of the pandemic, is the fifth wave of telework, which has changed the scale of the phenomenon.
Which industrial revolution you are in determines what you can achieve as a society, as an economy, as a business, and how you want to distribute productivity gains. When you have them. Whether through increases in real wages or reductions in working hours.
However, you must be a productive society and economy to be able to—by increasing overall productivity and labor productivity—distribute it between higher wages and reduced working hours per week, per month, per year, and throughout one’s working life.
This issue will occupy us in the coming years, especially those who are part of the 4th or 5th industrial revolution.
* Economist, Member of the ILO Executive Board