Iceland has reduced working hours to 35 to 36 hours a week without reducing wages, but productivity has improved.
According to a joint survey by the British Institute for Autonomy and Iceland’s Society for Sustainability and Democracy (Alda) on the 26th (local time), 51% of all workers in Iceland are subject to shorter working hours, including four-day work weeks, from 2020 to 2022. Based on this point, the ratio is expected to increase further, the two think tanks estimated.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Iceland had a 5 percent economic growth rate last year, the second-highest in Europe except Malta. Compared to Iceland’s average economic growth rate of around 2 percent between 2006 and 2015, it is a rapid development. The unemployment rate is also at the lowest level in Europe.
Earlier, large-scale experiments to reduce working hours were conducted in Iceland twice in 2015 and 2019. As a result, working hours for workers in the public sector have been reduced from 40 hours a week to 35 to 36 hours without pay cuts.
The experiment showed that productivity was the same or improved in most workplaces, while the quality of life of workers rose dramatically, and based on this, the current wide-ranging working hours reduction system was introduced throughout the industry.
Excluding Iceland, four-day-a-week experiments are underway in many parts of the world. In Germany, 45 companies introduced a four-day week system on a trial basis, but after being recognized for improving productivity and improving the quality of life of workers, most of them workplaces have begun to make permanent or extend their period, and in France, the public sector and some private companies are introducing the system on a trial basis.
Some companies in the United States and Ireland have also piloted the four-day week system in 2022.
EJ SONG
US ASIA JOURNAL
