The great misunderstanding of the four-day workweek
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/01/13/the-great-misunderstanding-of-the-four-day-workweek_6736987_19.html
The great misunderstanding of the four-day workweek
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/01/13/the-great-misunderstanding-of-the-four-day-workweek_6736987_19.html
11 Comments
**Far from being accompanied by the initial promise of a reduction in working hours, this organization has very often resulted in an intensification of employees’ working days.**
Over the years, the “four-day week”, which promised a reduction in working hours at the end of the 1990s, has become the “week in four days.” It may not sound like much, but that distinction changes everything, since it ends up meaning “no reduction in working time.” At France’s Centre d’Études de l’Emploi et du Travail, sociologist Pauline Grimaud analyzed all 300 company agreements that mention the four-day week in 2023, 150 of which actually introduced it. She is categorical: “Less than one agreement in 10 reduces working hours. In the vast majority, these are negotiations that condense the week into four days.” According to the Ministry of Labor, by the beginning of 2023, 10,000 employees were experimenting with the new division of time “into” four days.
What happened? Wasn’t it all about working less? In 1996, the Robien law created the four-day week to counter mass unemployment by reducing working hours. It offered a 40% exemption from employer contributions in exchange for a commitment by companies to reduce working hours to 32 hours a week over four days, and to increase the number of permanent employees by at least 10%. Repealed in 1998, that law served as a preamble to the current 35-hour week. The idea, in both cases, was to share the available work between a larger number of employees, while improving living conditions. But most of the experiments carried out at the time ceased at the same time as the financial aid, which was interrupted when the law was repealed.
LDLC is one of the few pioneers to have made the formula permanent. By 2021, the company had estimated the cost of switching to four days at 5% of its payroll, but didn’t even have to recruit to compensate for the reduction in working time, so much so that productivity soared.
From the 2020s and the Covid-19 crisis onward, the approach changed. Employers, faced with a desertion of offices on Fridays, were increasingly interested in the four-day week, but without a reduction in the number of hours worked, which enabled them to gain in flexibility and attractiveness at lower cost. A model that the former French government, that of [Gabriel Attal](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/09/06/ex-prime-minister-gabriel-attal-leaves-office-with-eyes-on-the-future_6725049_5.html), had tried to establish in the civil service, consigning to oblivion the initial four-day week project and its kinship with the 35-hour week, which had been constantly criticized by some employers and the law, in the name of competitiveness.
**Read the full article here:** [**https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/01/13/the-great-misunderstanding-of-the-four-day-workweek_6736987_19.html**](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/01/13/the-great-misunderstanding-of-the-four-day-workweek_6736987_19.html)
A wise man once said: It’s really important that we maximize our output because we’re consuming the Universe anyway. It’s basic thermodynamics.
Did anyone actually think the 4 day work week meant 32 hours? Everyone i know is smart enough to know it means 4 10’s.
I for 4×10 and it is so much nicer than 5×8
If you can get 4×10, you want 4×10
5+ day work week is a hundred year model, required for manufacturing. Let that sink in.
I understand how being more productive in your work can enable some professions to be paid the same amount to work fewer hours.
But there are many businesses that are open a specific number of hours each week (retail store, fitness studio, restaurant, etc), or roles like teachers, day care, plumbers, construction, doctors etc that cannot simply become more productive (unless we turn them over to automata).
And a business like there cannot simply pay their current employees more per hour to work less and hire 25% more employees to cover the other hours.
So, how do laws like this function for all businesses/roles?
As AI and other optimized options reduce the required manual labor of humans, moving to a 4 day work week will be a must. But whats constantly being overlooked is that these companies are gonna need everyone working still so they can make money so they can buy the goods. If there arent enough people working, not enough will be able to buy your stock.
So instead of everyone looking at it like a 5 day work week moves to a 4 day work week. We should be talking about 3-4 working day SHIFTS that overlap. That way, a company can have continued output throughout the entire week with zero lag, and workers dont have to work an entire week. More people working, but working less time.
The great misunderstanding is that people keep mentioning 4 10s. A 4 10 is a five day work week compressed into four. Unless you are working 32 hours with no loss in pay, you are not working a 4 day week.
Every time I click on one of these posts people are talking about 4 10s. The point of this proposal is to reduce hours worked but keep pay the same.
The 4 day work week is the failed dream of middle management. The people it would benefit lack the agency to implement it because upper management makes their own hours anyway. They lack the support to push for it because the actual workers still need to do their manufacturing or cleaning or customer service on Fridays.
This whole thing is silly. Why not focus on something *actually* meaningful instead, like the 14 days workweek? Work for 10 days straight, then have a 4 day weekend!
When I started a job as a mechanic for a car dealership in ’10 it was supposed to be four tens. But the job was paid based on hours of work billed, and we were continually hung up waiting on parts, and customers always wanted their vehicles back as soon as possible. Telling someone that their vehicle was going to sit on a lift for three extra days because that was my weekend, that was never going to work. In practice I worked six days a week, for years; it was generally five nine hour days, and then there was always stuff to either catch up on or get started on on the sixth day.
It did suck all the life out of my life at home, but I was able to pay off a house and then retire early. If I had to do it again I’d do it the same way.