While the CEO of Total Patrick Pouyanné said he was “looking closely” at the subject of the four-day working week, in an interview with Les Échos, and the environmentalist presidential candidate Yannick Jadot said he was ready to resort to it, the Minister of Labor Elisabeth Borne on BFMTV closed the door to a generalization.
We cannot impose such a measure.
“In some companies, there may be negotiations to set up this four-day week, but we cannot impose such a measure, ”she said on BFMTV.
The choice must be left to companies
“It can cause problems of pressure and purchasing power” indicated the Minister of Labor Elisabeth Borne on BFMTV.
“It is a measure that can be discussed in each company but it cannot be a general obligation”, she added.
“It is not a measure that is decided from above. The choice must be left to companies,” the minister said.
“With the Covid-19 crisis, since September, we have noticed that the occupancy rate of our offices is 65% from Monday to Thursday. Friday is half as much. I wonder if we should not free up half a day, or even a whole day, to allow employees to take care of their personal tasks so that the rest of the week is dedicated to their professional mission “explained in Les Echoes Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies.
For Yannick Jadot, environmental candidate for the presidential election, this four-day week: “It’s a very good initiative (…) and the meaning of history is the reduction of work” he had said on RTL. He proposes an implementation “adapted to the local scale”.
The four-day working week can take different forms: working 35 hours in 4 days, working 32 hours in 4 days, which implies a change of contract with part-time and adaptations to the hourly rate of employees so as not to modify the remuneration, it can also mean working four days a week for only part of the year.
Spain is currently testing the four-day week. The government of Pedro Sánchez has approved a pilot project that allows companies that wish to do so to implement the 4-day week, ie 32 hours of work per week spread over four days. This test project will concern approximately 200 companies (between 3,000 and 6,000 employees) which will receive approximately 250,000 euros each to cover the costs incurred.