Less work, the same wages: the US is tempting with a four-day week

The idea from the Californian parliament recently made headlines across the country: employees in companies with more than 500 employees should have to work 32 hours instead of 40 – with the same wages. According to the draft law, those who are paid on an hourly basis should in future be able to charge overtime from the 33rd hour, i.e. one and a half times the hourly rate.

California is the fifth-largest economy in the world – and as such, it must point the way to the future, according to Democratic MP Cristina Garcia, one of the initiators of the bill. The pandemic and the current bottlenecks in the labor market show that the work-life balance for employees urgently needs to be improved.

In fact, there is a shortage of people willing to work in the country. According to labor market statistics, last year more than 47 million Americans her position voluntarily. In California, too, “Help wanted” posters hang everywhere in shops. The four-day week, so the idea, should lure employees back into working life.

Almost 3.6 million workers and 2,600 companies would be affected by the new Californian law – technology groups such as Salesforce and Apple as well as the Tesla factory and large hospitals. The California Chamber of Commerce spoke of a “job killer”. Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom called the proposal “terrifying.”

If California actually passes the law, companies would stop hiring, lay off workers and forgo wage increases for the next five years, said Bloom.

In addition, it is to be expected that numerous companies would probably relocate to the neighboring states of Oregon and Nevada. Also the opinion department of the «Wall Street Journal» scoffed recently: “Do the Democrats really believe that workers at Tesla can assemble as many cars in 32 hours as in 40 hours?”

«Not four days, but five days are crazy»

The criticism was received by the MPs. The California State Legislature has the bill just postponed until further notice – but the idea of ​​a four-day week is not off the table. On the contrary: Numerous companies are currently voluntarily switching to a 32-hour week or are considering corresponding pilot tests, always with the same wages for the employees.

For example, the San Francisco-based software startup Bolt, which is considered a “unicorn” with a valuation of 11 billion dollars. “The idea just sounds crazy compared to our societal norms,” ​​says founder and CEO Ryan Breslow. The four-day week makes perfect sense: “I think five days are crazy.”

In 2021, Bolt initially gave his employees individual Fridays as “wellness days” so that they could better cope with the consequences of the pandemic. This was so well received by the workforce that the startup has now gone over to four days. “We’re not trying to squeeze five days into four,” says Jennifer Christie, Bolt’s chief people officer, who is responsible for HR issues. Rather, it is about fundamentally rethinking the way the 600 employees work.

The employees don’t have to “graze comfortably like cows,” said the 27-year-old CEO Breslow in a recent interview, “but hunt like a lion with great energy”. In an attempt to work more efficiently, many Bolt employees would have emailed more and collaborated on documents instead of holding meetings. “You get smarter about how you work and how you maintain contacts,” says Breslow.

The software company Buffer also introduced the shortened working week with the same wages in May 2020 – initially only for one month to do something good for employees in the pandemic. A noticeable drop in productivity was expected it says on the company blog. But the opposite was the case: According to internal surveys, 84 percent of employees managed to get their work done in four days, and more than 90 percent of employees were happier and more productive. The four-day week is now the new normal at Buffer too. There are no meetings on Fridays and no communication via email or company chats.

The 40-hour week has been around for 80 years

Elsewhere, the four-day week has also been experimented with. Iceland, for example, launched a pilot project that caused a stir internationally. Companies in Spain and New Zealand also tested the shortened working week. Belgium declared recently issued a “right to disconnect” for its civil servants and shortened the working week to four days.

But that was unthinkable in the US for a long time. The “nine to five” job has been a mainstay of working life here for decades. Even the 40-hour week once seemed revolutionary: In the age of industrialization, America’s workers often toiled 100 or 120 hours a week. In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant first introduced the 8-hour day for government employees; entrepreneur Henry Ford followed suit in his factories a few years later. Ford found that a longer workday resulted in only marginally more productivity. However, it was not until 1940 that Congress approved the 40-hour week nationwide.

Then, in 1956, Vice President Richard Nixon wanted to go one step further. He promoted the four-day week, «to support a new way of life – better than what we know to date». Nixon claimed that this change was unstoppable, but he was wrong. In fact, Americans now work more than 44 hours a week on average, as the Gallup Institute has found – an hour and a half more than ten years ago.

There are also hardly any part-time jobs in the USA: As of March 2020, 84 percent of Americans worked five days a week, 5 percent only four days and 11 percent even six.

A means to stand out from the competition

Startups like Bolt and Buffer are now also using the 32-hour week to differentiate themselves from other employees. “Especially in Silicon Valley, the battle for the best minds is intense,” says Breslow. According to the company, the number of applications has increased by a third since the company introduced the shortened working week.

In view of the fierce competition for skilled workers, other companies are quick to copy such new ideas. In fact, the list of companies that have, or are considering, moving to the four-day workweek is growing rapidly. It ranges from Silicon Valley startups such as Signifyd to the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and the online retailer Shopify to the Panasonic group. “There are so many moments in the work week that are just a waste of time,” said Banks Benitez, CEO of the accelerator Uncharted, which introduced the four-day week 2020.

Benitez compares it to a smaller suitcase that you take with you when you travel, instead of lugging a huge piece of luggage with you. “You also have to make compromises.” In order to let the employees work more concentrated, Uncharted introduced two “deep work” blocks: No meetings are allowed for four hours on Tuesday and Thursday, the employees should be able to concentrate fully on their own work.

Focused work is a key requirement for a shorter work week, agrees Justine Jordan of Philadelphia-based software company Wildbit. The company has allowed its employees to work a 32-hour week since 2017, according to the Wall Street Journal. Most of the 30 employees take Fridays off, some on Mondays, and some employees with children spread the 32 hours over five shorter working days.

Conscious decision against a shorter week

But the pilot tests with the four-day week do not work everywhere. the Market research company Alter Agents returned in 2021 after ten weeks back to the usual five-day rhythm because the new working model created tensions among the employees: some took their days off, but others worked voluntarily. The shorter week also brought problems in contact with customers. “It hurt our work culture,” said CEO Rebecca Brooks in an interview. Instead, every employee now has an extra day off per month.

Other startups also report that the four-day week has undesirable side effects. At Uncharted, for example, the employees are more hesitant than before to ask others for help. The corporate culture at the startup buffer is also suffering from the new working time model. There are simply “fewer hours a week for casual conversations and team activities,” says the company blog. More team building activities and meetings in the office have now been put on the agenda for the current year.

The NZZ correspondent Marie-Astrid Langer follow on twitter.