When, earlier this month, she announced her intention to go ahead with a pilot project in Portugal, the Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security did not elaborate, but said the government’s goal was to “think outside the box”. and “leading the debate at the global level.” There are already many experiences abroad that can inspire the Ana Mendes Godinho team.
In Europe, there are pioneer cases such as Iceland and Sweden, which between 2015 and 2019 implemented a four-day week in specific sectors (public administration and health, respectively), with different results. In Iceland, that would work, but not so much in Sweden. By 2022, projects are underway in at least three other countries. One of the most progressive in the UK, where 3,000 workers at more than 60 companies started working just four days a week in early June. The experiment will be monitored by researchers from several universities, but it is short-lived: it takes place between June and December 2022, without increasing the daily working time and without salary cuts.
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