Rendi-Wagner: “It’s time to implement the four-day week”

In this country, the SPÖ has pinned implementation on the flags and demands a right to a four-day week. So far, this has only been possible in this country via a works agreement. That is enough for the employers, they always speak out against reducing working hours.

“It is time for implementation,” said SPÖ leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner on Friday in front of journalists in Vienna. On the one hand, the four-day week could help to exit the Corona short-time work. Above all, however, a “win-win-win situation” would result. “It’s about a voluntary, subsidized model of a four-day week, not about a general reduction in working hours overnight; an offer to all companies and employees where it makes sense.”

There is a profit for the public purse, because in the long term jobs would be created, which provide for purchasing power and thus more tax revenues, so Rendi. There is a further benefit for the companies, which can find skilled workers more easily and benefit from higher productivity. And the third winner is the employees. As numerous examples around the world and most recently a scientifically supported large-scale test in Iceland showed, these are “healthier, more relaxed, more motivated and more satisfied”. The compatibility of family and work is also much easier with a four-day week, which is especially good for women, stressed Rendi-Wagner. Not to be forgotten is that commuting one day less is climate-friendly.

“Four days week must be possible”

The model proposed by the SPÖ includes public funding to get critical companies on board. Because there are already those who are now more successful with shorter working hours than the competition with conventional working hours, as was emphasized at the press conference. Specifically, working hours should be reduced by 20 percent, i.e. to 32 hours a week, and thus one more day off should be created. Half of the remaining 20 percent should be paid by the AMS and 25 percent each by the employer and the employee. That would leave a gross wage of 95 percent with a four-day week, calculated Rendi-Wagner. For every four employees in the four-day week model, one additional worker should be employed “in order to achieve an employment effect”.

“We are in the 21st century. It cannot always only be demanded of the employees, they have to become more flexible. A four-day week in connection with a reduction in working hours must be possible,” said SPÖ trade unionist and national councilor Josef Muchitsch “in the direction of critics” . Austria should not miss out on this international development. Of course, a distinction will have to be made between industries, but a four-day week is possible in each. In any case, productivity increases when working hours are reduced. Funded pilot projects are needed to get the ball rolling. Companies that were already working on their own in Austria with shorter working hours and a four-day week would be downright stormed by skilled workers, while other companies were desperately looking for them.

Is there a test phase in Austria?

Over the summer, the SPÖ wants to enter into a broad dialogue with the relevant stakeholders from trade unions, via the other parties to the Ministry of Labor. Then in autumn she wants to table a motion in parliament. A dialogue fits in with statements by Peter Zellmann from the Institute for Leisure and Tourism Research, who demanded in a “ZiB” report on Thursday that in Austria – similar to Spain – 500 companies should start a test phase and a study for the four-day week. “The interest groups, the classic social partnership are hopelessly lagging behind this development,” said Zellmann. Employees in companies should now be able to “develop new bottom-up models themselves”. It’s about a new world of work. “The four-day week is the best known, the most important of them. It needs a new agreement that is completely new and that has almost nothing to do with the good old collective agreements.”

The Chamber of Commerce (WKÖ), respectively the local secretary general and ÖVP member of the National Council, Karlheinz Kopf, rejected the SPÖ proposals. He only spoke out in favor of more flexible working hours, including a voluntary four-day week at company level, which is already possible. A subsidized reduction in working hours is out of the question. “In times of omnipresent shortage of skilled workers with currently 85 shortage occupations in which skilled workers are desperately being sought, such an idea is completely past reality,” says Kopf. “What we need rather is the use of the AMS’s diverse instrument case to introduce the unemployed to the more than 100,000 vacancies.”