VALENCIA'S mayor plans to 'pilot' a four-day working week for one month next year, to see whether productivity and staff morale improves, worsens or stays the same.
Joan Ribó, from the centre-left regional party Compromís, is keen to study the impact of reducing the working week from the standard 40 hours to 32, with a three-day weekend.
It will not involve shutting the city hall for an extra day, since the experiment will be in April 2023, meaning two of the weeks are only four days long anyway due to Easter.
The local bank holiday on January 22, in honour of San Vicente Mártir ('Saint Vincent the Martyr'), falls on a Sunday, meaning it would normally be lost, so Ribó intends to move it to a Monday in April.
Effectively, this will mean staff working four days a week from Tuesday, April 11 to Tuesday, May 2, since May 1 is a national holiday.
In total, four weeks at a total of 16 days rather than 20.
“It's a study we want to carry out in the city council,” explains Ribó.
“The regional government´has held a number of conferences over whether it would be feasible to move towards a 32-hour week.
“We want to see what happens, without getting involved in any type of collective bargaining between employees and companies – that falls outside our jurisdiction – and what would be the effect for, say, tourism, the hospitality sector, the public transport network, and how families would react.
“We're aware that there are major industries where people either work remotely, where their work is about achieving objectives, jobs or projects, and where the actual number of hours at your desk is not a determining factor.
“So we think it is important to investigate this.”
Ribó says it would be a positive move in terms of the work-life balance if it proved successful.
“For any member of the workforce, reducing working hours is a step forward for them and their families, and what we want to see is how our city responds, since we believe it's a positive move,” he explains.
“This hasn't been done anywhere in Europe – not across a whole city – so we're keen to try it.”
Valencia Chamber of Commerce chair José Vicente Morata says a 'cost-benefit analysis' is needed among companies concerning working hours.
“It's true we're a very open, very Mediterranean city, where we're gradually getting more and more technology firms setting up; their work schedule organisation is often different to the traditional format, although at the end of the day it's a decision made between workers and companies,” Morata admits.
“We need to evaluate all this so that those companies which are able to do so, can, and end up deciding they will.”
