Poland discusses four-day week
The leader of the opposition Civic Platform party, Donald Tusk, wants Poles to work less. He announced in Szczecin on Saturday that his party would draw up a detailed pilot programme for a four-day week before next year's parliamentary elections. The proposal has triggered a lively debate in the national press.
A way out of the generation gap
Rzeczpospolita sees Tusk's push for a four-day week as an offer to the younger generation:
“Millennials around the world have a different approach to work. Work is supposed to provide financial independence, not become the content of their entire life. This generation gap can also be seen today in the economy, as management experts point out, emphasising that management textbooks were written by the boomer generation, while Millennials have completely different expectations regarding work and career. Time for passions, for friends, for enjoying life is very important to them. And Tusk's proposal is a way out of this boomer mindset right into the terrain of the younger generation.”
Problematic in certain sectors
Wprost examines the pros and cons:
“The benefits of a four-day week include, above all, higher employee morale and well-being, a lower risk of burnout, higher productivity, less absenteeism, and easier recruitment. ... On the other hand, there are industries such as health care, emergency services or transport where people work around the clock and a change in the way the work is organised would be problematic, to say the least. Reducing working hours in these sectors would require hiring additional staff or introducing more overtime, which in turn would increase costs.”
A frontrunner in terms of workload
Polityka argues that Poland is not yet economically ready for the four-day week:
“Clearly, attitudes towards work depend on the level of economic development, and the structure of the labour market also depends on that. It is from this perspective that the question of working times in Poland should be considered. This is a country that is among the top OECD countries in terms of workload, with only the Croats, Romanians, Greeks, Russians, Maltese, Koreans, Chileans, Colombians, Costa Ricans and Mexicans working more than us. On this issue, there are no countries that experiment as much as the Icelanders or the British. Can Poland learn a lesson from this?”