Iceland Tried a Shortened Workweek and It Was an ‘Overwhelming Success’

Talk to people who work for the city of Reykjavík, they are now being compelled to do the work of 5 days in 4. They haven’t hired additional staff to cope with the time crunch. Employees are not happy.

> The strenuously long hours that “salarymen” (the term used for workers) put in led to deaths by overwork. It's so commonplace that Japan has a term for it—karōshi. “The government is really very keen for this change in attitude to take root at Japanese companies,” said Martin Schultz, the chief policy economist at Fujitsu’s global market intelligence unit.

Gotta love it when gaijin pretend knowing Japan by sharing over and over again the same myths. Yeah, Japan has words for many things, it does not mean that it's a phenomenon that's so commonplace that the word exists. The existence of a word and its frequency are very different things.

Also, for an article so insisting on sharing data, no graphs? Do your homework, Forbes.

> Between 2015 to 2019, Iceland conducted test cases of a 35-to-36-hour workweek without any calls for a commensurate cut in pay

> The Spanish government agreed to a 32-hour workweek over three years without cutting workers’ compensation

Obviously it would be preferable to have 3 days a week off instead of 2 but not having one's pay cut, that's a fantastic bonus on top. I never even considered asking to keep my salary, I always just assumed I'd go down to 80% which I'm fine with.