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The reduction of working hours is a subject of constant debate and testing both at home and abroad.
LO has had the six-hour shift as an important catchphrase for many years, and two years ago, the Labor Party proposed a government subsidy to companies that want to try shorter work hours for employees. The proposal was quickly sabotaged by Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
In the municipality of Stavanger, the six-hour shift can now quickly become a reality for some, writes Nettavisen, referring to the budget proposal of the majority parties SV, Rødt, MDG, Ap, Sp and FNB.
The parties request a pilot project in one of the municipal companies for a period of two years. The aim is, among other things, to see if benefits can be obtained in the form of greater well-being, reduced sick leave and better productivity.
– Better to share the work
– Our starting point is that many hundreds of thousands are now out of working life. So it’s better to share the work than for someone to work eight hours and a bit of nothing, Rødt’s leader in Stavanger, Mímir Kristjánsson, tells Dagbladet.
He points out that many in heavy occupations “burn out” before retirement age.
– Indicates that we can get more out of people by organizing work life in a different way. This is what we want to test. If we do it with good results, we have a showcase for other companies that want to try it.
A 2006 FAFO report concludes that no correlations between the six-hour shift and reduced sick leave or health can be documented in major trials in the Nordic countries. In recent years, however, new pilot projects have been introduced in various places.
The Tine cheese packing plant in Heimdal introduced six-hour shifts in 2006 and as a result experienced fewer illnesses and increased productivity. However, the pilot project was scrapped in 2019, to employee protests, because the calculation did not work.
It will make us all poorer
Two years ago, then-Finance Minister Siv Jensen presented calculations indicating that the tax for Norwegian households might have to be increased by between 8 and 11 percentage points to offset the effect of lost revenue for the Treasury, if the proposal became a national reality.
Kristjánsson admits to Nettavisen that the municipality does not know how much the project will cost. In principle, this should not lead to a reduction in the salary of employees.
– That’s what makes this expensive, but for us it’s just one way to increase staffing overall – to put more hands on work on the most important wellness services.
Receive criticism for the proposal
Most recently, in March, Finance Minister Jan Tore Sanner strongly opposed SV’s proposal to introduce a six-hour day with full pay compensation.
“If we cut the working day by just three and a half hours, from 37.5 hours to 34 hours a day. week, national wealth is reduced as much as the total value of oil wealth, both that is in the oil fund and that is still underground. SV’s proposal goes even further and will have even greater consequences, ”he wrote in a discussion post on Dagbladet.
It is clear to the Rødt leader that Stavanger municipality depends on the involvement of the state and the parties in working life to be able to introduce six-hour workdays so that productivity growth is not taken into account in the corresponding wage growth.
NHO Rogaland director Tone Grinland is highly critical of the proposal.
– I see no other purpose than this is politically and philosophically interesting, but also enormously expensive and definitely completely irrelevant for the private sector. This arouses little emotion in me, Grindland tells Nettavisen.
