THE FOUR-DAY WORK WEEK: A STEP TOWARDS UTOPIA?

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing discussion regarding the Four-day Work Week (4DW) by politicians and intellectuals. Many of them seem to regard the 4DW as an absolute good, and as a cost-free policy. This thesis challenges this view. It argues that while there may be valid reasons to adopt the 4DW, these reasons cannot include the arguments that the 4DW is an absolute good, or that it is cost-free. To show that the 4DW can be neither of these things, it unpacks the different ways the 4DW can be implemented and explores how each variation brings its own set of benefits and costs depending on one’s status (employer or employee) and job type (blue-collar or white-collar jobs). The potential benefits that the 4DW might have include mitigating the problems of work in the form of boredom, bullying, and burnout. But there are two major possible obstacles, namely, the problem of peer pressure, and the problem of coordinating work, that might render the 4DW ineffective. Lastly, this thesis shows why the 4DW constitutes a distinctively political problem. Any attempt to implement a single definition of the 4DW uniformly across all industries would be challenging and definitely politically controversial.