“Friday off”: Reducing Working Hours in Europe

By G. Kallis, M. Kalush, Hugh O.'Flynn, J. Rossiter, N. Ash́ford. 2013

143 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article explores the pros and cons for reducing working hours in Europe. To arrive to an informed judgment we review critically the theoretical and empirical literature, mostly from economics, concerning the relation between working hours on the one hand, and productivity, employment, quality of life, and the environment, on the other. We adopt a binary economics distinction between capital and labor productiveness, and are concerned with how working hours may be reduced without harming the earning capacity of workers. There are reasons to believe that reducing working hours may absorb some unemployment, especially in the short-run, even if less than what is advocated by proponents of the proposal. Further, there may well be strong benefits for the quality of peoples’ lives. Environmental benefits are likely but depend crucially on complementary policies or social conditions that will ensure that the time liberated will not be directed to resource-intensive or environmentally harmful consumption. It is questionable whether reduced working hours are sustainable in the long-term given resource limits and climate change. We conclude that while the results of reducing working hours are uncertain, this may be a risk worth taking, especially as an interim measure that may relieve unemployment while other necessary structural changes are instituted.

Subfields: Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/863a39026143a8a8692123085e8934a9835a7b39

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In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Citations in the corpus

Would shorter working time reduce greenhouse gas emissions? An analysis of time use and consumption in Swedish households (2015, background): “This differs from proposals to shorten work hours with unaffected salaries, where the reduction in work time would be financed by the company owners and through higher productivity levels (Kallis et al, 2013).”
Assessing the degrowth discourse: A review and analysis of academic degrowth policy proposals (2017, unknown): “…(2012) 40 Jarvensivu (2013) 5 Kallis and Martínez-Alier (2010) 23 Nierling (2012) 41 Johanisova et al. (2013) 6 Latouche (2010) 24 Speth (2012) 42 Kallis et al. (2013) 7 Lietaert (2010) 25 Tokic (2012) 43 Kallis (2013) 8 Martínez-Alier et al. (2010) 26 Trainer (2012) 44 Karlsson (2013) 9 Matthey…”
A Green New Deal without growth? (2021, background): “Such policies can, for instance, include work-time reduction to facilitate work-sharing (Kallis et al., 2013), wealth redistribution through income and wealth caps (Buch-Hansen and Koch, 2019), green tax reform (Cattaneo and Vansintjan, 2016), and environmental caps (Mastini and Rijnhout, 2018).”
Working time reduction policy in a sustainable economy: criteria and options for its design. (2014, background): “One issue, however, is that the details of what the “right conditions” are have received little attention, including what the principal considerations are for designing policies to support and encourage this (Kallis et al., 2013, pp. 1563–4).”