Professional Reaction to the 4-Day Work Week Proposal in Ukraine: "On the Border of Populism"

A petition demanding the transition to a 4-day work week without a reduction in salary was published on the website of the Prime Minister's Office of Ukraine. Anna Pavlenko, who prepared the petition, references international studies conducted abroad regarding the issue. According to the results of these studies, reducing work days significantly increases the efficiency and productivity of workers. Pavlenko claims that this step would also reduce the psychological burnout of workers and increase overall job satisfaction. However, the data behind these claims and the applicability of this system nationwide are being seriously questioned by economists.

The petition emphasizes that this practice is a necessity to alleviate the severe psychological fatigue (burnout syndrome) caused by war conditions. The author states that comprehensive experiments advocating the reduction of the work week to 32 hours, conducted in countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, and Iceland, have yielded successful results. Additionally, it is stated that with the restriction of long working hours, sick leaves and cases of professional burnout have decreased significantly. According to the petition, the reduction of operational expenses such as office maintenance, energy consumption, and logistics also presents a significant savings opportunity for companies. Furthermore, the extra weekend leave people would gain will positively impact the economy by boosting domestic tourism and local service sectors.

There are also differing reactions to this demand in the public. In particular, Mihaylo Kolisnik, a professor at the Kyiv School of Economics, openly criticized the proposal, directly describing the demand as being "on the border of populism." According to his statements, it is highly understandable that human nature desires working fewer days a week for the same salary. However, the professor argues that the state attempting to manage the economy by making such a restriction mandatory is not a realistic economic policy. According to him, such promises are merely populist rhetoric put forward to gather public support but could lead to major economic problems in practice. Kolisnik notes that the country's current socio-economic realities and labor market dynamics are completely ignored in this proposal.

One of the most fundamental criticisms directed at the petition by Professor Kolisnik concerns productivity and production processes. According to Kolisnik, reducing working hours will definitely not increase productivity in manufacturing and physically demanding sectors. Giving an example in his statement, the professor questions how a transition to a 4-day work week for workers in a dairy farm could be practically implemented, reminding that cows still need to be milked on the remaining days. In this case, employers would either have to find additional staff or slow down production. Furthermore, he emphasizes that the productivity increase experiments referenced in the petition were mostly conducted only in companies within the service and IT sectors, and therefore do not reflect the entire general economy. Since a significant portion of the working population in Ukraine is employed in areas where tangible goods are produced, such as industry, agriculture, and mining.

The labor crisis and personnel shortage in the Ukrainian economy are other critical topics highlighted by the professor. Kolisnik states that businesses in the country constantly struggle to find qualified personnel, and many small-scale enterprises have been forced to shut down not due to financial difficulties, but directly due to a lack of employees. Reducing the working hours of current employees in the midst of this crisis would cause businesses to suffer much heavier and hard-to-recover blows. Moreover, the tax systems and work cultures in the countries mentioned in the petition are very different from those in Ukraine. In summary, experts believe that transferring the results of foreign research directly to the national agenda without questioning them would be wrong. Because the war conditions and critical labor shortage experienced in the country contain too many variables that could drive such a system to failure.