"It Sounds Amazing For Belarus."
- 1.07.2025, 9:24
How the world is moving away from burnout at work.
In Poland, a project has been launched which involves working 6 hours a day and 4 days a week without reducing wages.
The project will last up to a year and a half and will be open to companies, government agencies, foundations, associations and trade unions. The main idea is to reduce working hours by 20% per year. If the testing is successful, and the effectiveness of this idea is proved, then in the near future, the Polish authorities may make changes in the legislation.
It sounds surprising for Belarus. Especially against the background of Alexander Lukashenko's recent demands to his compatriots: "If someone is afraid of foreigners, he should work for three, at least for two. Otherwise, the ruler threatens to bring 150 thousand Pakistanis into our country...
Between the two, the idea of a 4-day working week is not new. Many countries have conducted similar experiments, which have shown good results. And in Japan, for example, some private companies have already made the 4-day working schedule permanent.
Deputy Chairman of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions Sergei Antusevich believes that it is not possible to apply this system in all industries, but it has shown its effectiveness. In a conversation with "Salidarnastsu", the trade union leader was optimistic about the future of the four-day system.
- I think the world will follow this path, because now there is such a tendency that personal history, family is the main thing. Not work.
It used to be that people spent more time at work, often to the detriment of their lives outside of work. Some even had to work multiple jobs. But when the same paycheck remains as it was with the 5-day week, the employer gets a less burned-out employee who has more time for personal life, for family. Such a worker is more imbued, let's say, with his work.
I think that even minus one working day reduces the level of stress, workers are less ill, because they are in more comfortable conditions in terms of the balance of working and non-working time.
If there was a surplus of labor force in Belarus, the system of 4-day work week would be self-evident. But today the state actively attracts people to work, or rather, forces them: we know that the so-called "slackers" are called for preventive talks and threatened with various punishments if they don't start working.
So nowadays in Belarus work is not a right, but an obligation. For example, I, too, was summoned to the penal inspection and asked: do you work or not? And they have some kind of fetish that everyone should be employed immediately. And people were coming back from prisons, where they had been imprisoned for political reasons, and not every employer wanted to hire them.
Before the pandemic, there were positive changes in the Belarusian legislation - I mean remote work. And in my opinion, this should have been the first step towards the fact that a person does not need to go to work five times a week: one day he could work remotely.
I quite admit that this will also come to that. But this story is rather related to the private sector, which is less subject to regulation.
Unfortunately, in Belarus the state actively interferes in business affairs and tells how to work. While in many countries of the world the state acts only as an arbiter and regulator, prescribing certain rules, but by no means dictating working conditions.
I think that the introduction of a 4-day working week is possible in those companies that are not connected with production, where there are no technological lines for production. As for production, it is possible only if there is a surplus of labor force, which is not observed in Belarus today.
But, of course, everything should be calculated and evaluated as far as it is economically beneficial. If it is favorable, both employees and employers will be interested in the introduction of this system on a permanent basis.