“You can do the tests and experiments you want to do, but you must also find mechanisms to control the production of each employee, to understand if they can produce in fewer days what they produce in a whole week”, warns the president of the CCIA, Francisco José Rosa, speaking to Lusa.

The businessman was referring to the pilot project announced by the new Regional Government, led by the social democrat José Manuel Bolieiro, to create a four-day working week in the Regional Public Administration, extendable to the private sector, “always in common agreement with the worker and the employer, to better reconcile their professional life with their personal and family life”.

Francisco José Rosa is not opposed to the measure being applied in the public sector but understands that it can hardly be extended to the private sector, especially to companies linked to the tourism sector, such as hotels, rent-a-cars or restaurants, who are already struggling daily with a lack of labor.

“If we reduce the number of working days per week, productivity on those days would have to increase in some way, and we would have to compensate, due to seasonality and the fact that there are many business areas that cannot be closed two days a week. If productivity does not grow, it is practically impossible for us to reconcile the two”, insisted the boss of Azorean businesspeople.

In his opinion, this pilot project, announced following the early regional legislative elections on February 4, could even become a “mousetrap” for private companies.

“There are, perhaps, some business areas where it is possible to do hybrid work and where it is possible to measure the production of employees and the company”, admits the president of the CCIA, concluding that, “in most cases, we can be here at entering a system, like a mousetrap, in which we will all be held hostage by the problem we are creating”.

The Government Program, approved by the Azorean parliament with votes in favor of the PSD, CDS, and PPM (parties that form the executive), with the abstention of Chega, IL, and PAN, and with the votes against by the PS and BE, foresees the creation of a "pilot project for a four-day week/telework (also extendable to the private sector), always in common agreement with the worker and the employer”.

A study carried out by the University of London, recently released, states that companies that adopted the four-day working week reported an average reduction of 13.7% in weekly working hours.

"On average, the four-day week involved a reduction in weekly working hours by 13.7% (from 39.3 to 34 hours, reported by companies)", can be read in the report presented by Pedro Gomes, professor of economics at the University of London, and Rita Fontinha, professor of strategic human resources management at the University of Reading, study coordinators.

However, workers who participated in the experiment reported a smaller reduction in the number of weekly hours actually worked, by 11.3%, from 41.1 hours to 36.5 hours, indicates the same study.

According to the document, 41 companies are experimenting with the four-day week in Portugal, covering more than 1,000 workers, of which 21 companies began the test in June 2023, with a total of 332 workers.