Imagine having seven and a half weeks off every year. Imagine what you could do: take car trips, take naps, picnic with your kids, explore your neighborhood, learn to make éclairs, write that novel. That’s what happened — most likely minus the éclair-making — in New England in 1908, when a mill seeking to accommodate its Jewish workers on their Sabbath gave employees not only Sunday off but Saturday too. It was a spark: 18 years later, Henry Ford closed his factories two days a week, and subsequent union victories brought the two-day weekend to the U.S., and the world, for good.
So let’s do it again. As part of their platform, green parties in the U.K. and Australia have recently floated the idea of a three-day weekend, for everyone, all the time. Politicians in Italy are also weighing a similar scheme, hoping to create more jobs. After all, if a 32-hour week were normal, more employees would be necessary to fill in the rest of the hours.
A FOUR-DAY WORKWEEK COULD ALSO BE GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.
This idea hasn’t really broken in the U.S. yet: There has been an uptick of schools switching to four-day weeks simply to save money, and the state of Utah attempted something similar for public workers. But it turns out that just working longer shifts for fewer days can actually be detrimental to your health. Some high-powered tech firms have implemented or discussed implementing four-day weeks, but that’s the kind of change that, while positive, offers more leisure time to those already privileged enough to enjoy it. One reason that green parties are the ones for pushing for systemic change, says Nicholas Ashford, director of the technology and law program at MIT, is that a four-day workweek could also be good for the environment. “A lot of the enthusiasm for a shorter workweek wasn’t driven by the idea of equity for the unemployed, it was driven by environmentalists,” Ashford says. He also points out that reduced commuting to the office doesn’t necessarily mean people use fewer resources: “What if they buy snowmobiles?”