Mas Pais Proposes Four Day Week

The left wing party, Mas Pais has introduced a bill to the Spanish Parliament for a pilot programme to reduce the standard working week to four days working week.

If passed, the radical proposal will provide state funds used to make up the difference in the standard working week.

The left wing Mas Pais is led by Madrid MP and former member of Unidos Podemos party, Íñigo Errejón

Errejón fell out with Podermos leader, Pablo Iglesias, over the direction the party was taking, seeing it as increasingly at odds with it´s founding radical agenda and founded Mas Pais to pursue a more left wing agenda.

Podermos Unidos are now coalition partners with the Socialist PSOE party under Pedro Sanchez and Iglesias one of the deputy ministers of the minority government.

The Podermos / PSOE coalition agreed a pilot programme costing an estimated 50 million Euro to the viability of paying salaries of specified workers who have had their working hours reduced to 4 days by the pandemic.

Although the current rollout of the proposal is narrow in scope, proponents of the concept hope that it will incentivise companies to adopt the 4-day working week. Maria Alvarez, a leading campaigner for the concept, told local media that it is a “sensible idea that should be in every government’s toolbox coming out of this crisis”.