Spain launches program to reduce working hours in SMEs and increase productivity

Spain launched a pilot program last Friday to help small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) in the industrial sector to reduce the weekly work time of their employees without lowering their wages, with the aim of stimulating productivity.

The project, published in the Official State Gazette (BOE), will be tested for two years in companies that wish to implement organizational reforms likely to “generate a rise in productivity that offsets wage overruns,” said the Ministry of Industry in a release.

Interested companies must commit to reducing the weekly working time of their staff by at least 10%, over a period of two years. This measure should affect a minimum of 25% of the staff, the ministry specified.

The companies They will receive state aid in return. aimed at offsetting the impact of the reduction in working time on its production, but also the cost overruns associated with the implementation of the new organization, the statement added.

The objective is to have a number of companies with “sufficient statistical representativeness” to analyze the effect of this measure on productivity, before eventually “rolling it out to the rest of the economy,” he explains.

In recent years, several large companies have tried and even adopted the four-day week in Spain, including telecoms giant Telefónica and fashion group Desigual, but there are hardly any examples in the industrial sector and those that do exist have gone accompanied by a drop in salary.

The four-day week remains a sensitive issue in the country. Although the unions are mostly in favor, the employers are opposed, considering that it is not applicable in many sectors of activity.