80 percent of the work with 95 percent of the wages: With her proposal for a voluntary 4-day week, SPÖ leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner – not surprisingly – turned the business stakeholders against her. The industrial association and the chamber of commerce consider the reduction of working hours to be no effective means of successfully maneuvering through the crisis. In the ÖVP-affiliated business association one spoke disparagingly of a “socialist stew” – but “warmed up only goulash tastes good,” criticized Kurt Egger, secretary general of the economic association.
In the unions close to the SPÖ and parts of social democracy, the concept of the 4-day week can definitely be positive.
One of the arguments presented there goes like this: The relief would increase the productivity of the employees again. In addition, it should be considered that AMS, public authorities and companies cut the cost of reducing working hours by three – the financial burden on entrepreneurs is therefore manageable.
In this direction, SPÖ leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner repeated the demand at the club retreat of the SPÖ parliamentary group on Monday. The 4-day week is an essential point in the social-democratic “power package”, in which the Federal Party has collected its political demands for coping with the crisis.
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