A pair of Massachusetts lawmakers are the latest to try and make the four-day workweek a reality.
Rep. Dylan Fernandes of Falmouth and Rep. Josh Cutler of Duxbury filed legislation this week to create a voluntary program, the "Massachusetts Smart Work Week Pilot," that would create a tax credit for businesses who move their workers to a shorter week for the same pay.
Participating businesses would be required to transition at least 15 workers to a 32-hour, four-day weekly schedule without reducing their salaries. Employers would receive a tax credit in exchange for regularly reporting the shortened week's economic and social impact in their organization, such as on employee wellbeing and work-life balance.
Specifics of the tax credit, which would be administered jointly by the state Department of Revenue and state Department of Workforce Development, would be flexible and vary by employer in an effort to get a variety of companies of different sizes, industries and locations to take part, Fernandes tells CNBC Make It: "We want it to be flexible to attract a diversity of businesses, and different businesses benefit from different types of tax credits."
Fernandes says it's also important the pilot includes businesses run by women, people of color, veterans and people with disabilities to provide state-level funding to "support and uplift these businesses that have been too often overlooked in the past."
The legislation will now be directed to a committee and considered in a committee hearing.
'A life built around working all the time is not a very happy one'
Momentum behind the four-day workweek surged after the pandemic forced people to rethink how, where and when work gets done. In recent years, tens of thousands of workers around the world piloted a shortened workweek to study its potential benefits. And lawmakers are introducing legislation, like one Congressional bill to standardize the 32-hour workweek.
"The pandemic taught us that a life built around working all the time is not a very happy one, and what's more important is the ability to build relationships in your community" and with friends and family, Fernandes says. "A way to do that is to give people more leisure time. America has trended in the opposite direction of giving people leisure time, and that's a sign of society moving backwards."
He adds that Americans have not had a meaningful reduction in working hours since the 40-hour workweek became law roughly 100 years ago, "and that's with all these technological improvements that made workers significantly more efficient and productive."
A standardized four-day workweek still has a lot of barriers. In January, Maryland lawmakers introduced a similar tax incentive program for businesses to move to a four-day week, but legislators withdrew the proposal in March due to skepticism of the work model as well as budget concerns. Del. Vaughn Stewart, who sponsored the bill, says he plans to introduce new legislation in next year's General Assembly session with updated research, according to WYPR News.
Meanwhile, the share of companies offering a four-day workweek reached the 10% threshold for the first time last year, according to a recent Payscale report. A majority, 61%, of workers say they'd rather work a condensed workweek, and 33% say they'd even quit their job for one with a shortened week, according to a recent Monster survey.
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