Will We Get To A Reduced Work Week?

By Jonathan Goldberg and Grant Wilkinson

In April, the subject of a reduced working week for South Africa came up in a Parliamentary Q&A session. A study conducted by researchers at Oxford University found that South Africa has one of the longest working weeks in the world and this prompted the discussion. The government noted that research had previously been conducted into the state of the working week in South Africa, however, new data needed to be collected.

The Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) states that workers are only allowed to work a maximum of 45 hours per week. (This does not include overtime.) However, these stipulations do not apply to senior managers or those who earn above the threshold. (As of 1 March 2023, this was set at R241?110.59 per year.) Under a collective agreement, working hours can be averaged out over four months.

The Four-Day Work Week In SA

Although popularised in recent years, the notion of the ‘four-day work week’ has been around for most of the 20th century. ?In 1928 economic John Maynard Keynes predicted that the 15-hour work week would become the norm in the next century.

Fast forward to the 21st century and in many countries the shortened working week has been implemented with great success. For instance, in one of their Japanese subsidiaries, Microsoft applied the four-day work week and productivity increased by 40%. Overall, according to an article entitled Four-Day Work Weeks Are Good for Your Health, a Large Study Finds, written by Jamie Ducharme and published on the time.com website, the four-day work week improves employees’ health by reducing anxiety and stress as well as enabling better sleep and more time for exercise.

A four-day work week could be applicable to some organisations. Less time in meetings and more time to focus on outputs can get an organisation to that point. What South Africa cannot afford is a reduction in working time without an increase in productivity or a reduction in pay. So, for instance, in a factory working in a seven-day shift cycle, you could have a shift system accommodating a four-day working week with fewer hours worked. That would however have to be with reduced pay or a guaranteed increase in productivity.

COVID-19 pushed us into a new reality where South Africans and the world had to embrace technology and the new world of work. While a four-day work week could be possible if the factors above are addressed, one suspects that this would be quite a challenge to practically implement in the South African context across the wide variety of sectors operating in the country. As a result, it may be a journey - rather than an event – to get to this point. But as COVID-19 showed us, never say never. South Africans are remarkably innovative and resilient.

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