BCBusiness

32 A li n a Il y a s o v a B C B U S I N E S S . C A J U N E 2 0 24 says. It didn't work out that way. "In the first year we added 30 percent to our revenues. In the following two years we doubled in size and doubled our net prof- its. Our retention rate has skyrocketed. We don't have people leaving our firm unless it's a family emergency and they have to move. Mental health, happiness, loyalty, productivity, focus are all much higher." Ian Hanington is senior writer and editor at the David Suzuki Foundation, which has operated on a four-day week for decades. He believes it's an evolution of a societal shift that began long ago with the 40-hour week. "Henry Ford knew that going to a 40-hour workweek would not only improve productivity but would give people the time to use the products that they were selling," Hanington says. Not everyone is on board with the permanent long weekend. "If there was a country that could manage this," says David Williams, vice-president of policy at the Business Council of B.C., "it wouldn't be Canada." Williams points to a forecast by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) predicting that Canada will be the worst-performing economy out of the 38 advanced OECD countries. "Not just from 2020 to 2030, but also from 2030 to 2060," he notes. "And the main reason is that, for most of that 40-year period, we are predicted to have the lowest growth in labour productivity." Based on the 2022 OECD figures, Wil- liams says, "a German worker produces about US$69 of output per hour worked. American workers produce $76 per hour, whereas a Canadian worker on average produces only $53." Williams points out that the B.C. gov- ernment's own budget projections show a stagnant or shrinking GDP per person. "The budget says real GDP per person in 2022 was $60,277," he says. "And in 2028, the forecast is $59,346. You've got this key indicator of living standards going sideways. And then you say, 'Now let's all work 20 percent fewer hours.' That is not a good recipe." "The mistake is equating working less with being less productive," Yousefi says. "In our experience, working fewer hours has meant more productivity. I've seen that in action. Since everybody wanted the pilot project to be a success, nobody took advan- tage. They were all invested in it." What the BC Green Party is proposing "is that governments create an incentive program for companies that are willing to try a three-year pilot, and get tax breaks in exchange," says Furstenau. "You're not doing this for free—you're getting a finan- cial benefit in exchange for data. Let's try to create an evidence and data informed understanding of how this can work in B.C." Williams feels that if a four-day week is to happen, it should spread more naturally. "If businesses want to negotiate with their employees to work fewer days, they're at liberty to do that now," he says. "Under the current Employment Standards Act, they can come to some sort of agreement to average those 40 hours over different shift schedules, swing shifts or whatever— people can work longer days and have more days off. But this seems to be about reducing the maximum number of hours that you can work from 40 down to 32. If businesses aren't choosing to do that now, that's probably a clue that the gains to pro- ductivity are not there." Furstenau says it's not about moving to a four-day, 40-hour week: "If the goal is to improve quality of life, it's not about taking "If the goal is to improve quality of life, it's not about taking a 40-hour workweek and smashing it into four days. And the trials are really clear on this. This is about an eight-hour day, four days a week, to really achieve that quality of life improvement." –Sonia Furstenau, BC Green Party leader

• Cover