The four-day work week that’s gaining steam in pilot programs and fledgling legislative proposals yields workplace benefits but also potential employment law pitfalls.
A few dozen companies testing out a reduced work schedule found benefits both for businesses and the employees in initial results of a study released last month. The companies in the pilot ranged from a restaurant chain to a climate nonprofit to an RV builder—and at the end, not one opted to return to a regular five-day work week.
Employment lawyers say they are hearing more serious interest from businesses considering some version of a four-day week, motivated partly by the need for creative ways to recruit and retain employees in a tight labor market.
“It is not an avalanche of requests, but some clients are beginning to think critically about this issue,” said Michael A. Pavlick, an employment lawyer with K&L Gates LLP in Pittsburgh. “It’s gone beyond, ‘Oh, maybe one day we’ll do this,’ to ‘This is a real possibility and let’s address what some of the issues might be.’”
Federal labor law doesn’t bar businesses from shortening their work week or from cramming the usual 40 hours into four days instead of five, so long as workers receive at least the minimum hourly wage and overtime pay of 1.5 times their regular rate for any hours worked beyond 40 per week.
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