The 4-Day Work Week Debate： Economic Reality or Dangerous Illusion？
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Summary
We ve all heard of the concept of a four-day work week, but did you know that it has actually become a reality in other countries? In fact, in some countries, like Sri Lanka and Thailand, they have already implemented a four day work week. Today, we talk to our very own Paul Mccartuccio about why this is a good idea.
Transcript
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hi and thanks for joining us this is tpl media by the way you can go to tplmedia.ca where there's
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all kinds of great content uh don't forget to support subscribe and be part of the community
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that interacts now every day we love your comments in fact we react to your comments with new stories
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and new topics and so we love that you're there please continue to do that you can download the
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app for iphone or for android and we hope that you do that today we are talking about taking one
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of the work days away all right we could use one more day off in a week and to talk to me about
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that is uh our very own paul micucci are we really headed toward a four-day work week here paul
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well you know mike it's it's it's kind of interesting because it's come back on the table
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it was a those of you who are old enough to remember uh in canada it was uh not a four-day
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Workweek, but it was 12 unpaid days that the Bob Ray NDP government decided to put into play under
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Bill 48. So when this started coming up globally, it hit our radar because quite frankly, there's a
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lot of online chatter about four-day workweeks, especially with the price of gas going up so
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substantially. I was driving in today and gas went up overnight 10 cents. It went from 163 to 173,
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which we did a show remember with dan mctagg and he said he said 170 he called it right on the nose
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man then he went to 173 it's going to two dollars yeah so i'm going to talk about that in a minute
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but it's going to two dollars and and the interesting thing that we took a look at what
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i'll do the math i'm not going to bore you right now but before the show's over i'm going to
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actually talk to you about how not only four-day work weeks are going to be talked about economic
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migration is going to be a key issue coming up in the next few months if this if this uh war
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keeps going if it doesn't get ended in some fashion or form we're going to see it and so
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this came up in and we call it undeveloped countries third world countries yeah um it
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came up right away in sri lanka yeah sri lanka india japan korea now in all fairness they did
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call it for us almost at the beginning of the war if the Strait of Hormuz closes and by the way we
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don't have any we don't have reserves already so they told us they were a few minutes away from
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running out almost right away yeah well so Sri Lanka uh came up and the government stepped forward
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and said everyone take Wednesday off so that's done they're already doing it so their their four
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day work week is already happening so everyone there Thailand told people to stay at home and
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work from home as much as possible. They shut down their elevators and they're making everyone
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take the stairs. Now, I don't know if you've been to Thailand. I've never been to Thailand.
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Okay. Thailand this time of year I have been is actually 40 degrees Celsius. Oh my God. So
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everyone in Thailand who's working in an office building that's 10 stories or more tall is
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actually taking the stairs to get to their office. Oh my God. India in 40 degree temperatures. Yeah.
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yeah india has rationed their liquefied petro yeah so they're already said listen you see the
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pictures on tv and you see the pictures on the internet with the big lineups now and and remember
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this is not something that's outrageous we we did a show about oil a few days ago and we were
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reminding people in 1973 when the embargo happened um in the u.s used to drive through and you used
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look at the gas stations and they'd have uh red yellow green uh flags on them and if it was red
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there was no gas it was yellow it meant you could be pumping and you would run out of gas so it made
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you make your decision which gas station you were going to so these are all things that are popping
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up as we go through this and we're starting to see it go across so the four day work week is starting
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to become a topic again yeah now it's interesting because uh it was brought up here in canada right
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recently oh yeah as an economic measure yep who brought that up by the way
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who brought it up i think it was the ndp was it not oh yeah so so bob ray well no we we actually
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recently i mean it was oh yeah brought to the board sure yeah bob ray and that's that's what
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just came to my mind and i thought to myself okay i can understand in oil strapped nations right
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that are massive populations sri lanka india japan korea that are going to have to make moves
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quickly yeah we don't have that kind of population and and and quite frankly i don't think that the
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war was a consideration when we first heard this uh in recent days it seemed to be more of an
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economic measure, not a petroleum based measure. No, it wasn't your bang on. And thank you for
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that. Cause you're, you're kind of, uh, getting me to remind some things I don't want to think
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about. I was alive. I was alive in, in 1990 and kicking and working. Um, me too. And by the way,
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I was trying to pay off student loans at the time. And it was a little difficult to do it
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the numbers at that time well remember like 1990 was a terrible recession that hit canada but we
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were really hard hit um peterson had just lost the election to bob ray the ndp had taken over
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they had won uh 74 seats um you know and they had 37 of the vote so they actually won by a fairly
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stunning majority so they took over and they were union backed remember they were ndp was a labor
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Party. But they had taken over in a time when the economy was so bad. And I had to laugh when I took
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a look at this prepping for the show last night. They assumed a really, really bad situation in
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the economy. The Liberal government had hired all these public service workers, had grown the public
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sector to this immense crazy number so they were stuck with a huge union both on the public side
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and on the private side auto workers you name it there was a ton of unions they take control
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and next thing you know they're handed this deficit of 10 billion dollars people went
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i laugh because today 10 billion dollars is like it's oh no it's a rounding error if you showed up
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and said you had a deficit for a province of 10 billion dollars standing ovation aside from
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alberta no one would even say anything right but nowadays so you know it went crazy and so he had
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to make some strategic choices because people were going bananas like 10 billion dollars how did we
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rack up 10 billion well you raise a good point because he had the unions that he had built
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industries out of now moving against that government quickly exactly and the interesting
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part of it was he had promised also on top of it that he was going to do uh public auto insurance
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I don't know if you remember this, but some of the provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, and BC had already went out, and they had actually done no-fault public auto insurance.
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Bob Ray promised it in the election to everyone.
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He got in power, and then he's like, oh, my goodness, look at the mess I'm in.
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So everyone's like, well, where's my free auto insurance?
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So now he had to go back, and he had to open up all these union agreements.
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so now he's he's in this huge deficit he starts opening up uh all these agreements the deficit's
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growing right and so it's growing to a crazy point like uh you know 10 million it grew to 15
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10 billion it grows to 15 billion and he's saying what do i do now so he starts opening up the
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public service agreements the government agreements with the unions and he's saying
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and he's had to do it they didn't agree to open them up i was going to say i think it was it was
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forced move right he's canceling their agreements he's and he's asking them to make concessions
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and one of the concessions he comes to him and says i need you to take 12 unpaid work days
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they went bananas it splintered government government literally government fell apart
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uh the unions uh went against him the the public of course middle uh middle income earners in
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canada were affected the most yeah this wasn't you know the guy who was the high income uh wage
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earner didn't really care and and for the most part it was public sector employees who were hit
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with the 12 days well i remember people comparing it to uh he literally took a mortgage payment
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away from everybody who had to take the 12-day deal he did yeah and and you know it's interesting
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because i where i was working at the time i was asked and this was crazy at the time i was asked
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to go to a four-day workweek so i was in the private sector and i was asked to do four-day
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work weeks so and to go to 32 i had to think through it last night because i thought i was
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getting paid for 40 but then when i actually went back and thought about it they asked us to go to
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uh 32 hour work weeks so we took eight hour cuts and it was all this whole movement across canada
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wherever a lot of businesses because of the slowdown because of the recession were asking
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people to keep their job but to work fewer days it was terrible it gave me a lot of time and uh
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i was kind of smart enough that i had already secured a second job so it didn't really matter
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to me because that that it was kind of the birth of the gig economy i remember uh yeah the beer
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store cut our hours yeah i took hours waiting tables yeah exactly so i i picked up other work
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and extended the second job i had so bob ray it's over like you know by 1995 uh you know
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he's gone you know whatever happened to bob ray well bob ray did a high profile and then
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for several years he just vaporized from public view so i took a look from 1995 to 2006 he
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basically disappeared off the radar yeah i i was gonna say i don't recall anything any news with
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him and he and you know i i you know he came back as a uh liberal right and he did very well he got
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in yeah yeah he had a very good political career in the end and uh foreign affairs and he did some
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amazing i think recently they took his post away uh again um but but he did have a great career
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with the liberal government and he did a lot of great things so i think bob ray was uh uh
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really the it was impacted by a really poor economy that then uh and uh just a groundswell
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of decisions that almost he was forced to make to try to curb crazy deficits so now deja vu we're
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talking a lot about deja vu and then it does kind of feel like trudeau handing it off to
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Kearney, doesn't it? Well, even on the provincial level, you're starting to see a lot of
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premiers coming out and saying, hey, I can't do these programs anymore. Yeah. Right. Whether it's,
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you know, Doug Ford in Ontario and his crew, whether it's Daniel Smith in B.C., you're starting
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to see a lot of this kind of come on the radar. And they're saying, well, time out. I'm tapped out.
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i'm i'm incurring these huge deficits and you know from a federal perspective uh we're gonna
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we're gonna eclipse our 78 billion dollar projected deficit that we're we're getting
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conditioned a little to be told that right now so as we do this it's wild that you point out yeah
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daniel smith alberta coming out and saying look we can't we can't support this anymore was pretty
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shocking i think to canadians not to albertans but to canadians yes it gave us a it gave us the
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temperature pretty quickly on the rest of the nation yeah so now are we you know are we in the
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same situation as 1990 right or worse i think it feels worse to be honest with you i mean sure it
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does we have a much larger population we're supporting at the moment than we ever have before
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So, yeah, it is worse because we've reached new record highs of unemployment.
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We haven't seen a 10% unemployment rate since the Great Depression.
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So that kind of gives you a feel of kind of where we're at and where we're projecting.
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so you know i the reason i bring it up because when i say is it worse it is worse because we
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were a productive country i think and we were having this discussion i think roger and i were
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talking before the show in 1995 right uh up to 2002 we were on pace or average with respect to
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productivity compared to developed nations so there's 32 developed nations as they categorize
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them in the world we are in that category right now right now we are one of 32 developed nations
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right we were uh we were right in the middle so we were at one point we were number five in the
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world right we were the fifth yeah and we always were kind of between five and 16 we kind of
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went back and forth only up until 2014 so then we get to 2014 and we start to see this
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productivity slide so we slid um up until today now uh we're the last place well we were 26 then
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before the show you said no actually we're last place we are and this is the scary part that i
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know you know in our own government you know i i do the liberal government um has said and i
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mentioned it on lots of shows this is a big concern this isn't something that uh minister
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freeland we haven't we've heard it before uh in budget speeches we got to get our productivity up
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we got to get and and the big reason you know you've you know i've talked about this before
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we could slip potentially out of the category of developed nations so we could slip out of the 32
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and then we wouldn't be classified as a developed nation if your productivity is so low per capita
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how okay so you cannot maintain not producing something and stay on this list in the top 30
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there's no way yeah there's just no way and then so one of the calculations that i went out there
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to try and find. And an economist in Norway, funny enough, put out the data that Canada
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specifically, to get into the top 10 again in the leading world nations, we would not have to take
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one workday away, but we would have to add seven workdays per person, per working person in Canada.
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We would have to add productivity days of an entire other week, not strip us down one more
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day and that was my concern hearing a four-day work week wow okay i understand the fuel situations
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but come on we've all worked from home apparently that's what canada does now take a look at any
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city every office tower is basically empty i don't care what they're saying out there in the real
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estate markets you can take a look at commercial real estate everywhere people are still working
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from home it's true it's a gig economy more than it's ever been here in canada the unemployment
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is up. We need productivity. We don't need to reduce a workday. We need to find our way through
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and find things that we can participate in, manufacturing, distributing, becoming a hub of
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something right now, not taking away from that, not diminishing that. I mean, there has to be a
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better way. Raid days was a disaster, as you pointed out. I don't, and there must be a better
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way look fuel economy we've all been told to use better fuel economy in our lives so if we have to
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work from home for a period of time that the war is on or whatever the case is i'm sure we'll figure
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it out yeah but you know what happens with a four-day work week paul we jam six days into
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four days because we're currently jamming six days into five days yeah we are but mike can i
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throw something this is we did some quick math before the show and this is what i mentioned to
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earlier and i wanted to walk through with you so we this is where i end up upside down on these
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shows every time no no i have a very strong opinion it's about to change watch this no no
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no and i'm not i'm not it's okay i'm good for it no so if you're driving so the guys drove in this
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morning that work here with us and i said to them i said okay what are you driving and they're all
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driving small suvs yep and i said okay let's take your gas mileage let's take what was gas what was
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gas when we started this so they said gas was a dollar 30 per liter i said okay gas goes let's
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take the assumption that gas goes to two dollars it's okay gas goes up 70 cents i goes so what does
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that mean to you and they're like so they all started doodling and they're yelling out numbers
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and half of them are wrong because quite frankly no offense guys but you're from a generation and
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none of you can multiply or divide right just get your iphones out we'll wait exactly so so i i'm
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like no wrong wrong so finally uh sandip yells out he says it's a it's a dollar it's a it's an hour
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right and i go yep you're you're right so i go okay so is it exactly an hour a week that you're
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going to spend more on gas to get here right so you know assuming and and we used uh we used in
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just to be fair because not everyone's you know making 40 an hour and not everyone's making minimum
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wage we use 20 an hour right as the kind of benchmark so for those who are on the lower
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spectrum and we said okay 20 an hour let's do the math it's a hundred dollars a month
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at 70 cents that they're going to pay more to get here and get home to work every day
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right so now that's the direct cost of their gas right that's not repairs on the vehicle that's not
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the increased maintenance the cost that because all these other indirect costs and i said okay
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now let's put a food factor in there fifty dollars more a month yeah because food costs are going to
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go up so we were doing all this and they're like and so they're doing their budgets and they're
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like oh i go so now you got to find another 150 bucks a month just to get here for five days right
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and like oh so they kind of they're like oh that so that's what this is going to mean to me i said
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yeah that's going to mean and they so and then they said well i know but but you know we're gonna
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we're gonna have to get paid more i said i know but but businesses quite frankly are then going
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to make the decision if they want to move somewhere with a lower cost base so that's going to start to
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cause economic migration oh my god i hadn't even considered that but that is a good point so so now
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you're gonna have a bunch of companies saying well i don't blame the people but i can't have
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unhappy and unsustainable employment because they can't live yeah you know think about it all the
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guys drove here this morning all walked in with a tim hortons coffee the first thing they said to me
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is i'm gonna have to cut out my tim hortons coffee because i'm gonna have to find that 150 bucks
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right right because i gotta pay rent i gotta pay my mortgage i gotta pay all those fixed costs
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so they're all kind of so it was interesting we did the we did the math this morning we're trying
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to figure out what what happens so this is going to cause a domino effect that's going to roll down
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but to your point and this is you know it's not just exacerbated by the war it's not caused by the
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war it's not the imp it is part of it the gas prices are yeah but we've put ourselves in this
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situation regardless of whether it was a war or just a bad economy we've left ourselves vulnerable
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to this and that's where we kind of have to dig ourselves out well that's that's the thing there's
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so many i just can't understand how we ended up in a position where reserve gas would have an
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effect on our economy on our food on our living this is the moment where a nation like canada
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rises above because we have our resources we have a national treasure that is being untapped
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unused it's not being processed we could have an entire oil to gas system for diesel in this
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country now but we don't instead we're thinking okay how can we reduce one day of work per week
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when we need to be highly productive exactly well we can't we can't you know and it's interesting
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Some, you know, when we were doing the calculations before the show, someone yelled out, this is why we need universal income.
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Because I hear that on a lot of, you know, younger podcasters, you know, talk about universal income.
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it's been talked about you know all these crazy uh 15-minute cities universal income
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i have to explain something to you guys you have to be productive to do that so we're not we don't
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have the we're not a potentially a developed country we are not productive enough to pull
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that off because that can only work if the government takes control of your industries
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and makes money to pay you, it doesn't work the way you think it works.
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So that works in countries like Russia or Korea.
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For those of you who think that is a shot, you are so out in left field, it is insane.
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So what you're saying is for a universal income, right,
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yeah industries produce the industries take the product to the market yes the industries are owned
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and managed mainly by the government like like china oh so is this communism kind of it is a
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form now it can be listen i'm not gonna i don't want to get that's a whole other show it can be
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democratically it can be democratically monitored right so it can be a democracy but quite frankly
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you can't do it with low productivity you can't be an undeveloped nation which where we're slipping
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into by our productivity levels we can't be there and do that it wouldn't work because the same
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companies that are going to economically migrate because they can't make it here in a private
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scenario will not be better run by the government so they're the therefore the government uh deficits
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will be massive which is unsustainable for a country so it it is not sorry guys you know any
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economist who says differently i'd love to get on debate so if you're out there let's let's get
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together and talk about it because quite frankly that could never happen i do love the challenge
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so please in the comments if that's you let us know we'll reach out to you and we'll pair you
00:24:07.540
up with paul for a good old debate uh i made a list of reality checks paul just this four-day
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work week made me i told you i was this morning this morning over breakfast i was talking about
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four-day work weeks with my lovely wife who thought it you know might be uh an applicable
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idea okay i was told then to save my comments for my show with paul later today uh i think we need
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a little bit of a economic reality check it's a it's a paycheck illusion a four-day work week
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promises the same pay for fewer hours but that money doesn't come from nowhere as you point out
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we need to be productive the cost of everything will go up well of course it will you know you're
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in a recession when it occurs four day work weeks are the result of an economic downfall so it's not
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that one gives the other it's just that you're in the same place at the same time for the same reason
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uh fewer jobs means more competition oh yeah i guess we better take this to another country
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where we can get more productivity in a week exactly you're gonna you're gonna find a lower
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wage rate more productive place to run your business so you can increase your profitability
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uh services get worse remember ray days go and get your license renewed good luck yeah well there
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was a you know think about the morale remember and you remember that it was awful you know for
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those of you i'm glad if you didn't live through it you know you trust me you didn't don't let it
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happen again you didn't miss a lot because we frankly going to any uh government-run uh private
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or government run agency and trying to get anything done was a nightmare they were very
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unhappy the unions were massively pissed off because not only did their union dues go down
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because fewer people were still employed within their groups and quite frankly they had to go
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back to their constituency and tell them that they were being represented by unions but losing it a
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day right so they were like what do you mean i i get completely agitated with the union the
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the government i have to pay union dues they're taking and you supported the ndp who put that
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government in place and now they're taking a day off me and i still have to pay union dues no there
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was an awful situation yeah no there was outrage oh you're right i remember uh many of the unions
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were just uh inside out about it you know and it raises a good point because it creates and we
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didn't talk about this a lot at the time but we can look back on it now and i can assure you this
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is true it created a two-tier society you know oh yeah like laborers workers uh health care workers
00:26:42.660
uh cops and ambulance and all the services out there lost 12 days meanwhile the same group of
00:26:50.480
people in the same industries at an executive level well they got a long weekend it didn't
00:26:55.240
really affect them too much oh yeah it was created terrible animosity yeah it was known it was known
00:27:00.720
as a middle income tax so that's how it got defined people looked at it totally like it was
00:27:07.200
and we don't talk about it a lot but the erosion of the the middle income you know the our middle
00:27:14.660
canadians our middle income earner canadians uh the middle class is basically something that is
00:27:20.480
eroding already as we as we look at sort of the well the wealth distribution every province is
00:27:25.720
starting to report back that the middle class is disappearing entirely winnipeg we just did that
00:27:30.460
remember that story on winnipeg and and what's happening there yeah it's uh okay the other things
00:27:35.660
that i'll point out uh yeah more more work gets piled into less days that's how society works
00:27:41.020
small business gets crushed in this some of the large corporations are okay small business cannot
00:27:46.620
afford to do this as you point out if you have four people that you've got to pay uh whether
00:27:52.780
they're there or not or you're going to lose productivity in those days whatever arrangement
00:27:57.820
you have to make in a four-day work week in a small business is different than that in the
00:28:02.080
government or in large corporations. The small guys are going to feel it the most, I think.
00:28:08.580
And then just overall, and maybe this is the purpose, I don't know, maybe as an economist,
00:28:13.800
as an accountant, you can answer this, the economy slows down. Is that the purpose of a
00:28:19.360
four-day work week? Oh, I don't know. That's a good question, Mike. I'd have to think through
00:28:25.540
then is that the purpose of the economy slowing down yeah is that is that the reason we want to
00:28:29.980
slow the economy down for a period of time so that it operates you know a straighter uh more even
00:28:38.140
keel uh float rather than spikes and dips throughout that recession well listen you know
00:28:45.760
we're talking only about canada today right now so we we have a number of things colliding right
00:28:51.740
We had an overstimulated real estate market that was growing too fast.
00:28:57.840
We started using residential real estate as a trading chip.
00:29:06.900
It then now became part of an industry that people were using it to swap, buy, sell.
00:29:16.980
Even those margins became finer and finer and finer up against that moment at which it just didn't make sense to be a developer.
00:29:25.460
Exactly. And manufacturing, quite frankly, is slowed. That's the productivity crunch.
00:29:30.520
So, you know, we've seen a bunch of these things collide together and we're seeing a slowing of the economy.
00:29:35.060
So, yeah, I guess, you know, did we want it to happen? Was it self-fulfilling?
00:29:39.640
yeah i guess it was in a way we you know we stimulated things that we knew were going to end
00:29:45.160
that couldn't sustain population growth is declining now we've cut back on immigration
00:29:50.360
so that's kind of slowing down more and more so yeah i think there's a bunch of um
00:29:56.360
economic and and social decisions that we made as a country that are starting to collide and you know
00:30:03.000
we did that show this week on oil which we went back to 1973 and we've showed sort of the impacts
00:30:10.920
of policy decisions by the different governments conservative and liberal that have now are
00:30:15.160
impacting us today so you know we started the show talking about the impacts of oil
00:30:21.160
on people and how that kind of instigated the discussion on the four-day workweek
00:30:25.000
well we never we haven't once since the war in iran started gone back and talked about
00:30:34.480
why we're paying what we are for gas we're just assuming we pay for gas what we've put a great
00:30:41.700
point yeah we haven't talked about we're not part of opec we're not part of opec we're you know we
00:30:47.000
basically x we're a net exporter of gas we price against texas crude we we price against texas
00:30:53.360
crude we take a significant discount for the type of uh heavy oil that we actually do we have
00:30:58.520
export yeah so we and you know we've seen the faults of that we haven't got to electrical and
00:31:07.300
evs fast enough so we're in the middle so we need now to have that discussion on what to do next
00:31:14.080
that strategy right to avoid the four-day work week to increase our productivity those are the
00:31:20.820
discussions that have to be on the table now and canada still want to hear a four-day work week
00:31:25.140
they want to hear there's overtime yeah yeah unfortunately with you know uh the recession
00:31:32.340
and everything happening in our our economy today we can't talk about overtime anymore we have to
00:31:39.700
start talking about other factors and that's why it's so important right now to start to make those
00:31:46.900
policy decisions that increase our productivity what do you think we've taken tomorrow off no
00:31:53.220
okay back to work tomorrow we'll be here and i hope you will be too thanks for joining us
00:31:57.140
uh tplmedia.ca uh we we love that you're there comment share it with a friend we'll see you next
00:32:02.980
time patriotic means looking out for each other and fixing things together true patriotism is
00:32:16.740
Being in a country you love, surrounded by people you love, and great weather.
00:32:20.660
Being a patriot is being a part of your community and caring for it.
00:32:23.620
It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from.
00:32:28.900
It's okay to be critical of government and still be a patriot.
00:32:34.740
Of course I'm a patriot. I'm Canadian. It's my home.
00:32:37.940
Well, actually, true patriot love is the mission.