False: Finland is introducing a four-day working week with six-hour days.

By: Umme Kulsum
January 25 2022

Share Article:

The Finnish government has no plans to introduce a four-day working week with six-hour days.In 2020, social media posts about a plan to introduce a four-day workweek in Finland started circulating. In January 2022, the claim again re-surfaced. One such post, which has 1,700 views, claimed that Finland plans to introduce a four-day workweek with six-hour days under the leadership of Prime Minister Sanna Marin. However, this claim is false. The four-day workweek is not officially under the Finnish government agenda. It was just an idea introduced on a panel by Sanna Marin in 2019. While serving as Minister of Transport and Communications in August 2019, Sanna Marin made a suggestion during a panel discussion as part of the 120th-anniversary celebrations of the Social Democratic Party. Marin specified a shorter workweek as one of the party's objectives to be included in its policy. However, Marin's proposal was disregarded by other political opposition members, as the Helsinki Times reported. Consequently, Marin informally suggested the idea in 2019 when she was not the prime minister. The Finnish Government also refuted the claims circulating in social media about the shorter workweek plan on Twitter. The tweet said, "there is no mention about 4-day week. Issue is not on the Finnish Government's agenda. PM envisioned the idea briefly in a panel discussion last August while she was the Minister of Transport, and there hasn't been any recent activity." Since the idea was brought up in 2019, there has been no movement on this matter by the Government.