Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz closed an agreement to reduce the working day to 37.5 hours per week, changing the 40 hours per week established in the current regulations. This change will go into effect in 2024 and aim to fall 35 hours after the end of the next legislature. This reduction does not mean a reduction in wages.
Nadia Calviño, acting Minister of Economy, approved this proposal, as well as the unions, but the employers are against reducing the weekly hours while maintaining the same salary. This negotiation is necessary to approve the measure.
In most European countries, the working day is 40 hours per week, but collective agreements can reduce this working day. For example, in Portugal they are 39.4 hours, in Germany and Italy they are 38, in Sweden they are 37.1, in Norway 37.5. The lowest in the euro zone is France with 35 hours and Switzerland the lowest with 42 per week.
At 37.5 hours per week, how many hours per year do you work?
The 37.5 hours per week proposed by PSOE and Sumar for 2024 means that the current 40-hour workday will be reduced to three and a half hours per week. So it will be half an hour less than a day. And it’s complicated to calculate how much their annual time is because it depends on vacations, days off, overtime…
Roughly, calculating that number of weekly hours per year would multiply it by 52 weeks in a calendar year, resulting in a number of 1950 hours. But trying to get close to what is actually possible, you need to introduce variables. It should be taken into account that there are 104 Saturdays and Sundays, with 14 holidays and an average of 30 calendar days off. So there are 217 working days left. This number must be multiplied by 7.5 hours per day, resulting in 1627.5 hours per year.
This number may vary depending on the number of vacations of each worker, if the holiday falls on a weekend or overtime.
