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Comment by mongol | Hacker News Reader

> In neighbouring Sweden, where the 6-hour-day has already been applied since 2015, results showed that employees were happier, wealthier and more productive, as they were still fully paid and customers were more satisfied.

I am Swedish and am puzzled by this. What is it refering to?

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Never heard of this site but it seems like someone very unfamiliar with the countries talking about some tiny experiments as if they were the norm.

> The Nordic nation has embraced agile working patterns for decades as the country adopted the Working Hours Pact in 1996, which gives most employees the right to adjust their typical working hours of their workplace by starting or finishing up to three hours earlier or later.

This is also completely untrue. I guess they mean Working Hours Act which specifies no such thing.

Is it really untrue? Seems there is something to it, although maybe not unilateral right, but certainly there some language around flexibility up to 3 hours in the Act.

Maybe some Finnish lawyers chip in here on the actual interpretation of this?

Section 13. "Flexible working hours":

"When working hours are flexible, the regular daily working hours shall be extended or reduced by a flexible period of no more than three hours."

https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/46245/60791/F...

Not a lawyer but I work in Finland. This is not a "right" of employees but sets the limits for what kind of flex-time agreements can legally be entered into. In many white-collar jobs people don't really care about the legal limits, and in fact the new law (in force since yesterday) allows for more flexible arrangements.

https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2019/20190872#L4P13 (doesn't seem to be available in English at this time)

I am Finnish and am equally puzzled about this whole news story. It seems to be referring to an event in August 2019 that celebrated the 120th anniversary of Finland's Social Democratic Party, where Marin apparently suggested reducing the work week. While she is now prime minister, Finland always has a coalition government that currently consists mainly of leftist and centrist parties, and the coalition agenda is the result of a negotiation. The current agenda does not include reducing the work week: the closest I can find is

> The prospects for increasing the flexibility of working time will be examined with a view to balancing the harmonisation of work and family and prolonging working careers. The aim in particular is to improve part-time working opportunities for parents of small children and for those who are caring for elderly relatives.

http://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/161935 (there's a PDF link on the page)

It was an experiment: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38843341

Yeah I guess that must be it. The article is certainly misleading.

'studied' might be a more accurate word than 'applied', which is ambiguous.

I dunno if this is intentionally misleading or a language barrier.

i think we need to mention that the experiment failed and was not implemented.

I wouldn't call it a failure just because it wasn't implemented more. It had many benefits over a 40 hour work week.

Also Swedish, and equally puzzled. I think we've got to realize that there's a low-intensity political war in this aspect, and that we're (supposedly) battleground zero.

To be honest, whenever I see this, all I think is: Entitlement. "I've reached this level. I want to stop others from reaching this level."

"I want to just limit my work to what I feel is sensible, and no-one should be allowed to compete with my work."

I think they were referring to this "experiment" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/swedish-s...

I read some time ago that there was a trial but i never heard anything after that.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38843341

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