“I believe that people deserve to spend more time with their families, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of life, such as culture. This could be the next step for us in working life,” the prime minister commented on the new proposal.
I love how it’s always former politicians and officials who come out to advocate for better things in the world.
Like, you had power when you were in office, you could have at least made the effort to broach this with the people so the next elected official with power can keep the cause alive so we eventually get better outcomes. The endorsement of people without political capital has barely a shred of power in the real world chessboard of political give-and-take.
Edit: Did some research, found what I expected, that it never even made it to government and was just “some shit she said” at an event and made a tweet about.
She did campaign for it back in 2019, wasn’t popular within government then and especially now. Maybe next government might atleast test it?
I found a user-repost of an old article in newsnowfinland.fi, no idea the reputability of the site or its politics but I tend to believe it based on the fact that the “proposal” never really went anywhere nor had any momentum in Europe. I tend to be very cynical about these stories because I’ve had enough CEO’s who said similar sentiments and never made any effort to actually do the thing, because largely, liberal democracy haaaaates the idea of giving people any actual hints of socialism and social care, and tend to just serve the softer arm of capital.
How Finland’s fake four-day week became a ‘fact’ in Europe’s media
We take a look at how media outlets in the UK - and in Europe, Asia, Australia and USA - were all caught out by a Finland story that was just too good to be true. Because it wasn’t.
Have you heard the news? Prime Minister Sanna Marin (SDP) is doing something radical.
“Finland’s new prime minister, 34-year-old Sanna Marin, has announced plans to introduce a four-day week” says the Guardian, underneath the statement that Marin has “promised” a short working week.
“Finland’s new prime minister calls for four-day working week” says the Independent.
Britain’s commercial television channel ITV writes that “Finland PM calls for four-day working week and six-hour days.”
“Four-day working week and six-hour shifts to be introduced in Finland” trumpets Metro.
Meanwhile in the Daily Mail, with millions of readers every day, the headline is “Finland to introduce a four-day working week and SIX-HOUR days under plans drawn up by 34-year-old prime minister Sanna Marin.”
The story is not just confined to UK media outlets either: over the course of 12 hours on Monday it’s been repeated in a Belgian media website; and been the topic of a call-in during an Irish radio programme. It’s been published in Australia, India and the USA as well.
And it’s not true.
Not only are these proposals not included in the Finnish government’s policy programme, multiple government sources told News Now Finland on Monday evening that it’s not even on the horizon. SDP politicians and party activists gather at 120th anniversary event Turku, 19th August 2019 / Credit: Jukka-Pekka Flander, SDP
Charting the origins of the story
So how did this fake news story begin, and how did the misinformation spread so quickly?
Back in August 2019 some senior Social Democrat politicians and party activists gathered in Turku on Finland’s southwest coast, for an event to mark the organisation’s 120th anniversary.
The weather was warm, the drinks were flowing, and the Turku Workers’ Association brass band – resplendent in their scarlet blazers – played traditional tunes while the guests sang along.
After then-PM Antti Rinne had made a speech, it was time for a panel discussion.
The participants included Sanna Marin – at the time Minister of Transport; Tytti Tuppurainen, Minister for European Affairs; Ville Skinnari, Minister of Development and Trade; and Antti Rönnholm, the SDP’s Party Secretary.
They sat under a canopy on a small raised stage, with a potted ficus and some SDP banners for decoration.
A moderator posed questions and kept everything moving along, but the whole event that day was about a celebration of the party’s history rather than formulating policy – which had anyway already been enshrined in Rinne’s government programme just two months before.
At one point during the discussion Sanna Marin floated the idea that Finland’s productivity could benefit from either a four-day working week, or a six-hour working day (she never suggested both).
Marin also tweeted about it at the time, noting plainly that it was an SDP party goal to reduce working hours – but to be clear, again, this was never official government policy.
The comment got some modest media attention in Finland but the news cycle soon moved on. Composite picture showing some of the misinformation about PM Sanna Marin
Tracking the spread of the fake news story
Four months after the Turku event, on 16th December 2019, Austrian news outlet Kontrast picked up the story.
Journalist Patricia Huber quoted Marin as saying that day: “A 4-day week and a 6-hour work day. Why shouldn’t that be our next step? Are eight hours really the last truth? I think people deserve to spend more time with their family, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of their lives – like culture. That could be the next step in our working life.”
It’s the key quote to follow here, and it matches almost exactly to what Finnish media quoted Marin as saying at the time. So in that sense it’s accurate.
The next time the story crops up is 2nd January 2020, when Brussels-based newspaper New Europe published an article by journalist Zoi Didili whose headline was “Finnish PM Marin calls for 4-day-week and 6-hours working day in the country.”
It gives the impression that this is an initiative announced after Marin became PM with the opening paragraph “Sanna Marin, Finland’s new Prime Minister since early December has called for the introduction of a flexible working schedule in the country that would foresee a 4-day-week and 6-hours working day.”
It gets several things wrong in that one sentence, and while it does reference the SDP’s Turku event, it doesn’t actually quote Marin saying there should be a four-day week, or six-hour days, and frames the whole context as if it’s a new initiative since Marin became PM.
It’s this article which seems to have sparked other stories especially in the British press, who quote Marin’s comments about people deserving to spend more time with their families, but offer no context or timeline for the original information. File image of computer, cyber / Credit: iStock
How should the government respond to fake news?
This is not the most damaging piece of fake news, but the way it’s been picked up, adapted, and crucially not fact-checked by so many otherwise credible media outlets is worrying in an era where people are quick to spread information without verifying its veracity.
“If the misinformation is harmful then you should really attempt to address it as soon as possible. But always consider that the misinformation is likely to travel faster than the truth, so you are looking more at damage limitation rather than anything more effective” says Fergus Bell, CEO of Fathm, a consultancy for the news industry with a specific focus on countering misinformation in media.
“It is useful to have a communications team that know how to spot stories that might be surfacing – this is going to be the quickest way to put out a correction as quickly as possible” he advises.
It’s sound advice, and may have been hindered in Finland by Monday’s public holiday with civil servants and politicians trying to enjoy a day off. But Bell says that countering misinformation might anyway have a limited impact.
“Because of the way misinformation can spread a rebuttal might only fan the flames of the misinformation and give it life. Drawing additional attention to it isn’t going to make it go away any faster.
4 days work week with 10 hours per working day is reasonable, I will take it anytime.
No.
40 hours a week isn’t some magic number that we have to adhere to. We should be working less.
I’d rather work 32 please
I mean, if we all collectively, as a species decided we wanted a post-scarcity society where everyone is guaranteed whatever they need to live including food, shelter and healthcare, we could do it with relative ease. We have the infrastructure and technology to reduce work for everyone by a drastic degree, and many people would be freed up to study, develop science and make the system even more efficient.
But we’re not even at the point of a 4-day workweek being acceptable broadly, we’re not that unified species, we’re FAR from it. Baby steps my friend. Baby steps.
So is a 4 day work week with 8 hours per working day.
I honestly think a lot of hours we spend working are spent “working.” I know my, and my colleagues, 40 hour weeks certainly are less than 40 hours but I also don’t get paid enough so I think it’s a fair trade off.
I do get my shit done though and work late if I have to so it isn’t like I’m screwing anyone.
Seriously though I think we need to accept that we just don’t need the standard to be 40 hours of labor as the expected time. We arrived at it artificially and can just as easily walk away from that and into a brighter future with less work and more time with our family and friends. I’m sure we would even see productivity gains as folks are happier and healthier.
That’s the right direction but it needs to make sure that the wages stay the same, otherwise everything becomes a part-time job and people are forced to find an additional job to get to their original earnings.
Either way, we need Universal Basic Income
That’s it, I’m moving to Finland
I think Sweden would be a better bet. They’ve had bigger trials and Finland’s current right wing crony capitalist government would rather see 6 day work weeks with 12 hour shifts to please their corporate overlords.
Eh, Sweden is pretty much in the same boat right now…
24h 4 day work week sounds very, very enticing but snow is my biggest opp here
I hate heat. Hate it. Better to add layers than to sweat half of the year whenever you step outside. Finland, accept me!
I’m sad to announce that climate change has arrived here too.
But for the guy bothered by snow, great news, winters in the southern Finland, especially in the coast, have mostly turned to just a 5 month long wet and windy autumns instead!
Well, with that Atlantic current dying down, Europe might not have to worry about things getting warmer for much longer. Scandinavia especially might get quite a bit colder, like comparable to northern Canada.
Oh if the Gulf Stream stops we are totally fucked - Finland is almost exactly at the same latitude the Northwest Territories of Canada. The capital of Finland would basically get Yellowknife type temperatures, and that would essentially be the warmest place in the entire country.
If that ever happens I’m just going to kalsarikänni myself to death in the snowbank.
Yes, but it arrived in Germany too, and I’m sick of 35°C
Where we are going. You won’t ever have to deal with snow ever again.
Did she push for this when she was prime minister?
The idea floated in august 2019 when Sanna Marin was Minister for Transport and Communications (she did a tweet about that). Since then, it has not been introduced officially to the government agenda. (Source : Reuters)
My first thought as well. So often we see ex leader spouting this type of thing after the fact. But during their time, they toed the party line to keep the working class down.
Is that the one with all the scandals that more or less amount to this?
An interesting idea from Finland here.
She’s so hot right now
I for one want to spend less time with my family.
That’s equally valid of course, but unless you mean your birth family and not your own, the more appropriate and commendable route would be to remove yourself from the wrong family situation and figure out a new, working, one. It’s no benefit to anyone, least to yourself, if it’s not working out. Everyone will be happier for it ultimately, even if it requires some tough choices and a whole bunch of compromises, adaptation and potential heartbreak in the short term.
I mean the same is true for birth family too, but at least there it doesn’t matter as much, since often the first priority and the more day-to-day impactful one will be your own immediate family, so you can simply minimize the need to ever interact with them.
And there’s the moral implication, that you didn’t choose your birth family. But you did choose your own immediate family. So there’s a responsibility there in the latter that isn’t present in the former.
Unless the situation is that you didn’t choose your immediate family either. If it’s not working out, it’s even more of a reason to figure out a way out.
Unless there’s no way out. In which case, and only in this case, your sentiment seems agreeable and hopefully the situation doesn’t last. And if it does, hopefully you get as much time off as possible.
Dude, it was a snarky comments and mostly a joke. Perhaps not really in good taste, idk. Don’t take shit I saw too seriously.
1-size NEVER fits all:
Neither legislating a 60h workweek, nor a 40h workweek, nor a 6d workweek, nor a 4d workweek, CAN fit all diverse kinds of people.
Some are unhappy when NOT working all the time!
Many autistic workaholics would need2 jobs, to be happy in her idea of good, but it wouldn’t ever work right ( 8d work every 7d week??
There NEEDS to be some way for there to be 2 categories of employees: workaholics & humans,
& the measured higher social-support ( including late-life health-care ) amplification for the workaholics obliges a higher tax-rate for companies employing those, in proportion with the percentage of 'em working that way.
( I’d be in the workaholics category, not in the “family” category, just so you understand I’m deeming my own category to be more-costly to social-support systems.
But the Industrial Revolution was on us, not on the family-people.
We are the blockheads who keep bashing-away at making technology work right, see? )
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Overtime exists. You’ll just get paid more if you work 60h. If your employer allows you to work that much.
The idea is to place an upper limit on corps for the definition of a full time work week. If you want to work more, go ahead, but your employer shouldn’t be able to compel you to work past that max number of hours in return for benefits. It’s tricky because there’s a legal component and a cultural component to it. Also some businesses will push back (especially service industry) because they will need to change their whole hiring and scheduling.
