Bulgarian Employers Reject Four-Day Work Week Model
Source: Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency)
Discussions about a shorter working week, already being tested in parts of Europe, are meeting strong resistance in Bulgaria. The idea of reducing the work week to four days is firmly opposed by employer organizations, according to a BTA survey. The debate was sparked after Greece introduced a draft bill that would allow parents to work four days but with extended 10-hour shifts instead of the standard eight.
Currently, Bulgarian law sets the work week at five days and 40 hours. Together with Greece, Bulgaria records the longest actual working hours in the European Union, while ranking at the bottom in terms of the share of employees working overtime. At the same time, Bulgaria’s labor productivity remains the lowest in the EU – just 56.8% of the bloc’s average.
Maria Mincheva, Deputy Chair of the Bulgarian Industrial Chamber (BIC), argued that the country is unprepared for a four-day model. She pointed to the shrinking workforce and aging population, stressing that fewer hours would mean less production. According to her, Bulgaria lacks the necessary levels of automation and digitalization that would allow employees to work less without reducing output.
A similar position was expressed by Kiril Boshev, Deputy Chair of the Association of Industrial Capital (AIKB). He explained that reducing the work week with unchanged hours would immediately cut productivity by 20%, a loss employers cannot afford. In his view, this would harm economic activity, reduce budget revenues, and lead to job cuts. Boshev also rejected the Greek proposal of four days with 10-hour shifts, saying that “people are not robots” and employees would be too exhausted to perform effectively in the later hours of such long days.
Trade unions are also cautious. Alexander Zagorov, confederal secretary of the Podkrepa Confederation of Trade Unions, stressed that any reform of the work week requires broad dialogue with workers. He warned that employers would face serious challenges in reorganizing work schedules and reporting systems. Moreover, he added, employees in Bulgaria themselves are not actively demanding a four-day week.
Still, there are isolated examples of companies testing the shorter week model, said Todor Kapitanov, vice president of the Confederation of Bulgarian Trade Unions and Employers. These experiments usually keep salaries intact. Whether such arrangements succeed, however, depends on the type of work performed. Kapitanov noted that Bulgarian companies already struggle with labor shortages, often requiring employees to perform multiple roles, which makes businesses reluctant to reduce working days. He argued that the barriers are not primarily legal – the Labor Code already allows flexible arrangements – but rather market-related, since employers are unsure how to compensate for lost hours in a tight labor market.
The original article: belongs to Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) .
