Danish General Strike (1998)
Mon Apr 27, 1998
Image: Police arrest a picket at Aarhus Harbour [libcom.org]
On this day in 1998, more than 500,000 Danish workers, one fifth of the entire workforce, walked off the job in a general strike, demanding a 35-hour work-week, an extra week of paid holiday, and a 6% wage increase. The strike action came after a big economic boom in Denmark that left workers feeling left out from the increased profits of their employers.
The strike affected a wide variety of industries, from schools to manufacturing to airports to food and petrol stations. Workers in Sweden exhibited solidarity by refusing to load planes heading for Denmark.
May Day marked the fifth day of the strike, and a gigantic demonstration of more than 500,000 people took place in Copenhagen. The government intervened, ordering everyone back to work on May 11th and announcing that any strikes by the affected workers before March 2000 would be illegal.
A compromise deal was accepted by union leadership, and the majority of strikers returned to work, however some spontaneous walk-outs occurred in the following days - in 96 workplaces, 6,200 workers walked out for a one-day strike. Baggage handlers at Copenhagen International Airport stopped making their contributions to the Social Democratic Party, which led the government throughout the labor action.
- Date: 1998-04-27
- Learn More: libcom.org, nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu.
- Tags: #Labor, #General Strikes.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
I have a salaried job where I have some flexibility with my schedule.
I’d given myself a “four day workweek” a few times before, on the down low, just because I had life stuff to attend to, so I needed an extra day - a weekday - to attend to it, but I didn’t want to take PTO for it, if I could get the same amount of work done in that time.
I would intend to work 4 10 hour days. That was my plan.
But, realistically, they would be 9 hour days on Monday, and 8 hour days by Thursday.
So really, I was more or less just taking an extra day off.
Y’know what? Those were, by far, my most productive weeks I’ve ever had!
I can’t explain it. But I always get more done when I work 4 days than when I work 5.
Maybe it’s because I hustle better when I know I have a smaller window in which to work. Or maybe I work better when I have a “3 day weekend” to look forward to (even if I’m not relaxing or doing fun stuff on those days).
I don’t know. But it 100% works.
So I do this as much as I can “get away” with now. It’s not slacking, because it makes me better at my job. It’s the opposite of slacking, more like optimization. But it wouldn’t necessarily be seen that way by my employer.
Yeah, there have been numerous studies on this, and your impression aligns with the outcomes of those studies:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-four-day-workweek-reduces-stress-without-hurting-productivity/
https://www.4dayweek.com/research
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2025/01/rise-of-4-day-workweek
Given that the research shows a four-day workweek gets better results for everyone (including employers), it's worth asking why we don't have one--who is preventing it?
The most important outcome of this, of course, is that it makes for better worker conditions.