What was claimed
Finland is going to have a four-day working week and six-hour days.
Our verdict
This is not Finnish government policy. The Finnish Prime Minister did suggest the idea on a panel in 2019 while she was Minister for Transport.
Finland is not going to have a four-day working week.
16 January 2020
Multiple outlets claimed last week that Finland planned to introduce a four-day working week under new Prime Minister Sanna Marin. The articles were posted to Facebook and Instagram, where they have been shared hundreds of times.
However, this claim is not true; Marin informally proposed the idea during a panel in August 2019 when she was Minister of Transport.
On the panel, which was part of the 120th-anniversary celebrations of the Social Democratic Party she said: “A four-day work week, a six-hour workday. Why couldn’t it be the next step? Is eight hours really the ultimate truth? I believe 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 Finnish government rebutted the claim this was now government policy in a Twitter post last week. The post read: “In the Finnish Government´s program there is no mention about 4-day week. Issue is not on the Finnish Government’s agenda. PM @marinsanna envisioned idea briefly in a panel discussion last August while she was the Minister of Transport, and there hasn’t been any recent activity.”
Following the response from the Finnish government, many publications corrected their story.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the Finnish government says it has no plans to introduce a 4-day working week.