Solarpunk

A few things first of all we have a capitalist system today. That means most workers are in wage jobs, so they can not be forced to work for nothing like slaves. That however turns work time into a commodity. As long as their are too many work hours available, the employers have an advantage, as they can just fire you, not hire you and the like. However work needs to be done and when work hours are scarce, that turns into a workers advantage. So the employers have to compete for workers, which means higher wage so less profit and better working conditions. Hence capitalist want to increase the work week and have a lot of unemployed workers, to run their companies cheaply.

However a few things have changed recently. First of all Western workers have to compete much less with competition from overseas. This is to slower population growth and globalization slowing down and even reversing in parts. Combine that with the baby boomers retiring and you have a local worker shortage. That however means capitalists have to treat the workers better and interestingly for a lot of Western workers, that means less work. Obviously they do not like it, but markets work, so they have to offer it. That is why we see stuff like the four day workweek pop up recently. Most Western workers have enough goods and more free time, is preferable.