Friday, March 21, 2025
The Majlis voted last May to adopt a five-day workweek with a Friday-Saturday weekend, but that was rejected by the Council of Guardians, which reviews all legislation for compliance with Islamic law. Now, the Majlis has caved in to the religious hardliners and voted for a five-day workweek with a Thursday-Friday weekend.
The new law applies to government offices, not the private sector, but private businesses are expected to start a conversion to a five-day workweek with a Thursday-Friday weekend. The new law also reduces the workweek from 44 hours to 40 hours. That ends the half-day work on Thursdays. The new 40- hour week applies to the private sector as well as to government agencies. That fact is likely to spark more private businesses to switch to a Thursday-Friday weekend more quickly.
The decision on the Thursday-Friday weekend rather than a Friday-Saturday weekend has been billed by regime loyalists as an “Islamic” weekend. It has been criticized by others as a political decision to limit contact with global markets. A Thursday-Friday weekend, the critics say, means Iran will only be in contact with global markets for three days a week, Monday through Wednesday. As a practical matter, however, it just means that those individuals who have to be in contact with the global market will have to work Thursdays just as they already work Fridays now.
Similarly, Americans who need to be in contact with the global market work odd hours every day because of the time difference between the Western Hemisphere and Eastern Hemisphere. (Shanghai and New York are 12 hours apart.) The Iranians likely to be most impacted by the adoption of a Thursday-Friday weekend are vacationers. No other country uses a Thursday-Friday weekend.
Most Muslim-majority countries have a Friday-Saturday weekend. Most of the rest of the world uses a Saturday-Sunday weekend. Part of last year’s Majlis debate on the bill was strictly ideological, with some arguing that Saturday should not be made a day off because it is the Jewish Sabbath.
Ruhollah Harizavi, deputy director of the Islamic Propagation Organization, argued that adopting Saturday as a holiday would mean “adopting the infidel lifestyle.” The daily Khorasan said, “The issue is not just a day off; it is an issue of altering the social order.” The new workweek changes were adopted by the Majlis March 5. They will take effect after the 12-man Council of Guardians approves the changes.