I think the entire premise here is wrong. The x-hr work day is based on the model of factory work. That model is increasingly less relevant to real work. To imagine that merely changing these outdated labor laws which take factory work as the norm and tweaking the numbers on them in a "favorable" direction will somehow magically greater enrich or empower individual workers is like imagining that changing the laws of horse ownership is going to affect transportation in the mid 20th century. You're turning a knob that isn't connected to the right thing anymore. There are ways to empower individual workers in the 21st century economy, but those ways have very little to do with factory work, and changing the number of hours they are "forced" to work is so far removed from what actually matters as to be ridiculous.
The governing parties of the city doing this experiment are left-wing, which tend to be stuck in that kind of thinking. There aren't many factory workers anymore in Sweden, so I guess it's based on some kind of revolutionary romantic notion or whatnot.
