Give workers a 4-day week
Senator says move would boost productivity
A SENATOR wants firms to introduce four-day working weeks to boost productivity.
Labour’s employment spokesman Ged Nash said the possibility must be explored because staff are constantly expected to be on duty.
Last November a number of trade unions said reduced hours was emerging as one of the central issues in debates about the future of work.
And now Louth/east Meath representative Mr Nash is calling for it to be looked at in greater detail with the possibility of it becoming a reality sooner rather than later.
He said: “The world of work is changing rapidly and workers are increasingly being made to feel like they need to be constantly available to their employers.
“In order to make work more productive and to ensure family life and society benefits from advances in technology, I think it is timely we examine how our working time laws at Irish and EU level can better serve workers and industry by providing workers with a better work-life balance.
“With workers constantly being expected to be ‘on’, there is evidence to suggest quality of work and productivity can suffer as a result.
“Employees and employers don’t benefit from this kind of practice.”
In New Zealand, Perpetual Guardian – a firm which manages trusts, wills and estate planning – introduced a four-day working week last March as a trial over two months and later reported a jump in productivity and a massive decrease in stress among its 240 workers.
Senator Nash added: “Forsa here in Ireland and the TUC in the UK have called for an examination into how a four-day working week would benefit workers and the economy. The Labour Party is doing similar work in regards to this as we examine the challenges around the future of work.
Employers’ group IBEC last night said all aspects of the working environment will have to be looked at.
Its chief Maeve Mcelwee said: “More varied career paths bring new stresses, with more periods of change and flux as individuals move through their working lives.”