Labour plan for everyone to work a 4-day week... but get paid for 5

EMPLOYEES would work a four-day week but be paid for five under radical plans being considered by Labour.

Workers would receive an extra day at home because bosses could pass on efficiency savings from advances in technology, says the party.

The three-day weekend proposal builds on last year’s manifesto commitment to add four extra bank holidays to mark the patron saints of each part of Britain.

The idea is supposed to reassure workers who are frightened they will be left behind by the pace of technological change.

It would enable workers to benefit from improved efficiency rather than bosses and shareholders capitalising on it, they say. A senior Labour Party source told the Sunday Times: ‘A policy review is expected to be announced before the end of the year.

‘It won’t happen overnight but a four-day working week is an aspiration that fits in with the party’s approach to rebalancing the economy in favour of the worker as well as the party’s overall industrial strategy.’

The idea has been floated previously in Labour circles. Last month, the head of the Trades Union Congress said that a four-day week is achievable this century.

The plan will help to shape the party’s next manifesto. It calls for ‘rapid automation’ and ‘new models of collective, democratic ownership’ to ensure the benefits of technology are shared. It also favours a ‘shorter working week to fairly share productivity gains’ and ‘potentially in time a universal basic income to supplement labour market income’.

Last week at Labour conference, leader Jeremy Corbyn announced plans to help more people share in the economic prosperity which is ‘hoarded by the few’.

He said large companies would be forced to transfer as much as 10 per cent of their shares to workers.