Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MPs in plea to Sunak for 4-day week to guard jobs
RISHI Sunak is being pressed by MPs to bring in a four-day week to boost productivity and save jobs.
The Chancellor will make a statement on Wednesday which could pave the way for some VAT cuts.
But his big announcements to get Britain out of its worst recession in 300 years are not expected until the Autumn Budget.
Unemployment is predicted to hit 10 per cent – four million people – by
Christmas, as three-quarters of businesses cut workforces.
Labour’s Clive Lewis said in a Commons motion: “Shorter working time has been used throughout history as a way of responding to economic crises.”
A four-day week is already being considered by Scotland’s Post Covid-19 Futures Commission and by New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Ardern.
In Japan, productivity went up 40 per cent in a trial of four-day working by Microsoft. France produces 25 per cent more national wealth for each hour worked than any EU country thanks to its strict 35-hour week for blue-collar workers.
Four-day working would also increase employment by divvying up jobs without any loss of wages if productivity did not fall.
The feared jobs bloodbath exploded last week with thousands of redundancies looming at takeaway chains Upper Crust and Caffe Ritazza, luxury store Harrods, Arcadia, John Lewis, Airbus, TM Lewin, Harveys and
easyJet. They come on top of others at Centrica, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Virgin Atlantic, BP and P&O Ferries.
More than 75,000 child-care providers are under threat as a third of nurseries face permanent closure.
Shadow Children’s Minister Tulip Siddiq said: “The impact on working families is too awful to contemplate.”
Although the UK unemployment rate is holding steady at 3.9 per cent, Office for National Statistics figures show a drop of 600,000 workers on payrolls from March to May. There were 342,000 fewer vacancies and 94 million fewer hours worked in the three months to April than the same period last year.
And Boris Johnson’s £5billion New Deal is unlikely to be much help as it represents only £76 of spending on each Brit.
Mr Sunak has been urged to increase taxes on incomes and reduce them on spending to both plug holes in the economy and stimulate it .
One idea is a so-called Alternative Minimum Tax to raise £11billion a year from those earning £100,000 or more by taxing dividend payments and capital gains at 35 per cent.
A study by the London School of Economics and Warwick University found many on high salaries are paying lower tax rates than those on modest incomes due to the way the tax system is designed.
The Chancellor is also looking at changing the triple lock on pensions which gives annual rises to 12.7 million pensioners of 2.5 per cent or the increase in earnings, or inflation, if either is higher. Anna Dixon of the Centre for Ageing Better said scrapping the triple lock would push 700,000 more people into poverty by 2050 and warned against making “knee-jerk changes”.
In his financial statement, the Chancellor will unveil proposals to spend £800million to recruit 13,500 new coaches to give personalised support to those looking for work.
The coaches will provide one-to-one help on building new skills and finding local jobs.