Labour plans four-day working week
LABOUR is considering offering a four-day week to voters in the hope of winning power, John Mcdonnell has said.
The shadow chancellor said Labour would “look at the working week” as part of an examination of working practices ahead of drawing up the party’s manifesto for the 2022 general election.
It comes after Frances O’grady, the TUC general secretary, said that a four-day week should be “an ambition” for unions.
Labour is already said to be looking at how the rise of robots and artificial intelligence could be used to benefit workers rather than just company bosses.
Speaking on BBC One’s Sunday Politics, Mr Mcdonnell said: “We will be exploring a whole range of issues about automation – we will look at the working week.”
Asked if the measure might be included in the party’s manifesto for the 2022 general election, Mr Mcdonnell said he would “see how it goes”. He added: “We have got to make sure in the fourth industrial revolution that workers get the benefits of this [automation] as well and that might be reducing hours of work. We work the longest hours in Europe, yet we are less productive. The Germans and French produce in four days what we produce in five.”
Last night, a Labour spokesman said: “We are looking at the work of the TUC on automation.”
Details are still to be worked out, but a TUC source said that a four-day week could form part of talks between unions and management as part of the collective bargaining process.
Mr Mcdonnell’s admission represents an about-turn by Labour.
Two weeks ago, a party spokesman said: “A four-day working week is not party policy and is not being considered by the party.”
Speaking at the TUC conference in Manchester last month, Ms O’grady said: “In the 19th century, unions campaigned for an eight-hour day. In the 20th century, we won the right to a twoday weekend and paid holidays.
“I believe that in this century we can win a four-day working week, with decent pay for everyone.”
Mr Mcdonnell also revealed yesterday that Labour would scrap Universal Credit, telling Sky News: “I think most people now are coming to the conclusion that it has got to be scrapped.”
Brandon Lewis, the Tory party chairman, criticised the four-day week plans, saying: “Labour [is] again looking to do untold damage to our economy, which would hurt our productivity, reduce living standards and create higher unemployment (like most Labour government legacies).”
‘We have got to make sure in the fourth industrial revolution workers get the benefits’
Conservative strategists sense an opportunity at the end of the party conference season. They calculate that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has become so extreme that it will put off traditional supporters and that these could be wooed into the Tory camp. Theresa May indicated as much in a weekend article she wrote for the Left-leaning Observer newspaper. Millions of people who have voted Labour all their lives were “appalled” at what it had become, she said. This echoes her conference speech in which she observed that the party of Wilson, Callaghan and John Smith was now in the hands of the hard Left.
But Mrs May was also right in her article to say that denouncing Mr Corbyn’s extremism was of itself not sufficient to convince Labour voters to jump ship. As was apparent at last year’s general election, the Labour leader’s past links with the Irish Republican movement or sympathies for Soviet-era communists make little difference to young voters, for whom these are historical events. As Mrs May said, their defining memory is not the fall of the Berlin Wall but the collapse of the banks.
The danger for the Tories is that they draw the wrong message from the right analysis. Yes, voters are fearful of Mr Corbyn, who does not conform to the British idea of a Left-wing leader and is seen as unpatriotic, which is anathema to Labour’s working-class voters. But he is trying to overcome these handicaps by making a whole series of spending promises, backed by excessive taxation that will bankrupt the country.
The temptation will be strong for the Tories to match Labour’s pledges in order to win over voters who are bound to be attracted to Mr Corbyn’s Fantasy Island economics. It needs to be resisted. The Tories have an obligation to defend freemarket capitalism against the depredations of Marxist ideology. Mrs May said she wanted Labour voters to look afresh at her government to find “a decent, moderate and patriotic programme worthy of their support”. But it needs to be true to core Tory values, not take a Blairite soft-left approach.
That means having the courage to argue for reforms of key public services such as the NHS, rather than throwing more money at them. Voters will spot a phoney a mile away. One reason why Mr Corbyn has attracted an almost cult following is because he is seen as “authentic”. The Conservatives must remain so, too.