A four-day week, Mr Corbyn? It’s already a working reality
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that technological advances would allow employees of the future to work just three hours a day. A couple of decades later, in 1956, Richard Nixon promised that a four-day working week was coming soon for Americans. Now the Labour Party has jumped on the bandwagon, pledging to reduce the number of weekly working hours to 32 for British employees within a decade.
I have news for him: we’re almost there already, no state intervention required.
The average British working week now clocks in at 36 hours, compared to 1952, when employees averaged a 48-hour week. And that’s a decrease from the previous century, when most workers put in a six-day week. There’s a reason football matches are traditionally at 3pm on a Saturday: it’s because that was when people finished work. Nowadays, we’re more likely to spend Saturday morning lying in with the papers, or playing football ourselves. It’s fashionable to think that we’re an overworked, stressed, suffering society. But try telling that to your average manual labourer of a century ago.
The world of work has changed vastly since the Seventies, the timewarp that Jeremy Corbyn and his communist pals appear stuck in. Employment is up, for a start, at a record 76.1 per cent. Part of that is due to the explosion of flexible, part-time work – and, yes, that’s one reason why our average working hours have fallen; it’s thanks to people like me, who choose to work a four-day week, maybe because of children or other caring commitments, or perhaps just for a better work-life balance.
But the key word here is choice. Give people a say over how they work and it reaps dividends. Last year, the accounting firm PWC started the Flexible Talent Network, which allows people to choose different working patterns, whether that’s shorter weekly working hours or working just a few days a month. More than 2,000 people registered within two weeks. Fine, you might say, but you earn less for fewer hours worked. Not always. Microsoft just trialled cutting working hours for staff in Japan to four days but without reducing pay – sales rose by nearly 40 per cent.
Does this mean all companies should have to offer the same? Of course not. Not everybody wants to work a four-day week, and neither would it work for all industries. Mandating working hours is not the answer, and for public services like the NHS would be a recipe for disaster, not least because it would cost a fortune – between £17 billion and £45 billion a year, according to the Centre for Policy Studies. Businesses, as well as employees, should be able to choose what works for them.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to restructure the working week. But it’s happening already. So let business work on it – for however many days they like.