Four-day work weeks are inevitable

I wrote this for the Canberra Times, but it’s paywalled. Here’s the version I submitted. You can get to the published version using archive.is if you know how

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As another working week begins, many of us will be looking back wistfully at the back-to-back four day weeks we just enjoyed on either side of the Easter Break. That raises the question: why not make every week a four-day week?

The most common objection is that such a shift would be economically unaffordable. The historical evidence shows that this is simply wrong. Australian workers achieved the 5-day working week, and its beloved counterpart, the weekend, in 1948. Since then, productivity has more than tripled.

Yet standard working hours have barely changed. There were some modest improvements after 1948, including more generous annual and family leave, and the shift from a 40 hour week to 38 hours, but these came to an end in the early 1980s. There has been essentially no change in standard working hours since then.

Even since the turn of the present century, labour productivity has risen by 20 per cent. That is, we now produce in four days what used to take us five days as recently as 2000. We have, on average, more goods and services, but no more time to enjoy them. This does not make economic sense, or any kind of sense for that matter.

Even granting this point, it might be claimed that the adjustment to a four-day week would be too disruptive to manage. The experience of progressive companies that have made the shift suggests otherwise. Workers with shorter hours get more useful work done per hour. Absenteeism declines, as there as much less reason to take ‘sickies’ to deal with household issues or just to have a break. And over the longer term, valuable employees are less likely to quit. As a result, any loss in productivity is less than the 20 per cent suggested by simple arithmetic.

The Global 4-Day Week initiative has worked with numerous companies around the world which have trialled the shift. Most, including in Australia, have been very satisfied with the outcome

Other objections to a four-day week relate to the fact that not everyone works a five-day week. Essential services like hospital emergency wards have always been run on a 24/7 basis. And we have become used to expecting retail businesses to operate seven days a week. The length of the standard work week is not directly relevant to workers in industries of this kind. But it would clearly be unworkable to offer a reduction in working hours, with no less of pay, to full-time workers, while leaving conditions unchanged for everyone else.

In the short run, a shift to a four-day standard working week would entail an increase in hourly wage rates which would flow through to part-time and casual workers. But in the longer term we might consider more radical alternatives, such as the creation of a standardised category of 3-day jobs covering the longer weekend.

Here’s what ChatGPT thought would be a good illustrataion

What about schools? As with employment, there’s nothing sacrosanct about our existing school timetable. The US manages with a school year of 180 days, compared to our 200. And most studies suggest that a long summer break sets many students back. If we cut the summer holidays to four weeks, and lengthened the school day by half an hour, Australian students would get as many class hours as their US counterparts while enjoying a four-day week.

Until recently, the overwhelming response to proposals for a four-day week did not rely on specific objections, but rather to a more general sense that such a radical change would be unthinkable. No one now in the workforce is old enough to remember the times before the weekend, so it seems (or used to) that the five-two arrangement was eternal.

Today however, the phrase ‘Before Times’ is more commonly used as a wistful reference to the pre-Covid era. If Covid-19 proved one thing, it was that the unimaginable is perfectly possible. This was most obvious in relation to remote work. Before 2022, only halting steps had been taken to capture the potential benefits offered by nearly universal Internet access. Getting permission to work remotely required negotiation with employers and managers which might or might not be successful. Anecdotal claims about “water cooler conversation” were used to justify the status quo and the massive commuting costs it entailed.

Lockdowns changed that overnight. Like it or not, all kinds of office work were performed remotely. And, to the surprise of many, the switch was just about seamless. At least at the beginning there were lots of tiresome Zoom meetings, as managers tried to adjust. But otherwise work went on smoothly.

When the lockdowns lifted, managers repeatedly announced a ‘return to the office’ backed up by vague (and occasionally specific) threats of consequences for those who did not comply. But without the spell of inevitability, these demands went nowhere. Workers stayed home in such numbers, and worked effectively enough, that no manager could afford to penalise them. A new normal, in which three days of office became standard, has emerged.

The same thing now seems to be happening with the four-day week. Remote workers are getting their jobs done early on Friday afternoons and disconnecting. As the Wall Street Journal, the favoured news source for the employer class, observes, people are working fewer Friday hours, but work is still getting done

This informal movement is helping to break the idea that five full days of work are the natural way of doing things. But it is inevitably partial, and available only to some workers. Sooner or later we will need action from governments and the Fair Work Commission to formalise the process, probably in gradual stages. From being a utopian idea only a few years ago, the four-day week now looks inevitable.

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