In Britain, Calls for a 4-Day Week. Can It Be Done?

Since about 1970, worker productivity in the US has more than doubled, while wages for about half of all workers has grown by zero. A shorter working week is the least (and I do mean the least) workers could get.

A four day week? From the nation that already clocks off at 4pm on the dot every Friday? Britain is going to have to spend the next century working overtime to catch up and the catastrophic effects that Brexit will do to its economy. You must be ‘avin a laugh!

Yes this. People often work better and more efficiently under appropriate constraints. Adding a time constraint of one less working day drives efficient use of time.

rather shallow article, more a listing of a couple of limited initiatives. would be great to have an unbiaised analysis of reduced working hours, for eg in france where 35h week has been the norm for more than 15 years now

Where vacations matter more than work, where drink matters more than life...no surprise here.

We could all work 4-day work weeks if we got rid of work that doesn't need to be done. For instance, if we had simple and sensible taxes laws, no-one would need an accountant to do their taxes. If TV was financed by subscriptions and free of ads, no-one would need to make those ads. If laws and regulations were less complex, government bureaucracies could be smaller. There are similar examples everywhere you look. We could all benefit, not just from the shorter work week, but from the reduced complexity in our daily lives.

Why not allow flexible work hours and let workers decide how much they want to contribute to their career? Shouldn't the ambitious be able to work longer and harder in order to succeed, and why should that be prevented? If people want to work less, the government should not shield them from the professional consequences.

In Britain, Calls for a 4-Day Week. Can It Be Done? Why yes, the enabling legislation would be Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty (2009), implementation is currently scheduled for March, 2019.

For the American worker, that dream is right up there with winning the state lottery. We just hope to be able to take the vacation time we have earned.

i work four 10 hours days a week with generous benefits. longer shifts and holidays offer overtime pay. it has worked out very well for our family. i firmly believe more people would benefit from a 4 day work week.

It may work in some work sectors but it will not work in the catering industry as not only is it still one of the poorest paid it is also the one industry that is suffering from shortages from trained kitchen staff. So as much as I would like a 4 day week the only way that will happen is we'll be doing 4 10hr shifts instead of 5 8hr ones and therefore no reduction in hours worked. plus it is still not going to help sort out the shortage of trained staff needed.

Work to live NOT live to work.

I grew up in the UK in the 1070’s when there was a government mandated 3 day work week as they could not afford to pay employees of all the nationalized industries. Back to the future!

How I long for a 3 day weekend! God please make it happen!

I work in healthcare and have worked a variety of shifts from 8- to 12.5 hours. This has made it possible to ALWAYS have at least 3 days off every week. At one point, I was only working 5 12.5 hour shifts per 2-week pay period and getting full benefits. This has afforded me amazing flexibility to raise small children, pursue artistic endeavors, exercise, read, and start a small farm. I encourage everyone to keep agitating for this type of scheduling in their work lives - it's worth it!

This is long overdue. It will shrink the artificial labor surplus, creating a well functioning free market that should increase the cost of labor to its true market value. This would lead to higher paid workers and less profit for business owners, closing the ridiculous income gap.

This article could not be more tone deaf to the real issues. So far, (and the employment data for two decades supports it) employers want more part-timers because part-timers dont get expensive benefits. So in effect, more people ARE working "4 days" a week in 2018 but they are being paid by the hour and without benefits. My own 25 years experience as a manager at a very large NYC employer is that folks at the very top and HR wanted those who were true full timers to work 5 days a week, even if productivity was not necessarily increased.

I want Jetson's future: 4 hour work week. :)

As a supervisor, I fought and gained for a four-day work week for my staff. The results: better productivity, sick days dropped off to almost nothing, and everyone appeared happier. Then my new, less-than-enlightened boss appeared. She thought it was some sort of way to scam the company. This is the same company that has since laid off hundreds of workers.

With Brexit round the corner? Um, no - we’re going to need every penny - as Ms O’Grady knows full well which is why she’s calling for a new referendum if the govt can’t get a deal with the EU. Post-Brexit, the people with reduced days will be the thousands and thousands rendered unemployed by this insanity. You can tell I hold great hopes for the future of Little Brexitland...

Keynes was right, for office workers like me at least, I work about 15 - 20 hours a week, but sit in the office wasting time online or working on personal projects for considerably longer to cover hours. In fact, as I type this, I'm waiting for an acceptable hour to sneak out of here - acting as if I'd just completed another hard days work. The reality it seems is that low wage earners seem to have to cover hours, and work really hard standing for hours checking out groceries, mowing lawns or otherwise laboring, while middling office people like me work about half the time, while really rich folks don't go in to the office much - if at all - and yet they reap the VAST majority of the rewards of our capitalist system.

Unfortunately it won't help people who are not on the clock like those of us in sales where we are expected to be available and reachable at all times by bosses.

In the law firm where I work the clerical people all work four day weeks. It is so splendidly received by the clerical staff that most of the lawyers wish they had gone to typing school rather than law school. The effervescent glow on the faces of those people on Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons is sheer torture to behold. But they do seem to make up for it with increased motivation and upgraded pleasantness. I'm now up to 18 WPM, and I may be seeking a change of job title soon.

Good luck with that America! My wife's a bit of a hard-charger at work. She loves to get stuff done and feels badly when she can't bat something back right away. She regularly eats at her desk while working. One thing she's disciplined about, though, is not working a minute longer than 8 hours. She says that she didn't fight cancer to work herself to death. Others in her office stand about and chat for hours during the week and work longer hours because of it. They expect my wife to work those hours, too, even though her hours are more productive. Peer pressure to conform, I guess, which came to a crunch this week when she refused to partake in a 'volunteer' team building exercise (picking up litter for a local church and then going out for lunch. Oh, Yay!), because she's the only member of her department who has a government-mandated deadline in 3 weeks. Yet she is criticized for working and not partaking in 'volunteer' play time. If Americans want a four-day week, they need to get together and decide it. But from my wife's experience, that'll never happen. Why? Because too many Americans don't have a life outside of work, and are jealous of those who do.

A four-day work week sounds wonderful with eight our days being optimal. And on a related matter: expanding overtime pay to all employees working more than eight hours a day would be be extremely helpful.

Why not 8 hour days on Mon/Tues and Th/Fri with Wednesdays and Sat/Sun off ?

I've been advocating a four day work week for years because it makes sense. Give people one more day per week to cope with the demands of their personal lives and there will be fewer sick days taken and less time wasted at work. It would increase the number of workers needed to cover the same amount of work, so it would also decrease unemployment. Each company or institution could decide when and how to allocate the extra day off. Personally, I feel that days off should mostly be staggered to avoid highways jammed with end-of-week Thursday night commutes vs. the current Friday rush. Some employees could take Mondays off, some Friday , and some a mid-week day for doctor appointments and the like. I already have doctors who do not work on Fridays, so I plan accordingly. I think a four day week is only a matter of time.

I worked 3-twelve hour shifts with about 60+ people for a data center . That amounted to 4-days off per week and four shifts to cover the week (two day-shifts, two night-shifts) We were paid as if we were working 40 hours. Yes, the schedule put us working on few holidays during the year but the operators were paid time and a half. Now I'm scheduled for 40 but usually put in 50+ hours per week five by five. I understand I won't get a medal for my extra hours and that is time away from my family and those I love. Three-twelves was better for living AND still giving the company what they needed.

"France has created a law giving workers the 'right to disconnect.' It requires companies with more than 50 employees to negotiate a new protocol to ensure that work does not spill into after-work hours, an effort to prevent cases of burnout, which officials say are becoming more prevalent." A 4-day workweek is interesting and I'm all for a future that contemplates human beings spending less time working to make ends meet instead of more. That said, I think the more immediate concern is the idea that work, whatever the hours, simply MUST have some parameters that everyone agrees to respect. Unless there is some grave risk to human life (medical personnel, military operations, firefighters, etc.), it is not unreasonable to establish principles for when an employee is on the job and when they are not. If an employee is, even unofficially, expected to continually be aware of emails and messages outside of normal working hours, it means that they are never TRULY allowed to clock out. At best they are allowed to change into more comfortable clothes and continue to work remotely; to devote some attention to their own concerns while eternally keeping one eye on the shop. In some industries, sleep and/or unconsciousness are seemingly the only true excuses for not being on call. Do I want the government to regulate this principle? No. But with unions being purposefully weakened (in the U.S.), one size fits all regulations are the best anyone can hope for (if that).

Maybe technology really does reduce the workload to 15% of what it was before the days of computers and automation. But when the employer then lays off 90% of support staff, and then expects either managers to do all their own secretarial work, or believes one admin can now do the work of 20, the remaining employees are naturally suffering an increased workload, and of course I have to work longer hours to keep up. But sure, let's talk about how the technology must be at fault, and not about employers working ordinary people to death for less and less money so that owners, executives and shareholders can pocket more for themselves.

Interesting idea, although I am concerned it will further separate us into two camps: 1) those whose jobs have evolved positively due to automation, and will have additional leisure time; and 2) those who are in low-paying service positions with little stability and benefits, who either work at multiple jobs, participate in the gig economy as a freelancer, or rely on government and/or social service programs to make ends meet. It already seems like we live on two different planets within the same country, so I'm not sure why we need yet another fundamentally different experience that will further fracture our collective psychology.

I would settle for working 9 days over 2 weeks, if we can get there faster.

This is remarkably pessimistic. Senator Black (later Justice Black) got the 30 hour week through the US Senate in 1933 by a vote of 53 - 30. It is generally accepted that President Roosevent killed the Bill. Cutting the work week sharply, NOW, WITH NO CUT IN PAY, is the most promising response to climate change. It will also redistribute income downward. Many benefits. Let's get going.

I cannot speak for any other workplace than my own, but I personally put in 10 hours on a daily basis (but only getting paid for 8). I do what the job requires and what is necessary and needed. I realize that is an old-fashion mindset, but one in which most "old timers" like myself grew up with. Going to a 4-day week would be a wonderful treat but not a game changer for me since I usually work on the computer after dinner for a few hours every work day and Saturdays. I am extremely fortunate to have a boss who recognizes and appreciates the time, the detail, and the sense of responsibility I have when it comes to my work. It's always been more about doing my best and hoping the boss appreciates my efforts than merely being compensated financially or hourly. Believe it or not, there are still some dinosaurs like me who care more about a good work product than simply putting in the bare minimal of hours each day and week. I never understood why a 4-day work week would NOT be feasible - half the staff could work Monday through Thursday and the other half could work Tuesday through Friday - this way, everyone gets a 3-day weekend and only has to show up 4 days instead of 5. Sometimes running a pilot program for 3 - 6 months is a sure fire way to see if this notion is feasible or not.

This almost makes me want to have children. . .but then I remember everything else that is going to happen to babies born today.

Alex Bryson has it wrong. Labor movements move slow until they don't. If and when the four day work week happens, it'll happen all at once. The change will happen in a wave, not a tide. And why would labor want the change slow anyway? Technology is supposed to enable human freedom, not enrich capital owners. There's a fundamental disconnect in how economists perceive labor. I would argue we only need a catalyst to initiate change. Drop your laptops and walk out. There's very little that needs to be done in an office Friday that can't wait till Monday. There's generally an undue sense of urgency associated with otherwise mundane tasks. I encourage you to strive for mediocrity. That's what the boss gets anyway with 50 plus hour work weeks. Anyone worth keeping won't stick around.