Four day week

tidyskatemum, very many workers already have standard thirty six hour per week employment contracts rather than the forty hour contracts so prevalent only a few years ago.

The Labour proposals are to bring those standard hours down to thirty two over the next ten years. Therefore just as forty hours as normal working has been reduced to thirty six, so thirty six to thirty two should be easily achievable over the next ten years.

The key to the above is flexibility of working in Britains seven-day economy, especially in such industries as Transport and Health care. However, I do believe that the British Road Transport Industry has demonstrated in recent years how such challenges should be handled, but even in that does anyone really believe that heavy goods vehicle drivers should still be demanded to drive ten hours in any day, with total hours being legal of up to fifteen hours in that day.

That is what Labour is trying to address.

tidyskatemum I have tried to get this across several times but without any effect. I hope more people read your post and take it on board.

Some of you still haven’t realised that what is being proposed in a 4 day week is NOT to condense eg 5x 8 hour shifts into 4x10 hours but to reduce working hours by 20% while maintaining the same pay. So the NHS, schools, councils will have an increased wage bill of 20% plus increased NI and pension contributions for the fictional additional staff who will be conjured out of thin air.

A lot of companies operate on shortened weeks. The daily hours are extended but overall the total amount hours worked is the same. Some companies actually close others just organise that workers have a different day "off" but most seem to prefer Monday or Friday for a long weekend. The ones I know of are mainly office based roles. Don't know how eg industry, A & E, pilots would be accommodated. Wouldn't there be childcare issues if schools closed?

M0nica it is a four day week. No one is proposing that a limit be placed on the number of hours that you work on each day.

As I have stated in an earlier post in this thread, a number of the staff in our company now work four days of nine hours rather than five days of seven and a quarter. For us, it also makes a rolling week possible.

So, staff get the same pay for the same total hours but working fewer days. That has proved to be very popular and many employers are engaging in such working without any prompting from the government.

growstuff Labour are talking about a 32 hour week.

After re-marrying (in 2004) at 57 after being widowed for fifteen years, I asked to work four days, rather than five, in order to spend more time with my new husband. We had agreed that we would continue to live apart for the three years I still needed to work in order to reach pension age, and not lose a valuable employer pension. This meant that we could spend long weekends together every week. This meant that I worked fewer hours and was paid less as a consequence, but was still expected to complete the same level of work. I worked for an American Brokerage company, and my job was clerical support. This worked well for me. It enabled me to work out how living with a smaller income would be managed (that would be inevitable when I retired), and actually ended up with more holiday days in the working year. Not ideal for everyone, but it worked for me. The work was fairly repetitive, and I was the only one carrying out these tasks in my unit.

I dropped down to a 28 hours 4 day week 3 years ago with a commensurate drop in salary. What I have found is that it focuses the need for good time management. I am doing the same job my productivity and output is roughly the same but to achieve this I need to make every minute of my working day productive. In principal it could open up opportunities for flexible working, and create employment opportunities but business and public sector would take the hit in higher employment costs. There is also a risk of exploitation to work the extra hours.

But in future they would presumably be working 4 x 8 hour shifts at the same pay. Who is going to work the extra 4 hours a day and how much will it cost?

The key of the policy is not simply working only four days a week, but working the same number of hours on that day, so that other people have to be employed work the hours the work the current employee is not doing on the 5th day.

Working current hours over 4 days isn't a problem. I did it myself once for some months and there was much in its favour. But reducing hours on the same pay means that hourly rates go up by 20 percent and that extra staff have to get that higher rate as well, even if just working part time.

Visiting a relative in ICU, nursing staff worked 4 12 hour shifts a week

If this is a 20% reduction in 48 hours, it won't affect most people.

It will be announced that it’s merely ‘an aspiration’ no doubt,
Along with banning all private schools and other poorly thought out policies that Corbyn and McDonnell think will appeal to the masses.

When the working time directive supposedly put a cap of 48 hours on the working week, lots of people weren't affected.

Firstly, it didn't apply to the self-employed.

Secondly, it was an average over 17 weeks, so people like teachers still had to work over 48 hours a week because holidays were taken into account.

All this headline stuff doesn't make much sense without knowing the details.

MOnica Is it about a 20% reduction in hours? I haven't actually read what was said.

The devil is always in the detail.

Swap obtuse for stupid in my last paragraph

So many of you seem to be opposed to the idea of a shorter working week. What is so wrong for it t be a goal? No one is suggesting that if Labour win the election they will introduce a 4 day working week immediately.

I have to say that some of you are being deliberately stupid to suggest that hospitals, businesses etc would close for 3 days out of 7.

The people I am talking about Maizie are not newly qualified graduates but professionals with 5, 10, 20 years experience behind them, capable, for example of undertaking complicated life saving surgery, taking responsibility for installing wind farms, capable of heading departments in schools, taking on the installation of a major IT project.

Unemployment registers are remarkable free of them. DH is stilling working at 76 because he is an expert in the safe movement of large items at sea, currently working almost non-stop in the wind farm industry because they currently cannot find enough people with the right experience for the work.

I am sure (not) that there are thousands of such experts working 1 hour a week who would leap at all the new vacancies that would be available if everyone worked shorter hours.

Changes like the mininimum wage were not a problem, because it only affected a proportion of the population and for most the effective wage rise was only a couple of £s an hour. This new plan is talking about a 20%, full on salary rise for everybody, plus a 20% rise in the size of the workforce in a competitive global economy in which British goods will no longer be competitive in international markets.

The voice of reason, growstuff, 12.37

This is all uninformed speculation.

I would have thought that the Leavers among us would have loved this idea as they have no problems with leaps in the dark...?

Humptydumpty

I think it said on the News last night that all the different manifestos are out next week.

True Chewie

I have taken two calls this morning. 1. Broken guttering.
2. Slates off a barn roof.

No problem, we will be with you next Monday.

It's hard enough getting a plumber or electrician now, there'll be no chance when they work a four day week.

Of course we should be moving towards shorter working hours. This is a rich country, and with AI developing apace we have plenty of scope for making working life easier for employees.

But the above isn't on the agenda for businesses. They are out to spend the least amount while getting the most profit from their workers.

With a planned economy (democratically of course) the targets - phased in as applicable - should be:

30 hour working week for all (small businesses to be supported where necessary)
class sizes of 20
A&E waiting times less than one hour
minimum pay £15 per hour (small businesses to be supported here too)
etc - you fill it in!

Instead what do the government spend money on:
Trident £200 billion and rising
HS2 over £100 billion and rising
NHS failed IT projects £10 billion
several other failed IT projects costing £10 to £200 million each
Fire sale of RBS with £4 billion loss to taxpayers
and not forgetting procurement - the MOD pay £22 for s single light bulb!

AND we let accountants draw up tax legislation so that nice big holes are left for their other employers (the wealthy and their businesses) to leap through!

This just would not work especially with primary school children.

Jay Lucy I don't know any GPs who work an 8 hour day. 12 hours would be nearer the mark!

allule I remember being told about all the increased leisure time I could expect when I was at secondary school in the 1960/70s.