More than a dozen MPs are calling on ministers to consider a four-day working week as part of the Employment Rights Bill.
An amendment to the Bill, tabled by Peter Dowd, Labour MP for Bootle, would oblige the government to establish a new Working Time Council to provide recommendations on how the UK could transition away from a five-day working week.
Dowd said the UK should get ahead of the curve. “The benefits of greater productivity in the economy as a result of new technology such as artificial intelligence must be passed back to workers in more free leisure time,” he told the Mirror.
Four-day week
Second jobs at four-day council ‘nuttier than a squirrel’s brunch’
“A four-day, 32-hour working week is the future of work and I urge my party to back this amendment so we can begin a much wider transition.”
Maya Ellis, Labour MP for Ribble Valley, said: “I hope our government can be brave enough to take the first steps now, in what I believe will one day be considered the norm.”
The Working Time Council would provide advice and make recommendations on how a transition could be made from a five-day working week to a four-day working week with no impact on pay, including how such a transition would affect employers and employees, and how businesses, public bodies and other organisations should approach such a transition.
Members would be appointed by the business and trade secretary within six months of the Bill becoming an Act, and would include representatives from businesses, trade unions, government and employment experts.
Other Labour MPs backing the amendment include Kim Johnson, Rachael Maskell, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain and Paula Barker, together with the Green Party’s Ellie Chowns.
Last month it emerged that 200 UK companies, with more than 5,000 employees, have signed up for a permanent four-day working week, according to the campaign group 4 Day Week Foundation.
In November, the PCS union claimed that the government could save around £21 million a year if it allowed civil servants to work four days a week on the same wage.
The union believes the move would enable the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to hire an extra 2,345 people as a result of a 57% drop in staff turnover, and reduce sick leave from an average of 4.3 to 1.5 days per year – the equivalent of gaining of 328 new workers.
Joe Ryle, director of the 4 Day Week Foundation, said: “Compressing the same amount of hours into four days rather than five is not the same thing as a true four-day working week. What is missing from the Bill is a commitment to explore a genuinely shorter working week which we know workers desperately want.
“As hundreds of British companies and one local council have already shown, a four-day week with no loss of pay can be a win-win for both workers and employers.”
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
