THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
Since the pandemic, there has been an increasing call globally for a four-day working week and a growing consensus it could prove more productive for businesses and better suited to employees’ life/work balance.
Countries that already have a four-day week are Iceland, Belgium, United Arab Emirates, Lithuania and France. Meantime, Brazil, Portugal, Canada, Japan, South Africa, Botswana, the UK, Spain and the US are examining the matter, such is the demand of their workers. Ireland is among this cohort.
Not all four-day workweek arrangements are the same. Some involve employees working fewer hours over any given week. Others require them to work the same number of hours, but over four days.
Many four-day workweek trials have deployed the ‘100-80-100’ scenario. This involves paying workers 100% of their pay for 80% of their time, in exchange for 100% output.
The Irish campaigning group Four Day Week wants – no surprise here – the four-day week being the standard arrangement across the economy, and with no loss of pay. “This will look different for different companies and sectors,” a spokesperson says. “It won’t necessarily mean a ‘three day weekend’ but adopting new rostering and working arrangements that allow businesses to stay open five days a week – or even longer – while enabling every worker to have a shorter working week.”
Seemingly, there’s a false narrative that working long hours is good for productivity and a badge of honour, and that we need to challenge the worst excesses of the ‘work-first always-on’ culture, and champion the importance of family time, leisure time, caring work and community work – something that came home to us during the pandemic.
A shorter working week, the campaign argues, can bring benefits to everyone. For workers it means more time to themselves. For business it can actually bring greater productivity, as well as attracting the best talent. For women, a shorter working week can allow greater flexibility. As a society, a four-day week also supports us to take better care of our health, and can have a positive impact on the environment by, for example, reducing carbon created by commuting.
Meanwhile, civil servants here are demanding a four-day week, claiming it is “critical to attaining a good quality of life” and would give them time for “one day of chores, one day of fun and one day of rest”.
Staff at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs say they could save the Government £21.4 million a year by dropping a day of work while remaining on the same pay. Civil service research released last week claims civil servants’ lives would be “transformed” if they could work four days and that such an arrangement is “essential for a happy and healthy life”.
In the countdown to November 29, People Before Profit has said it will introduce a four-day working week, without loss of pay, increase workers’ holidays to 30 days and add two extra bank holidays. It says Irish workers work two weeks longer than the EU average.
Back in the mid-80s, journalists and printers at Ireland’s national newspapers were given a four-day or four-night week as part of protracted productivity deals which included – would you believe? – a whacking pay rise! And that was during an eight-year recession before then Finance Minister Bertie Ahern devalued the punt.
In our rearing of three children, the Indo deal allowed my wife, then aged 22, to stay home for 15 years as a truly great mother before she opened her own business as the children got older.
Also with my four-night week on the editing desk, every three weeks I would finish work just before midnight on a Wednesday and not return to the Irish Independent until 5 o’clock the following Tuesday. I had six days off every three weeks – and six weeks annual leave!
My week off every three weeks meant I could spend time with my children and their mother, and during school holidays we could take off somewhere. Having their mother at home has stood my now three adult children and they still talk of the smell of fresh fairy cakes coming out of the oven as they came in the door from school.
There was a downside though. As I advanced up the ranks, my promotion to Assistant Editor meant I was expected to be on the ground five days a week.
Seems bosses don’t always get the best deal…
