4 day working week is happening l

[Ridgemont]

I’m not sure I can quite fathom the logic but it turns out that having given vast swathes of the public sector pay increases the government is now removing any objections to council workers moving to a 4 day week with the same pay

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/11/08/la...

Apart from the right wing frothy side of me doing a ‘Wut’ moment I do seriously wonder whether any of the proponents have studied basic economics.

If budgets are largely stationary (or slightly increased) but time is ‘apparently’ reduced by 20% but output remains the same would not there be a moment of ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’ while private sector workers are going to be enjoying the impact of the increase of NI on non public sector workers employees? Output remains the same but they spend 20% less time working? Hmmmmm.

Mind boggled.

[kiethton]

This government is a parody surely, they can't be this incompetent surely

[Mr Whippy]

The tube drivers do 10hrs less and 4 days less per 4 week period.
They were on 35 x 4 ~ 140hrs.

So they must now be on 130 / 4 ~ 32.5hr weeks over 4 days?


So they’ll need 35/32.5 ~ 7.7% more drivers…?


Ummmm. Errrr. What?



What planet are Labour on?

I thought it was tough decisions time, not free sweets for chosen-ones time!

[mike9009]

That does seem bonkers.

Every 4 day work deal I have seen is either a reduction in pay pro rata or increase in daily hours (so same number of hours per week).

I work in an SME with about 80 employees.

We have many people who do a lot of discretionary hours to get the job done to schedule. The upset of giving another employee a day off per week for doing the bare minimum hours disincentivises those keen to get the job done rather than those who want to get the hours done.

So, largely the four day week has been quashed, unless a reduction in pay is accepted. (Some cases are accepted within certain (usually lower) pay grades and certain circumstances for limited time periods (for example child care responsibilities).

[Challo]

So it’s a trial to see if it would work. Some companies already offer this, and seems to work for them.

Apparently it could be 4 x 10hr days, with an extra day off each week, or adjust the hours and get an extra day off each fortnight.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fo...

My friend does it and loves it.

[Ridgemont]

Challo said:

So it’s a trial to see if it would work. Some companies already offer this, and seems to work for them.

Apparently it could be 4 x 10hr days, with an extra day off each week, or adjust the hours and get an extra day off each fortnight.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fo...

My friend does it and loves it.

I’m sure he/she does.

The only one I know which does is it is dying on its arse.

[Challo]

Ridgemont said:

Challo said:

So it’s a trial to see if it would work. Some companies already offer this, and seems to work for them.

Apparently it could be 4 x 10hr days, with an extra day off each week, or adjust the hours and get an extra day off each fortnight.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fo...

My friend does it and loves it.

I’m sure he/she does.

The only one I know which does is it is dying on its arse.

According to the article there is 200 companies that offer a 4 day week. If it works for a company then why not offer it to some employees?

Labour are trialing it. If it works implement it, if it doesn’t don’t. Not rocket science.

[Ridgemont]

The crazy thing is I work with teams out in Chennai. They do 10 hour days and 6 day weeks.

This is a recipe for accepting crap productivity: what happens if demand increases? Do you switch back and pay 20% more (again)? Utterly bonkers.

[Ridgemont]

Challo said:

Ridgemont said:

Challo said:

So it’s a trial to see if it would work. Some companies already offer this, and seems to work for them.

Apparently it could be 4 x 10hr days, with an extra day off each week, or adjust the hours and get an extra day off each fortnight.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fo...

My friend does it and loves it.

I’m sure he/she does.

The only one I know which does is it is dying on its arse.

According to the article there is 200 companies that offer a 4 day week. If it works for a company then why not offer it to some employees?

Labour are trialing it. If it works implement it, if it doesn’t don’t. Not rocket science.

I very much imagine the metrics will show it ‘working’.
And I very much doubt that those 200 companies are ‘working’ but would love to see evidence.

Because if I was a CEO I would be looking at it and assuming that a large chunk of my staff are unproductive.

[MattsCar]

A 10 hour day would be absolutely dismal in my opinion.

Get up at 7.30 to get in to work for 9 and then finish at 7 to be home for 7.30 or beyond, if it is a bit of a drive.

Doing that for 4 days doesn't appeal to me.

Also, from the point of the business, most people are lagging by 5 o'clock, how they are going to get another 2 hours of productivity out of them would be interesting.

[valiant]

Ridgemont said:

The crazy thing is I work with teams out in Chennai. They do 10 hour days and 6 day weeks.

Not sure that’s something to aspire to.

[Challo]

Ridgemont said:

The crazy thing is I work with teams out in Chennai. They do 10 hour days and 6 day weeks.

This is a recipe for accepting crap productivity: what happens if demand increases? Do you switch back and pay 20% more (again)? Utterly bonkers.

That India and I know they do long hours. Not sure what that has to do with this.

All this is doing is compressing the working week. Rather than doing 40 hours over a 5 day week, for some people they might want to do those same hours over a 4 day week. If demand increases you just work extra hours as you would do today? Why are you accepting crap productivity? It’s the same hours.

[aeropilot]

kiethton said:

This government is a parody surely, they can't be this incompetent surely

Oh they can, and I bet there's even more lunacy to come.

[Mr Whippy]

MattsCar said:

A 10 hour day would be absolutely dismal in my opinion.

Get up at 7.30 to get in to work for 9 and then finish at 7 to be home for 7.30 or beyond, if it is a bit of a drive.

Doing that for 4 days doesn't appeal to me.

Also, from the point of the business, most people are lagging by 5 o'clock, how they are going to get another 2 hours of productivity out of them would be interesting.

Plus health.

Eating like that won’t be good for you.

It’s a recipe for worse performance/efficiency in the long run, as you’ll spend the extra day recovering.


And in the tube drivers case in the article, it’ll require almost 8% more staff/hours to cover the proposals.
So it’s not more efficient off the bat, it’s much more expensive.


Ultimately you can see what’s coming. Winding the country down.
Controlled economic shrinkage.
Why though is another matter as no one, in the end, will be better off doing this.

[Ridgemont]

MattsCar said:

A 10 hour day would be absolutely dismal in my opinion.

Get up at 7.30 to get in to work for 9 and then finish at 7 to be home for 7.30 or beyond, if it is a bit of a drive.

Doing that for 4 days doesn't appeal to me.

Also, from the point of the business, most people are lagging by 5 o'clock, how they are going to get another 2 hours of productivity out of them would be interesting.

And the thing is from my experience watching a 10 hour day (including Chennai as above) is that it doesn’t. Because supply chains aren’t aligned with 8 hour day companies, or people are knackered or when demand is irregular there isn’t the capacity to deal with it.

It adds sand to the gears and delivers crap performance.

Now imagine trying to get through to a Council Tax line on a Friday or a Monday when employees will be wanting that extra day.

[bigpriest]

If I could decline all my unecessary meetings with people chatting st for hours I could probably manage a 3 day week.

[aeropilot]

MattsCar said:

A 10 hour day would be absolutely dismal in my opinion.

Get up at 7.30 to get in to work for 9 and then finish at 7 to be home for 7.30 or beyond, if it is a bit of a drive.

Doing that for 4 days doesn't appeal to me.

You could only do it if WFH full time, you certainly couldn't do it if you had a reasonable commute.

Up until a few months ago, I was doing one day a week in the office, which on an 8 hour working day, meant getting up at 5.20am to get into the office for 8am, and leaving at 5pm and getting home at 6.45-7.00pm (if I was lucky)

Adding 2 hrs to that would be crazy and bugger doing that every day even for one day off a week.

[philv]

I don't get it.

Workers are going to work 4 day weeks.
Workers are going to get pay rises.

Emplyers are going to pay more.
Inflation is going to rocket.

Is this fag packet economics?
Is it even sustainmable?

Are we trying to be the exact opposite of the usa?


L

[philv]

aeropilot said:

MattsCar said:

A 10 hour day would be absolutely dismal in my opinion.

Get up at 7.30 to get in to work for 9 and then finish at 7 to be home for 7.30 or beyond, if it is a bit of a drive.

Doing that for 4 days doesn't appeal to me.

You could only do it if WFH full time, you certainly couldn't do it if you had a reasonable commute.

Up until a few months ago, I was doing one day a week in the office, which on an 8 hour working day, meant getting up at 5.20am to get into the office for 8am, and leaving at 5pm and getting home at 6.45-7.00pm (if I was lucky)

Adding 2 hrs to that would be crazy and bugger doing that every day even for one day off a week.

Ah yes, that works....work from home.

As half o that involves tea breaks and wlakign the dog, 10 hours should be no problem.

Been there done it.

[ATG]

aeropilot said:

MattsCar said:

A 10 hour day would be absolutely dismal in my opinion.

Get up at 7.30 to get in to work for 9 and then finish at 7 to be home for 7.30 or beyond, if it is a bit of a drive.

Doing that for 4 days doesn't appeal to me.

You could only do it if WFH full time, you certainly couldn't do it if you had a reasonable commute.

Up until a few months ago, I was doing one day a week in the office, which on an 8 hour working day, meant getting up at 5.20am to get into the office for 8am, and leaving at 5pm and getting home at 6.45-7.00pm (if I was lucky)

Adding 2 hrs to that would be crazy and bugger doing that every day even for one day off a week.

Do you think your commute is representative of the average commute? A clue: it isn't.