Corbyn Toys With Four-Day Week to Win Over British Workers

(Bloomberg) -- U.K. opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn will consider a new pitch to win the hearts of Britons -- working a four-day week.

The Labour Party commissioned a study that will call for fewer working hours for millions of public-sector employees, more than a fifth of the workforce. Due out in July, economist Robert Skidelsky’s report finds investing in automation and improving flexibility in the civil service, health service and schools could be a starting point, he said in an interview.

Part of Corbyn’s appeal has been tapping into people’s disillusionment with capitalism since the financial crash, and the perception that gains aren’t being evenly shared. With companies set to boost investment in robots over the coming decades, trade unions are concerned workers will be left behind amid greater automation and use of technology. The consultancy McKinsey estimates 40% of all hours worked could be automated with existing technologies.

“The government can do something in the public sector,” said Skidelsky, who’s best known for his biography of John Maynard Keynes. Hours could also be cut by reducing the working day or staggering days off.

The idea could also address Britain’s productivity problem -- it’s had some of the most feeble growth in output for hour among advanced economies for a decade -- and persistent weak investment.

Working hours, which had been steadily falling since the start of the industrial revolution, stabilized in the 1980s. Skidelsky says people should today be working about 33 or 34 hours a week based on historical trends, but instead 74% of people still work closer to 40 hours. That’s partly because of a lack of investment and the decline of trade unions, he said.

Britain has the lowest density of robots in manufacturing among the Group of 10 nations, partly because businesses opted to use cheap and expanding migrant labor force in the past decade rather than buy new machinery to boost their efficiency.

As a result, the average U.S. worker gets as much done by Thursday afternoon as a U.K. counterpart would in an entire week, according to the International Monetary Fund. British workers also trail behind the French, where a 35-hour-work week was introduced almost two decades ago.

Almost three quarters of British workers already say they could do their job to the same standard in four days as they do in five, according to a survey by YouGov on behalf of the jobs website Indeed.

Skidelsky’s report will inform Labour’s thinking on the future of the labor market. In doing so, it would be taking a leaf from the Green Party, which included the four-day week in its manifesto for the 2017 election.

“The way in which we can shape the working week and be more flexible about it will be incredibly popular,” John McDonnell, Labour’s economy spokesman, told reporters on May 21.

Skidelsky said companies and organizations should be open to the many ways people can cut hours, such as parents leaving the office at 3 p.m. each day in order to collect children from school. The strength of the civil service trade union would make it an ideal testing ground for cutting working hours.

The idea has its skeptics. The CBI, Britain’s biggest business lobby group, is opposed to a mandatory four-day working week saying it would impose rigid rules on companies at a time when many are already moving to more flexible hours. The country is currently enjoying record levels of employment.

For Chris Downs, managing director at digital product designers Normally, the idea of government trying to mandate a shorter work week is troubling. Though the firm pays its workers equivalent to a full week salary, it has operated on a four-day week since its inception and even trialed three days, which he said proved impractical.

He worries that some employers would simply push their workers too hard if forced to cut hours. He has also seen people struggle to adjust to the pace of increased efficiency and even had one staff member leave for a more traditional routine.

“We’ve had someone come in and say, ‘this is too fast, we’re thinking too quickly, you’re moving too quickly, I need a little bit more space in my day,”’ he said. “It’s really important that people are given the freedom to choose whether they’re happy to work really intensely.”

Earlier this year, the Wellcome Trust abandoned plans to test a four day week for its 800 head office employees, saying it would be too complicated to implement. For the CBI’s Chief Economist Rain Newton-Smith, that decision demonstrates why government should avoid legislating blanket policy across the whole economy.

“When you’re mandating companies to have a certain working pattern, I think that is difficult and actually it could reduce the amount of choice that people have, as well as making it harder for businesses to be as innovative,” she said. “Some people could find it harder to have the sort of work-life balance that they want.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Lucy Meakin in London at lmeakin1@bloomberg.net;Jessica Shankleman in London at jshankleman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Gordon at pgordon6@bloomberg.net, Brian Swint

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