Election 2024: Labour dodge calls for four-day working week
The Labour Party is reportedly avoiding calls from unions to make a four-day week for UK workers an official policy.
Trade union Unison, one of Labour’s key backers, last month called for the next government to take action to ensure more employers adopt a four-day week with no impact on workers’ salaries, after passing a motion at its annual conference branding it “the next step”.
But according to the Telegraph, despite the four-day week policy being a 2019 manifesto pledge, a senior Labour adviser said: “There are no plans to do it. It’s a decision for individual businesses.”
They reportedly told the paper: “It’s not in any conversation that I have had, or in any manifesto-level conversations.”
Labour’s apparent refusal comes despite the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which represents public sector staff, calling for a “significant shortening” of hours.
Party leaders, the Telegraph said, received a joint letter from 40 business leaders, including the ex-Oxfam GB boss, pushing for the next government to introduce a working hours law.
It argues the current work day has “been the standard way of working for almost 100 years” even though advancing tech “means the way we work now bears little similarity” to the past.
Under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is now standing as an independent, Labour made mandating a move to a 32-hour work week within ten years part of the party’s manifesto at the 2019 general election.
Then-shadow Chancellor John McDonnell pledged to “reduce the average full-time working week”, and stressed that Brits “work some of the longest hours in Europe”.
But under Sir Keir Starmer, Labour has focused on wealth creation and its plans to reform workers’ rights have come under pressure from City figures and business lobby groups, prompting anger from some trade union leaders, including Unite’s Sharon Graham. The scale of unease over its workers’ rights reform make any shift to a four day week unlikely.
However, deputy leader Angela Rayner – who is also shadow secretary for the future of work – previously encouraged bosses to consider shifting to a shorter work week if it suits them.
It followed a major nationwide pilot of some 3,000 workers across 61 firms, and researchers concluded after the study that sick days reduced by 65 per cent while revenue increased.
A spokesman for the official 4 Day Week Campaign said: “Claims that a four-day week could widen inequality are wrong and way off the mark. A four-day week has the potential to massively boost job recruitment and retention in the NHS.
“Those that stand to benefit most include disabled people and those with caring responsibilities for whom an extra day off work each week with no loss in pay will make a tremendous difference.”