So what’s the next step in this progression?
As far back as the Roman slave revolts led by Spartacus, to the mediaeval peasant rebellions wanting protection from their kings, to the factory workers uniting in the Industrial Revolution to stop child labour and gain a 10-hour work day, to the union organisers of last century getting a 2-day weekend, the story of the worker has been one of trying to improve their workplace conditions and attain a more comfortable life. So what’s the next step in this progression? And why would it help businesses just as much as their employees?
The way the work week works sucks. When we wake up on Monday, it is the beginning of five consecutive days of work. By Wednesday we’re already worn out and dreaming of the weekend, still with over half our work week to go. And yet when the weekend arrives, we cannot enjoy it to the fullest. On Saturday we are too tired to truly do anything more than rest, and on Sunday we have the looming Monday on our horizon, impeding our enjoyment. Two is the wrong number of days off – you really need three just to feel like you’ve had two. Not to mention all the odd jobs and grocery shopping we have to get done!
So how do we fix this problem? A simple answer is a third day off, not on Friday or Monday though, but on Wednesday. That way when you get to work Monday you’ve only got two days before your break, when you can relax and recharge and get some odd jobs done, and then only two more days till the weekend. You’re more rested, have more time to get your housework done, and more time to spend with your family and friends. But wouldn’t this impact our salaries and the performance of businesses?
Most proponents of the system propose maintaining the same take-home pay for a week’s work you would have had otherwise. If you made $754 per week on minimum wage working five days a week, instead you make that working four days a week. But how can businesses be expected to maintain themselves if their staff are working less for a higher hourly rate? Productivity gains. Employees working a four day work week are more productive than those working traditional 40 hour work weeks, they resign less, and one study showed a 35% increase in revenue when compared with the previous year. In that particular study only three companies from sixty-one did not continue the 4 day work week after the study ended. A New Zealand trial in a financial services company of 240 staff showed the total amount of work went up, and there was a 50% increase in work/life balance satisfaction. WIth these sorts of numbers it’s hard to see why a company wouldn’t go for it.
So what are the reasons companies aren’t shifting to this latest development in working life? It’s very simple – productivity is no longer a measure of an employee’s worth in the same way it used to. People from all over the political spectrum assumed that as productivity increased so would our leisure time. This assumption has not just come from the communists and anarchists, but even conservatives like Richard Nixon who said one day we’d work 15-hour weeks in the “not too distant future” with the rate of productivity. But with Thatcherism, Reaganomics and Rogernomics we instead had a separation of productivity and wages, and a culture of working overtime to prove your value. Despite an unreal explosion of productivity in the age of the internet, wages did not keep up. Productivity increased 400% that of wages between 1979 and 2020. Before that, they were matched almost one-to-one. In the same time period, corporate profits have increased by 600% once adjusted for inflation. In the 1950s, CEOs made 20 times the average salary in their company; now it’s 400 times.
It is clear that the current work week has become a hindrance to employees, as it fails to provide them with sufficient time to relax, learn, and engage in social activities. Instead, overtime and exhaustion have become the norm, while the wealthy reap the benefits of increased productivity. The five-day work week leaves us distracted, tired and unable to fight for our rights as workers, look for new jobs or protest governmental overreach. By embracing the idea of a 4-day work week, we can improve our productivity, achieve a better work-life balance, and reclaim our value as employees. So go to your boss and ask for 30 hours work for 40 hours pay. Show them the studies, ask for a trial, and if met with resistance consider unionising to secure better wages and working conditions.
-Words by Jackson Green
