A group of Labour MPs have called for a four-day working week to be included in the government’s flagship Employment Rights Bill.
Advances in technology such as AI have meant workers can be just as productive while spending less time at their job, the amendment’s backers argue.
They include 13 MPs in the governing party and one, Ellie Chowns MP, from the Green Party.
The government has previously said the Bill would strengthen workers’ rights to ‘request flexibility in their working pattern’ by compressing their hours, though employers would not be mandated to accept.
Then-pensions minister Emma Reynolds dismissed the idea that a four-day week could be introduced for the civil service, saying ‘we are not living in the 1970s’.
She said she could ‘see the benefit’ for those wanting flexibility, adding: ‘I’m a mum of two young children, and you know, sometimes I wish that I worked part time.
‘But I don’t think as a whole that civil servants as a general rule should work four days rather than five.’
The new amendment would require a ‘Working Time Council’ to be formed, which would ‘make recommendations on how a transition could be made from a five-day working week to a four-day working week with no impact on pay’.
Labour’s Rachael Maskell, who is backing the amendment, told Metro: ‘The UK’s productivity has consistently been low, and yet where a four-day week has been instituted in studies, it shows that there is no detriment to productivity, and in fact it can improve.’
Bootle MP Peter Dowd, a former shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Jeremy Corbyn, is the lead proposer of the amendment.
He said: ‘The benefits of greater productivity in the economy as a result of new technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) must be passed back to workers in more free leisure time.
‘A four-day, 32 hour working week is the future of work and I urge my party to back this amendment so we can begin a much wider transition.’
Joe Ryle, campaign director of the 4 Day Week Foundation, argued the current measures in the Bill to improve flexibility aren’t enough.
He said: ‘Compressing the same amount of hours into four-days rather than five is not the same thing as a true four-day working week.
‘What is missing from the Bill is a commitment to explore a genuinely shorter working week which which we know workers desperately want.’
A government spokesperson said: ‘We have no plans to mandate a four-day work week for five days’ pay – not in government nor in any other sector.
‘We are strengthening workers’ rights to request flexibility in their working pattern which is different to this and organisations will still be able to reject unworkable requests if it doesn’t work for the business or organisation.’
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