Four day weeks can help companies survive and save jobs

The argument

The five day working week is a relatively recent development. In the 1930s a two day weekend was introduced to cut job losses. Just under 100 years later, we are faced with the same predicament. The pandemic has caused many job losses, and many companies have administered pay cuts. A way of tackling this is to create a four day working well. It is suggested that a four day working week will have the impact of creating half a million new jobs in the public sector alone in the UK, according to a thinktank, Autonomy. Whilst cutting salaries, and the UK's furlough scheme may be a temporary solution, a transition into a four day week would save many companies from having to close down. The Labour Party had also sought to implement this according to their 2019 manifesto. A model to be considered is Germany's Kuzarbeit (short-work) scheme, implemented in the wake of the 2008 recession. This model was inspired by Margaret Thatcher's scheme back in the 1980's. The government subsidised the pay cut of many employees to avoid mass unemployment. The same scheme has been rolled out during the pandemic to help avoid job losses in Germany.

Premises

Counter-arguments

When the UK's Labour Party set out proposals for a four day week in their manifesto in 2019, it faced a lot of criticism from politicians in opposing parties and businesses. It was argued that if the proposals sought to introduce a four day working week, but did not reduce the pay, then businesses would end up having to pay 20-25% more for less productivity. If the position was that people take pay cuts and do a four day week, it was argued that this would negatively affect the poorest in society as they would benefit from less income. Additionally, it would hamper people's abilities in gaining opportunities. The idea was again entertained by a cross-party group of MPs in June 2020, urging the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to consider the proposal. There is no movement on the position. A government spokesperson suggested that for private companies, it was not for the government to dictate working patterns, and the civil service already has flexible working patterns.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The historical parallel is loose. The shorter week emerged over decades through industrial bargaining and legislation in conditions unlike a public-health shutdown, and citing a precedent is not evidence that the same measure suits the present case. [Rejecting P2] A projection from a single advocacy think tank is presented as a finding. No mechanism is given for how a reduction in hours generates half a million posts, and the estimate is not set against any competing analysis. [Rejecting P3] The German scheme is not a four-day week and does not support the conclusion. Kurzarbeit is a temporary, state-subsidised reduction in hours during a downturn, designed to be reversed on recovery, whereas the position argues for a permanent standard week — and the argument's account of its origins is inaccurate, since short-time working has been part of German labour policy since well before the 1980s. [Rejecting C] The counter-argument on record sets out the dilemma the proposal has to answer: holding pay constant raises employers' hourly costs by roughly a fifth for the same wage bill, while cutting pay falls hardest on the lowest earners, who have least margin to absorb it. It also notes that when the proposal was raised again in 2020, the government's response was that working patterns in private firms are not for it to dictate.