Should we take the day off, then?

By Leigh Cobban

For perhaps not entirely selfless reasons, I’d like to review some arguments and supporting studies in favour of a four-day workweek. This is something I’m quite intrigued by, and not only because by noon on a Friday (at the time of writing), I simply lose all motivation and ability to concentrate on anything more serious than vaguely work-related interests such as this.

Rather, it’s something we should consider, as the New Economics Foundation (NEF) succinctly puts it, because a shorter week “could help to address a range of urgent, interlinked problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life.”

In fact, the NEF suggests that the UK should slowly be cutting back on work hours to reach the ideal of a 21-hour workweek (you can see their full report, or just read a summary page). The three-day workweek is also promoted by activist and No-logo author, Naomi Klein, and is a basis for the ‘Plenitude economy’ (here’s a video on Plenitude if you’re interested).

Could it really be the answer to so many of our problems?

The push for ‘economic degrowth’ (or a slowing of economic growth) as a means to stabilise the global economy and reduce our environmental footprint, sits neatly alongside the idea of a shorter work week. This works in the following ways:

• More time to do things that matter: The NEF argues that more free time would allow you the time to live more leisurely, to grow a garden or ride your bike, to take a more active role in your community, to study further, for example, or simply to take pleasure in simpler values that consumerism ignores. A cynic would say we currently ‘live, to work, to buy’, working to earn money to purchase convenience goods and “things you don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last on people you don’t care about.” (Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey)
• Reduced emissions and energy use: Shorter work hours (or fewer days) have a lower ecological footprint. Knight et al (2013) investigated the effect of working hours on three environmental indicators (ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and carbon dioxide emissions) by analysing data from 1970 - 2007 from 29 high-income countries that are members of the  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Their study shows that “working hours are significantly associated with greater environmental pressures and thus may be an attractive target for policies promoting environmental sustainability.”
• Increased employment and reduced inequality: Importantly, reducing the hours you work opens up room for another person to fill that void: if 4 people took on a 20% reduction in their hours, hiring an additional 5th person could make up the difference. Not only would this help contribute to a levelling of salaries and reduced inequality between social classes, it would also “make it possible for paid and unpaid work to be distributed more equally between women and men; for parents to spend more time with their children – and to spend that time differently.”
• Healthier, happier workforce: Long hours, overtime and long commutes are bad for one’s physical health and psychological well-being, so reducing these would have a positive impact on the health and happiness of the workforce
• Increased productivity: … and a happier, healthier, less exhausted workforce is a more productive workforce, as NEF argues “They are less prone to sickness and absenteeism and make up a more stable and committed workforce”. It’s also suggested that more concentrated or constrained time makes you focus on what’s important, making you more efficient.

In short, the idea is that more people would have more time to live better.

Well, if it’s such a brilliant idea, why isn’t anyone doing it?

“Interestingly, it was Henry Ford who introduced the five-day workweek. In 1926 he initiated it in his factories, replacing the prevalent six-days, without reducing employees’ pay. His rationale was that workers needed more time for leisure if they were to buy the cars he was producing.” (Kallis et al.)

Some places are reducing the number of hours or days people work. Examples are split between those with reduced total hours (notably Denmark), which is more in-line with the NEF’s suggestion; and those that remain with a 40-hour workweek, but with four 10-hour days as opposed to five 8-hour days (e.g. some US state departments). It’s also often a company policy (such as Treehouse).

Despite these examples of reducing work hours, I couldn’t find clear cases demonstrating that the all positive outcomes suggested by NEF and others were achieved. Kallis et al. (2013), however, provide an interesting, extensive review of economic literature to assess the case for a four-day week for Europe. They try to establish the relation between working hours on the one hand, and productivity, employment, quality of life, and the environment, on the other. They generally find that a positive relationship in each of these areas depends on contextual factors. For instance, environmental benefits “depend on complementary policies or social conditions that will ensure that the time liberated will not be directed to resource-intensive or environmentally harmful consumption”. They also caution for the need to not reduce wages: “the point is not to work less and be poor.”

Kallis et al. also raise the concern that climate change (and/or peak oil) may pose a challenge to any shift towards a reduction in work hours, because “in an energy-scarce future, labor will have to replace energy or energy intensive capital.” Put another way, productivity or efficiency is partially tied to the availability of cheap energy, and without cheap energy, we may need to work more to maintain the same level of productivity.

Despite this concern and some of the uncertainty in the results of reducing work hours, Kallis et al. still conclude that reducing work hours “may be a risk worth taking”, at least as an interim measure to reduce unemployment while other changes are implemented on the path to sustainable degrowth in Europe (such as taxation, or increasing poor people’s access to capital).

To help reduce the uncertainty in the effects of a shorter work week, the Swedish government is working with an Oxford researchers to implement a trial of a 6-hour day amongst municipal workers in the city of Gothenburg, and compare their experiences with a control group. Their main focus will be on productivity and health (e.g. absenteeism), though hopefully the study will still touch on some of the other areas - such as how free time is actually used. I am a little sceptical that society would turn into a bunch of conscientious do-gooders if we only had a little more time, but it’s worth looking into.

But what about here?

Of course, just about all of the discussion here has focused on or come from Europe (and the US, to a lesser degree), and these same theories and examples may not apply in the same way to the contexts of developing countries. From Africa, there are fewer examples of intentionally or systematically reducing working hours that could provide some insight – notably President Yahya Jammeh  shortening the workweek in Gambia, to allow people more time to pray, socialise and tend their fields – and even fewer critical studies.

Generally, there is a strong relation between the development of a country and the number of hours worked, with more developed countries tending to work less: “working hours probably decline as structures change from an industrializing to a more service-driven, higher added-value economy” (Kallis et al). Would a reduction in work hours redistribute wealth (and gender imbalances) and deduce unemployment, in a developing country’s context? Perhaps we may be able to learn from Gambia’s experiences in a few years.

References

Knight, Kyle W., Eugene A. Rosa, and Juliet B. Schor. "Could working less reduce pressures on the environment? A cross-national panel analysis of OECD countries, 1970–2007." Global Environmental Change 23.4 (2013): 691-700.

Kallis, G., Kalush, M., O'Flynn, H., Rossiter, J., & Ashford, N. (2013). “Friday off”: Reducing Working Hours in Europe. Sustainability, 5(4), 1545-1567.

Image source: here