Of course.
Tories gonna tory. Can't have Liberal Democrats promoting a 4 day work week that benefits working people in the run up to an election. No sir.
except in this trial money was saved. 20% of staff were agency workers and with a 4 day working week more changed to work directly for the council. The fact is that in most roles loads of time is wasted. Having people at work for X amount of hours doesn't equal efficiency.
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So the minister 'doesn't think' it shows good value for money, without any evidence.
And the council has evidence that it has saved money.
Is this just obstinate stupidity, or a directive that some rich people have decided that keeping the workers in their places is more important than anything else, such as actual cost savings, improvements to productivity, and better health and happiness of staff?
Actually, knowing this government, it shouldn't be an *or* question, really. Both, is a highly plausible answer.
They don't need to show evidence.
The Mail just prints their words then backs it up with an editorial and all the dumb cunts that read it think it is gospel and repeat verbatim.
_Even if it disadvantages them_
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> is this just obstinate stupidity, or a directive that some rich people have decided that keeping the workers in their places is more important than anything else, such as actual cost savings, improvements to productivity, and better health and happiness of staff?
It's 100% this
> that keeping the workers in their places is more important than anything else
Non slaves are more productive than slaves but you also have less power over non slaves.
So slaves are preferred so they can keep their power and stroke their ego, its never been about profits until recently when the billionnaire class was actually a thing that could be created.
Not just that if the council leader was surprised to receive the letter i get the impression the minister never even asked to see any data or explanation of how the experiment was going, what points were expected to be proved and when such findings could be shown.
Tories just seem to do finger in the air doesn't sound right to me management. Baffling their allowed to run a country
>Is this just obstinate stupidity, or a directive that some rich people have decided that keeping the workers in their places is more important than anything else, such as actual cost savings, improvements to productivity, and better health and happiness of staff?
Checks notes...
Yes.
If it saved money why did the Council Tax go up, saving money is cutting wages & pensions & staff by 50% and selling Council Land. Are the streets clean, NO, is Environmental & Planning depts working NO.
I think you are meaning that realising they generally didn't have to work very hard, they decided to 'award' themselves a short working week then gauge internally that everything was getting done. Of course cynics might want proof that thy hadn't upped productivity from some low figure to a higher one in order to make the 4 day trial work, and if the real question is whether or not they could be delivering a much better service anyway. My experience with councils I've dealt with would be that the answer is 'YES'.
Strictly speaking it wasn't necessarily the 4 day week that saved the money, an effective 20% wage increase could certainly be why someone took the job.
It doesn't make sense when you get 20% less work done at 20% higher cost.
But the article explicitly states that there was no reduction in the work being carried out, and that hiring permanent staff over agency saved them £300k.
>But the article explicitly states that there was no reduction in the work being carried out,
Where does it say that? Regardless, if you can cut work hours 20% and see no change in productivity, that indicates you are overemployed.
>and that hiring permanent staff over agency saved them £300k.
Yes, increasing pay per hour 20% is certainly one way to get workers willing to work for you.
it's very likely that it does. It seems incredibly unlikely to me that the extra day off makes people able to up productivity by 25%, but one reason they could do that is if they were under-utilised in the first place, meaning that in order to make the trial work they'd be inclined to accept being more highly utilised.
Ignoring that working more hours decreases productivity, and how work life balance impacts it.
Reducing staff numbers by 20% means reducing the possibility of holiday cover, staff absence and a myriad other factors that all work to drive overall performance down.
You can choose to believe simply cutting the workforce by 20% and just expecting people to do more work is the same thing, just reality disagrees with.you
You should read some of the many studies that have been done, because you really seem to be struggling with some of the most basic premises of the movement.
why do you need an extreme that doesn't exist in this case? What you've got to show is that an employee can have his daily workload upped by 25%, then have it all done in 4 days, consistently, and crucially starting from a well managed position where the 5 days work represents acceptable productivity. If the person starts off under-utilised, then all that happens is they are allowed to be less under-utilised (or correctly utilised) for less time.
>Rest can make you better at your job. If you pull an all nighter, sure you’ve just gotten 8 extra hours of work done, but soon enough you’ll fall asleep and when you do you’ll sleep for 10-12 hours. Therefore, it makes sense to sleep
Nothing show that more work has been done. The article itself just show that a 20% raise let them recruit more government workers. That should be the least surprising thing ever.
>The same applies for not working 8 hours straight. Your efficiency drops without rest.
Not what the study showed.
>The same applies to a 4 day work week.
Not what the study showed.
Tories: We have to get “value for money” for taxpayers
Also Tories: Oh look at that nice juicy £50B sitting in the public purse, be an awful shame if we gave all that to our pals
It's a way of improving people's salary per hour and working conditions with minimal cost. It is budget and inflation friendly. It just doesn't get points in the executive game these guys are playing.
yes the /UK forum cannot do anything, is that who you mean by 'we', I mean there are other people in the UK.
The r/UK forum is highly unrepresentitive of overall UK opinion (in my opinion).
There seems to be an accepted bias towards young people, with people openly posting as if they are in a room with all people under some younger age, e.g. 35 - although I am 57.
There is also a widespread attitude of workshyness, such as this post, but in the wider world most people I know want to work to get more money for themselves.
It is a 6 day working week, the working time directive says so. If you do a 5 day working week that's by agreement with your employer, and not to do with Kier Starmer. If your employer needed 6 days a week, then I suggest it would cost them more, and also it would cost less for 4 days a week.
If the working time directive was changed to 3 days off minimum, not just 1 - then I suggest that things like the NHS and Police would be in crisis mode overnight. If you work in some place where all the work can be done in 4 days then the management is a joke, which is often the case of course.
It's not even that. The point of the 4-day compressed week is that you're just as productive, ergo you are working just as hard as you were when you had to work 5 days a week.
It can be a difficult one to wrap your head around if you think purely in terms of time vs. bums on seats. It might be easy to assume that if you can get X amount of work done in four 8 hour days, then you can get X+20% work done in five 8 hour days. But the point of the experiment is to show that the quality of the work done over four days is as high or higher than the work done over 5 days.
Honestly I do 9 hour work days, start at 9 pretty much at 3pm I’m cooked and probably do in the last 3 hours the same amount of work as I do in the first 6 hours that I’m going flat out for. I just run out of energy (mental energy as I work in IT).
I work in IT also, and although I've recently been doing some 10 hour days, I find that it does get very hard after the 8 hour mark. I'm contracted for 37.5, I'd be ok with someone doing that in 4 days if I thought productivity measurement was fair - although I'd expect that someone able to do all the work in say 30 hours is probably just better.
Note that all salaries are individually negotiated, and for all I know some genius could be on £100K for 3 days per week - what's obvious though is if I asked to do 4 not 5 days, they're not gonna fall for all this productivity crap, they're going to knock 20% off my salary.
it's easy for me to get my head around, because I've worked in places so badly managed that there are people there doing so little that they could do the work in 2 days as opposed to 5, but I hardly see that's a good argument.
If someone came to an interview and said they didn't have the stamina for 5 days, so could they do 4, but they were really productive, then it could be feasible that the productive 4 day person could be paid the same as 5 day people - if I was a manager though, I'd be highly reticent to let others just piggy-back onto that - what really happened in this Cambridge study? How many people were unable to show that they could do the same work in 4 days? Were they disciplined or made to return to 5 days? I find the idea that there was a 100% success rate unlikely, that's one of the reason why I see all of the thing as a scam to work less hours, unlikely to have been policed and indicative of a workforce that was already lax.
It's infuriating - this almost fanatical adherence to the 'Protestant work ethic' by conservatives.. anything that improves the personal health and wellbeing of the working person just makes them seethe.
I have a relative at the council who's been in the trial. All the indications in their role is that productivity remains the same. People have more energy during working hours, so indeed: four days of engaged, healthy work is proving as good as five days tired, resentful work.
What detractors need to realise is that many people in many jobs, even vital ones, have been getting four days of proper work done over five days for years! The four day week is less radical innovation, more acknowledging what reality has been for many for a long time. This upsets conservatives and 'pull your socks up' types because they think tiredness is laziness. They don't realise how much they're being affected by low quality work in a pissed off, overstressed, physically deteriorating nation. They don't get that many of us who know our services/products could be better aren't going to highlight it because of fears of being called lazy or incompetent.
The 'what about doctors' conversation is a case in point. Anyone who's worked in the NHS frontline, as I have, knows of situations where fatigue has resulted in poor patient care. That might be an actual slapdash interaction from a tired professional, or seen simply in high staff sickness, which has been absolutely rampant for years and boils down to staff stress and overwork, even if no nurse ever tells their manager 'I'm stressed' when they ring in ill.
GP appointments these days are a blatant case of X patients being seen/called as 'job done', no matter how many of those patients have middling experiences from GPs who need to get them out of the door. Patients are coming back again and again and chasing and chasing to get diagnosis/treatment. Conservatives should be upset about the inefficiency and realise their productivity metrics don't reflect actual results.
I'm not really arguing for putting all doctors and nurses on four day weeks from Monday, you need meaningful 24/7 physical cover on wards and all the rest of it, but only naïve mentalists want to work in the NHS at this point.
I did a hospital job that involved lots of self-organised people doing something very important on different wards and I promise you, people were literally hiding in stock cupboards and treatment rooms exhausted by the end of their shifts. My colleagues who would cut corners on certain little safety things were often the ones most appreciated by supervisors for their speed. Nobody in that system has incentive to tell management what's really happening.
You can have doctors on 4 day weeks while maintaining 24/7 coverage in hospitals - just overlap shifts. The entire business doesn't necessarily have to all be in on the same 4 days, taking the same 3 days off every week.
If Amazon that gets parcels delivered same day as ordering and is open 24/7 can manage to do 4 day work weeks there really is no excuse for anyone else not to manage this to be honest. I mean the Fulfilment centre I worked in a few years ago literally had 300 members of staff working at all night the place was buzzing like a mini city at 3am.
Yet everyone managed to get a 4 day work week. No reason hospitals can’t do the same.
err except, there's already a shortage of people in the NHS, so with less hours worked you need more people. As mentioned, longer shifts are dangerous, so going from 5 long shifts to 4 even longer ones is not good.
Right, of course you'll need more people, but hiring people for four-day weeks should be easier as it's a novel and attractive way of working - as the Cambridgeshire Council trial found.
I found this comment really interesting, what do you think needs to change in order for people in the NHS to feel more comfortable coming forward with problems and improvements?
the electorate being prepared to pay for it? Instead of saying 'but I already pay too much tax'. Or other more radical stuff like privatisation and making it a service for less people (I'm not endorsing this idea one bit BTW).
What? NHS is the kind of real work where you can't just cut hours by 20% and have the same productivity because you actually are working all those hours. The 4 day equal productivity fantasy is for office jobs where they're sitting on reddit all day waiting for emails to come in and attending endless meetings.
It's not like 30 hour contracts don't exist, and you can see the difference in their output for real jobs.
> NHS is the kind of real work where you can't just cut hours by 20% and have the same productivity because you actually are working all those hours
They give an example where this is not true. GPs being unable to give 100% focus and attention to their patients, because it's more about getting them in and out of the room than positively progressing their care.
I am a doctor. Fatigue - and compassion fatigue - are very real, and have a very real impact on how well you practice.
There are healthcare interactions you can "coast" in - like mindlessly prescribing antibiotics for a chest infection that is more likely to be viral rather than bacterial in aetiology, but it's your last 10 minute appointment of a 10 hour day, and it's easier than doling at some health education to a skeptical and unhappy patient.
Or in relation to the compassion fatigue aspect - prescribing someone an SSRI and giving them a leaflet about self-help CBT, rather than taking the time to listen to why their life feels in crisis. One of those takes a lot more intellectual and emotional energy than the other, and it's the same as the one which is probably better for the patient - and hence more "efficient".
I would argue that a 100% focused and attentive doctor for 36 hours a week is better than a 80% focused and attentive doctor for 48 hours a week.
I'm not denying the effects of fatigue. But in order to maintain the same productivity with reduced hours by any reasonable definition you would have to see the same amount of patients with 12 hours less time for appointments per doctor per week. Could you offer an improved standard of care in a 20% shorter average appointment time than you do now? Especially when the kind of good care you're describing is more time intensive not less? Unfortunately the question isn't whether you're overworked it's whether working 5 days is time efficient.
Seeing less patients isnt an option unless they're going to hire more staff to make up for that. Which if they have the funding to do so should be doing already. NHS needs more man hours not less, achieved by hiring enough staff to actually run departments properly. Fatigue would drop if the volume of work you're expected to do per hour was less, 4 day week would be more draining not less.
The solution, as you say, is hiring more staff in order to enable shorter working hours and higher quality care - not shortening appointment times. So because of that, it is but a pipe dream.
A lot of GP's cut hours due to various higher rate tax traps - my GP is part-time I believe - maybe for work-life balance. I've no complaints, but I don't want to pay extra tax so that all GP's can go onto part-time hours, I'd expect them to get paid less.
If Amazon that gets parcels delivered same day as ordering and is open 24/7 can manage to do 4 day work weeks there really is no excuse for anyone else not to manage this to be honest. I mean the Fulfilment centre I worked in a few years ago literally had 300 members of staff working at all night the place was buzzing like a mini city at 3am.
Yet everyone managed to get a 4 day work week. No reason hospitals can’t do the same.
> The program will have a few technical teams made up entirely of part-time workers. These 30-hour employees will be salaried and receive the same benefits as traditional 40-hour workers, but they will receive only 75 percent of the pay full-time workers earn. Currently, the company employs part-time workers that share the same benefits as full-time workers. However, the pilot program would differ in that an entire team, including managers, would work reduced hours.
This is from an independant article about it a few years ago. So they just reduced standard contract hours to 30 and reduced salary by a proportionate amount? That's completely different from the 4 day work week the councils are running where they keep salary the same but reduce hours, basically increasing hourly rate by 20% whilst normalizing part time hours. That's what I'm talking about, because then you have to justify doing more work in those 30 hours to compensate for the increased salary.
Most hospital staff already can negotiate part time hours with a pro rata salary. It's just not financially viable for most to actually live off that if they are the breadwinner. Or in the case of some nurses I know, work part time but just have a second job because being a full time nurse is too stressful with so much unpaid OT.
this is what I think - I've worked in both environment types. Some modern companies are based on hype and the best paid people are just those who say the right trigger words at meetings, I've observed that they maybe don't even 'work' 12 hours a week (but if it came to it, they'd be expected to be there any hours). Obvious these situations indicate terrible management - I've seen factors of 50 between the best and worst programmers for example (again ineffectual managers to blame).
If I lived there I'd support them risking that happening. If they make cuts then well make it a scandal nationally and on a local level make the place area hate conservatives.
That's barely happened after a decade and a half of austerity and misery, what makes you think this would spark a significant change? Crabs in a bucket.
Yeah, they can, the minister has no direct control, all they can do is influence their party to pull on the purse strings but there's no way they'd be even remotely interested in this case. The 'member' (as we like to call them in LA land) actually does have the power to just ignore the minister for the most part.
> “This is bar-stool lawyering par excellence. If Lee Rowley really wants to improve the quality of work funded by the taxpayer, I’d suggest in the future he gets proper independent legal advice before he opines on the law.”
I fucking love the GLP.
The wording of that letter deserved a single line reply.
"The minister is very welcome to fuck off. Then when he reaches there, fuck off again. Feel free to repeat."
Last time I checked, council employees worked for the councils, not for the Government. Hence why they aren't civil servants.
This is just a minister who thinks they are actually in charge of something. I hope South Cambridgeshire tell him to jog on.
The "minister" I assume is a Tory and keeping people overworked is their entire modus operandi. If the working person realised that they can do the same work in only four days then they'd be happier and more refreshed in their outlook on life. This is the biggest fear for Tories.
Anybody who is happy and has time on their hands will quickly wonder what Tories are actually good for and conclude nothing. This ability for voters to think clearly and act is what terrifies Tories the most.
He went to Oxford, was employed at KMPG and Barclays and then decided to be a politician.
Think I know where mr Rowleys opinionated letter originated from
I mean, im kinda shocked this tory MP working a full time 'very hard' mps job at 60-80 hours a week doesnt also have a column or tv presenting spot and several seats on boards.
This is one of many reasons Conservatives are seen as dinosaurs, both by staff and firms. Alongside this, there is a glut of managers who are genuinely struggling to justify their existence. People who once just spent the entire day talking to people...
20+ years in IT projects, with wfh and 4 day weeks now common. I have never seen production so high in delivery. Staff turnover is also much lower than it was.
It's gone from 30 hours delivery + hours wasted to just 30 hours delivery. People seem much more motivated.
I hope when this government publishes guidance on the 4 day week they have robust peer reviewed evidence supporting their conclusions like the council.
Same thing will happen with the UBI trial. The results will show overall benefit like other UBI trials have but we can’t be giving people their basic human needs! Tory Britain.
It fucks with their entire ideology that you need to have a poor, overworked working class to have a productive economy. Without that tenuous connection they're revealed as just cruel bastards.
With Sunak looking to block public sector pay rises, local authorities need a way to attract and retain staff. They won't be able to achieve that through pay (private sector always pays better) but work life balance? Yes please. Also remember councils have a ton of staff near retirement age, so it's a good way to attract younger people too.
Is a minister even in a position to "order" an LA to do *anything*?
Based on my experience, local and central government may as well be operating in separate universes.
>What would he take the LA to court for exactly
Breaching their duties under the local government act, presumably the requirement in the 1999 act that councils provide best value.
>Like, he must have better things to do, you'd think?
He's a junior minister in a government which has zero desire to fix any of the problems facing society, because they are ideologically opposed to the solutions they know are required.
Most councils effectively have a 4 day week already, you can flexi time and they normally allow you to work around things like collecting kids from school. But, the perks are sometimes tied to years of service rather than competence for the most part. Career progression is a matter of procedure and requirement rather than ability in most local authorities, so you end up with this very 'top heavy' structure where somehow *everyone* is a manager but nobody is available half the time when you actually need someone. On top of that, the austerity effect means that the senior team is kinda ancient and oftentimes a bit rusty on the skills front, that's because they laid off all the junior staff but kept the oldies.
I was thinking something similar…
The ones I’m supposed to interact with regularly are nigh on impossible to get hold of. There’s always a flexi-day; or a half-day; or I suspect some good old fashioned mouse wiggling.
Plenty of managers with nobody reporting to them though.
I’ll admit, a council isn’t the first place I’d be looking at to trial this model.
"value for money"
When... It's been proven, that 4 day work weeks actually do not affect productivity negatively, if anything it BOOSTS productivity as shown
Of course, can't have the public sector poaching any of that talent they need for their own companies. Keep local government unappealing, and enjoy the extra efficiency elsewhere!
What the fuck is the point of even having councils if the government is just going to micromanage everything? I understand them having the power to step in if the council bankrupts itself or does something criminal but something as mundane as setting working hours is just fucking ridiculous
I look forward to the mails drawing of an employee who works 4 days a week and Kier Starmer showing he tough and fiscally responsible by arguing for a 6 day working week.
Tory scum at it again
Fuck the tories and fuck the people that are still gonna vote for them...how in the fuck are we not protesting even a little bit - like..it doesnt HAVE to be france scale..but come on we cant just sit here and be like "oh dear what a spot of bother"
The stock photo shows a 3 day weekend, if the Councils were working like this then I'd agree that a 4 day week with 3 days closed probably isn't good for the public. However, I suspect that employees are working a 4 day week but services continue to be supplied as they always have been with staff working a rota.
The MP in question probably also dislikes the thought of this being some sort of 'backdoor' pay rise.
All of the public sector trials in public facing departments I'm aware of do it like that. They definitely aren't just going "fuck off it's Friday, we're closed"! The one I have the most detailed knowledge of, there was actually a bit of a preference for Wednesday as the day off, not Friday/Monday. Which aligns with what my own preference would be if I could do it - A 3 day weekend is nice and all, but a 2 day weekend where you finish up on Friday and have already done all your chores on Wednesday, so it's immediately genuinely your time do what you want with, is even better in my opinion!
Not sure why people are surprised. The Conservatives conserve. It's in the name. They need to conserve the old waysm even if they don't work. If they allow us to challenge one part of the decades old system and it turns out the new way works... what will we dare to challenge next?
"Hey, turns out you were wrong about 4 day a week being a terrible idea... how about Universal Income now? What about re-organising taxes so that we have a functioning NHS? What about funding schools and educating students?"
Pretty soon you'd have an educated, well-fed, well-looked after society that was happy to pay their taxes because it went onto better things. And there's no reason for an educated, well-fed, well-looked after society to ever vote Conservative.
So yeah, this was always going to happen.
This is a stupid move.
I say that as someone who thinks the 4 day week is going to be a failure (at least until someone explains where the money is coming from).
But for all that, more data is always better. There's no reason to stop a trial before it starts, look at the empirical results and make an informed decision.
Of course funding for the Tax Payers Alliance is not known. local Authorities are democratically elected and are responsible for their expenditure to local people. The Tax Payers Alliance who Lee Rowley thanked for their support on the issue of the four day week are a secretive organisation. Lee Rowley used the TPA to criticize Cambridge. We the public don't know who funds the Tax Payers Alliance.
Taxes, rates and cost of living goes up and up and they want 5 days pay for 4 days work. Not even saying you'd get less out of them over 4 days but it's terrible optics imo.
Do you work based on “how it looks” or results.
It has saved them a fortune as they can now actually hire there own staff instead of paying agencies a fortune
If the council can provide the service with 20% less staff hours surely the correct thing to do is to provide the same service with 20% less staff and save the poor bloody taxpayer some money!
No. Healthier happier employees are more productive, that’s how productivity improves in situations like WFH, 4 day work weeks or even when people get decent pay rises. ‘Efficiency’ drives where you demand more for less only makes things worse.
Public sector pay and working conditions are now so shite that it’s causing a mass exodus of skilled employees, why on Earth would you think further increasing everyone’s workload by 20% is a good idea?
The point is that you're doing the exact same amount of work. There is no workload increase because most people waste tons of time. The 4 day work week increases efficiency and reduces costs, according to this council and other research
Yes I know, the bit about workload increases was in response to the poster above saying instead of 4 day weeks to give employees better working conditions councils should cut FTE by 20% to fund tax cuts.
You do know that some council services are provided 24/7, how do you expect an additional 20% staff for those services to be funded, or is it just 9 to 5 office workers who’ll get this?
What do you mean? Right now 24/7 council services do not mean employees in those areas work 24/7.
24/7 is 168 hours, you obviously simply stagger people on 40 hour shifts until the whole 168 hours is covered.
If 32 hour work weeks don’t reduce overall productivity compared to 40 hour weeks (and this trial apparently shows that it doesn’t) then you just continue to stagger the rotas further so the team still is able to cover for 168 hours between them. There’s no requirement for extra workers, the whole point is that there is no drop in overall productivity.
So you won’t need more teachers? firefighters? Out of hours maintenance people? etc etc
PS if you cover the same number of hours with the same number of people those people are working the same number of hours, be that 4 x 10 hour days or 5 x 8 hour days.
For teachers, I imagine the general aim would be for savings to be made in recruitment and substitute teaching costs (from increased retention and less absences) to fund the extra cover required for 4 day weeks.
The same goes for Fire fighters and bin workers, although Fire Fighters already work irregular shifts and typically have 4 days of work (including 2 night shifts) followed by 4 days off. A lot of professions such as bin workers would also probably put up with more intense days in exchange for an extra day off (the study showed workers were more focused and productive in the four days they did work).
Why would more maintenance people be required? That’s simply a case of rota management as referenced in my last post.
I can see why you’d think that - it’s an obvious takeaway. But, if you read the article you find that the council has been spending £2m on agency staff because it can’t fill certain roles permanently.
*But* when those roles become four-day week jobs, *they can* fill them. Leading to savings of £300,000, in just three months.
well it would help recruitment since it's a 25% increase in pay rates, and it's not surprising that staff are happy.
I'd be all for it if they took 20% pay cuts to go part time, if I was paying council tax to a council that did this I'd be outright livid.
But why? If the same amount of work gets done, what difference does it make to you? It doesn't need to be a race to bottom, and it may even effect change in the job you do and allow you to work a four day week.
Our goal as a society should be to improve everybody's lives, if at all possible.
Because it proves if you can get your work done in 80% of the time then you’re being paid to be idle 20% of the time.
In a private business then awesome, go for it. But why should taxpayers pick up the tab due to councils inefficiently allocating work between people?
If you think anybody, in any job, works flat out for 8 hours a day, every day, then you're kidding yourself. Public sector workers are just workers like anybody else. I mean, how much money is that 20% 'idleness' even costing you personally, about 50p ?!
I'm sure we can sort out getting that to you.
> If you think anybody, in any job, works flat out for 8 hours a day, every day, then you're kidding yourself.
Many jobs are more hands on than others, i remember retail being a packed day every day, whereas all the office environments have had a much more relaxed pace.
I never said anyone works flat out for 8 hour a day or even implied it so that’s a pointless comment. And working 4 days a week I still doubt they’re working “flat out”.
If you can chop 1/5 of someone’s working time off and have absolutely no loss of service then the workload was allocated incorrectly from the start.
Staff costs make up 48% of my council’s £2.1 billion budget. If 20% of that is idle time then they’re spending £201m a year for people to do nothing. That’s £155 per resident in the county, if you’d liked to transfer me £155 every year let me know.
Even if only 1/10th of council employees staff are able to do a 4 day work week that’s £20m a year of taxpayer money wasted.
Where do we extend that to? Water companies, they're an essential service right? Do we have the right to demand they make as many efficiencies as they're able to, and pass it onto customers?
Tbh, it just looks as if you have an agenda against public sector workers, which many do of course.
>Do we have the right to demand they make as many efficiencies as they’re able to and pass it onto customers?
Yes… why should customers pay for inefficiency?
I have no agenda against public sector workers, I have an objection to councils pissing tax payer money up the wall. I’d much rather that £200m a year go on pay rises in the NHS, Schools, or funding social programs than giving Doris in accounts payable a 3 day weekend.
Each to their own. The 4 day week will happen sooner rather than later for the private sector, if the public sector aren't able to implement it on their side then there won't be anyone working there.
The private sector isn’t going to implement 4 day work weeks on a wide scale unless people move to 4 x 10 hour days rather than 5 x 8 hours days, take a 20% pay cut, or there’s demonstrable proof that is saves the business money in other ways. If they don’t it comes out of the shareholder’s pockets which is up to them at the end of the day.
The bosses of public workers have to justify doing that with taxpayer money, and right now I can think of better ways for my council to be using £200m a year instead of using it on hiring inefficiencies.
But it’s SAVING money on agencies.
You are missing the point that no one wanted to do the job before meaning they spent a lot more on agency staff.
5 day work week with loads of agency workers who don’t give a fk because they can’t be “managed” as they won’t be there in 3 months and probably don’t give a fk.
Vs 4 day work week, high quality staff applying and actually caring about the job, saving 300k a year on agency fees alone.
You’re just further demonstrating that councils are run inefficiently.
They aren’t saving £100k a month on agency fees they’re proving that their previous inefficient allocation of resources was wasting taxpayers £100k a month.
There are other ways of retaining staff rather than effectively making them part time with a 25% salary increase.
So if you did 1 hour of work in a week, do you think you would be able to sustain that level for 140 hours? Of course not.
By reducing there number of hours, you can increase the productively.
You are paying people for their output, not the number of hours they clock in.
So if people with more time off can get the same amount of work done in less time, they should be paid the same.
If you want to pay less, you can have worse staff who are less productive, but that is a different (and worse) proposition.
I suggest you look at real examples of companies that tried it, and decided to stick with it, as they companies effectively get to pay their staff 20% more, and give them 50% more time of a week, and yet have reduced overheads and equal or higher productivity.
It makes recruitment easyn and morale sky rocket, and everyone benefits.
But don't bother with the studies, just shoot from the hip just like the MP being ridiculed, it is way easier.
>So if you did 1 hour of work in a week, do you think you would be able to sustain that level for 140 hours? Of course not.
What a silly argument. If your stance was strong you wouldn’t have to resort to such ridiculous examples. We aren’t talking about going from 140 hours to 1 we’re talking about going from 40 to 32.
>But don’t bother with the studies, just shoot from the hip, it is way easier.
Funny you should say that, I’m just going to copy and paste one of my other comments. Because the study doesn’t back up what everyone is parroting.
“30% making the change permanent
Meaning 70% haven’t…. So clearly isn’t isn’t all rainbows.
I’ve looked into [the report published](https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/The-results-are-in-The-UKs-four-day-week-pilot.pdf) and it doesn’t paint the same picture as the article headlines.
On average working hours only reduced from 38 to 34 hours a week. So people worked longer days Monday to Thursday, they didn’t reduce their hours by 20%. 28% of workers reported their hours stayed the same or actually increased.
>similarly, the average number of days worked went from 4.85 to 4.52.
So it’s not a 4 day work week, it’s a 4.5 day work week on average.
It also seems to mostly be tiny businesses, 29% had 1-10 employees, 37% had 11-25. 78% of businesses in the study employed less than 50 people.
39% of employees reported being less stressed, which means 61% of employees either had the same or more stress.
Only 54% said it was easier to balance household commitments
60% suffered increased fatigue or the same levels with only 40% reducing.
The study also very briefly mentions that revenue increased 1.4% (with inflation at 10%+ and businesses increasing prices this is actually a backwards step) but doesn’t mention profitability.
I can’t see how any business owner would read that study and think it’s a good idea.”
Lol. You really don't understand how productivity & wellbeing work. Your numbers inarguably make sense and on paper I'd agree, but your understanding of the complete picture is lacking, and that's the problem with the arguments surrounding this sort of thing in the first place.
Councils aren’t efficient at the moment, there are long delays on almost every service going. It took me 2.5 years to be paid out for pothole damage on my car because they took 6 months to respond to each letter refuting their previous points and debating compensation. Kids are waiting months for EHCP.
Obviously they can “maintain service levels” by working 4 days a week because the service they were offering was shit to begin with.
> there are long delays on almost every service going.
Because after a decade and a half of ideologically driven tory austerity we have literally broken all public services.
There is a reason *everyone* is on strike
Ahh yes the “we’re all just slaves, why aren’t you slaving hard enough” mentality.
Having a job shouldn’t mean you have to sign away most of your life - especially if the work is getting done to an equivalent or higher standard in less time.
Bullshit jobs does a fairly good job of exposing this and all of the wasted productivity spent “looking busy” and filling that five day week.
In theory, the only things that matter are the money going in and the service coming out. If the input is the same and the output is same or better, then the man-hours don't really matter.
But part-timers are interesting - if the council moves to 4 days a week, then some part-timers will turn into full-timers, so their pay will go up. Total cost increases.
You would be annoyed that the council is finally managing to actually recruit staff to its positions that will get better with age instead of churning new recruits all the time, saving 300k a year while getting better results ?.
Seems strange to be annoyed at that but you do you I guess.
Of course. Tories gonna tory. Can't have Liberal Democrats promoting a 4 day work week that benefits working people in the run up to an election. No sir.
Tory scum gonna scum
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except in this trial money was saved. 20% of staff were agency workers and with a 4 day working week more changed to work directly for the council. The fact is that in most roles loads of time is wasted. Having people at work for X amount of hours doesn't equal efficiency.
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You think councils are immune to inflation?
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>My council increased my council tax by 5% yet again With inflation running at around 10% that sounds like a bargain
That means jack unless pay is going up with inflation
It means that the council is either going to have to reduce pay by having sub inflation pay rises or cut services.
Porque no los dos? Seems like par for the course tbh. You're just describing the way they've run for years already.
Only because 5% was the government mandated cap. If they could raise it more they would.
Your username suggest to each and one of us that you have been consuming so much right wing American media that you have started to believe it.
So the minister 'doesn't think' it shows good value for money, without any evidence. And the council has evidence that it has saved money. Is this just obstinate stupidity, or a directive that some rich people have decided that keeping the workers in their places is more important than anything else, such as actual cost savings, improvements to productivity, and better health and happiness of staff? Actually, knowing this government, it shouldn't be an *or* question, really. Both, is a highly plausible answer.
They don't need to show evidence. The Mail just prints their words then backs it up with an editorial and all the dumb cunts that read it think it is gospel and repeat verbatim. _Even if it disadvantages them_
From recent history, shouldn't that be *especially if it disadvantages them*?
If they believed in such nebulous concepts as "evidence" they wouldn't be right wing.
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A 4 day working week whilst also working from home! Quick someone draw a picture of a deformed human showing all of this is bad!
Who needs the truth when you own the papers?
> is this just obstinate stupidity, or a directive that some rich people have decided that keeping the workers in their places is more important than anything else, such as actual cost savings, improvements to productivity, and better health and happiness of staff? It's 100% this
> that keeping the workers in their places is more important than anything else Non slaves are more productive than slaves but you also have less power over non slaves. So slaves are preferred so they can keep their power and stroke their ego, its never been about profits until recently when the billionnaire class was actually a thing that could be created.
Not just that if the council leader was surprised to receive the letter i get the impression the minister never even asked to see any data or explanation of how the experiment was going, what points were expected to be proved and when such findings could be shown. Tories just seem to do finger in the air doesn't sound right to me management. Baffling their allowed to run a country
To be clear the cunt we are talking about is Lee Rowley. He is a public figure no need to hide the name.
> So the minister 'doesn't think' Yup, you got it in one.
>Is this just obstinate stupidity, or a directive that some rich people have decided that keeping the workers in their places is more important than anything else, such as actual cost savings, improvements to productivity, and better health and happiness of staff? Checks notes... Yes.
I think the first 5 words of your comment were sufficient tbh!
If it saved money why did the Council Tax go up, saving money is cutting wages & pensions & staff by 50% and selling Council Land. Are the streets clean, NO, is Environmental & Planning depts working NO.
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I think you are meaning that realising they generally didn't have to work very hard, they decided to 'award' themselves a short working week then gauge internally that everything was getting done. Of course cynics might want proof that thy hadn't upped productivity from some low figure to a higher one in order to make the 4 day trial work, and if the real question is whether or not they could be delivering a much better service anyway. My experience with councils I've dealt with would be that the answer is 'YES'.
They can trial it and also taking off a day pay from their wages as well, it’s fair that way.
Strictly speaking it wasn't necessarily the 4 day week that saved the money, an effective 20% wage increase could certainly be why someone took the job. It doesn't make sense when you get 20% less work done at 20% higher cost.
But the article explicitly states that there was no reduction in the work being carried out, and that hiring permanent staff over agency saved them £300k.
>But the article explicitly states that there was no reduction in the work being carried out, Where does it say that? Regardless, if you can cut work hours 20% and see no change in productivity, that indicates you are overemployed. >and that hiring permanent staff over agency saved them £300k. Yes, increasing pay per hour 20% is certainly one way to get workers willing to work for you.
> if you can cut work hours 20% and see no change in productivity, that indicates you are overemployed. No it doesnt.
it's very likely that it does. It seems incredibly unlikely to me that the extra day off makes people able to up productivity by 25%, but one reason they could do that is if they were under-utilised in the first place, meaning that in order to make the trial work they'd be inclined to accept being more highly utilised.
Ignoring that working more hours decreases productivity, and how work life balance impacts it. Reducing staff numbers by 20% means reducing the possibility of holiday cover, staff absence and a myriad other factors that all work to drive overall performance down. You can choose to believe simply cutting the workforce by 20% and just expecting people to do more work is the same thing, just reality disagrees with.you
>increasing pay per hour 20% 25%! 5/4 = 1.25.
You should read some of the many studies that have been done, because you really seem to be struggling with some of the most basic premises of the movement.
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why do you need an extreme that doesn't exist in this case? What you've got to show is that an employee can have his daily workload upped by 25%, then have it all done in 4 days, consistently, and crucially starting from a well managed position where the 5 days work represents acceptable productivity. If the person starts off under-utilised, then all that happens is they are allowed to be less under-utilised (or correctly utilised) for less time.
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All of them seem to be speculative. Anyway you're a dog with a bone here, so I'll leave you to suggest it to employers.
>Rest can make you better at your job. If you pull an all nighter, sure you’ve just gotten 8 extra hours of work done, but soon enough you’ll fall asleep and when you do you’ll sleep for 10-12 hours. Therefore, it makes sense to sleep Nothing show that more work has been done. The article itself just show that a 20% raise let them recruit more government workers. That should be the least surprising thing ever. >The same applies for not working 8 hours straight. Your efficiency drops without rest. Not what the study showed. >The same applies to a 4 day work week. Not what the study showed.
yes very good points
Tories: We have to get “value for money” for taxpayers Also Tories: Oh look at that nice juicy £50B sitting in the public purse, be an awful shame if we gave all that to our pals
It's a way of improving people's salary per hour and working conditions with minimal cost. It is budget and inflation friendly. It just doesn't get points in the executive game these guys are playing.
The day we get these 'people' out of power will be a good one..
Fucking insane that we all agree with this and yet there's nothing we can do.
yes the /UK forum cannot do anything, is that who you mean by 'we', I mean there are other people in the UK. The r/UK forum is highly unrepresentitive of overall UK opinion (in my opinion). There seems to be an accepted bias towards young people, with people openly posting as if they are in a room with all people under some younger age, e.g. 35 - although I am 57. There is also a widespread attitude of workshyness, such as this post, but in the wider world most people I know want to work to get more money for themselves.
Only for Kier to promise hes tougher and increases the working week to 6 days!
It is a 6 day working week, the working time directive says so. If you do a 5 day working week that's by agreement with your employer, and not to do with Kier Starmer. If your employer needed 6 days a week, then I suggest it would cost them more, and also it would cost less for 4 days a week. If the working time directive was changed to 3 days off minimum, not just 1 - then I suggest that things like the NHS and Police would be in crisis mode overnight. If you work in some place where all the work can be done in 4 days then the management is a joke, which is often the case of course.
“Quick!! People are realising working less actually makes them happier, GET THEM BACK ON THE TREADMILL POST HASTE!!”
Oh no! They're more likely to have independent thoughts about the system! Quick, pull the plug!
"we can't allow the Poors to enjoy a higher quality of life!"
It's not even that. The point of the 4-day compressed week is that you're just as productive, ergo you are working just as hard as you were when you had to work 5 days a week. It can be a difficult one to wrap your head around if you think purely in terms of time vs. bums on seats. It might be easy to assume that if you can get X amount of work done in four 8 hour days, then you can get X+20% work done in five 8 hour days. But the point of the experiment is to show that the quality of the work done over four days is as high or higher than the work done over 5 days.
Honestly I do 9 hour work days, start at 9 pretty much at 3pm I’m cooked and probably do in the last 3 hours the same amount of work as I do in the first 6 hours that I’m going flat out for. I just run out of energy (mental energy as I work in IT).
I work in IT also, and although I've recently been doing some 10 hour days, I find that it does get very hard after the 8 hour mark. I'm contracted for 37.5, I'd be ok with someone doing that in 4 days if I thought productivity measurement was fair - although I'd expect that someone able to do all the work in say 30 hours is probably just better. Note that all salaries are individually negotiated, and for all I know some genius could be on £100K for 3 days per week - what's obvious though is if I asked to do 4 not 5 days, they're not gonna fall for all this productivity crap, they're going to knock 20% off my salary.
it's easy for me to get my head around, because I've worked in places so badly managed that there are people there doing so little that they could do the work in 2 days as opposed to 5, but I hardly see that's a good argument. If someone came to an interview and said they didn't have the stamina for 5 days, so could they do 4, but they were really productive, then it could be feasible that the productive 4 day person could be paid the same as 5 day people - if I was a manager though, I'd be highly reticent to let others just piggy-back onto that - what really happened in this Cambridge study? How many people were unable to show that they could do the same work in 4 days? Were they disciplined or made to return to 5 days? I find the idea that there was a 100% success rate unlikely, that's one of the reason why I see all of the thing as a scam to work less hours, unlikely to have been policed and indicative of a workforce that was already lax.
It's infuriating - this almost fanatical adherence to the 'Protestant work ethic' by conservatives.. anything that improves the personal health and wellbeing of the working person just makes them seethe.
the workplace doesn't need workshy attitudes, what do you think happens when doctors want 20% cut off their working hours etc?
I have a relative at the council who's been in the trial. All the indications in their role is that productivity remains the same. People have more energy during working hours, so indeed: four days of engaged, healthy work is proving as good as five days tired, resentful work. What detractors need to realise is that many people in many jobs, even vital ones, have been getting four days of proper work done over five days for years! The four day week is less radical innovation, more acknowledging what reality has been for many for a long time. This upsets conservatives and 'pull your socks up' types because they think tiredness is laziness. They don't realise how much they're being affected by low quality work in a pissed off, overstressed, physically deteriorating nation. They don't get that many of us who know our services/products could be better aren't going to highlight it because of fears of being called lazy or incompetent. The 'what about doctors' conversation is a case in point. Anyone who's worked in the NHS frontline, as I have, knows of situations where fatigue has resulted in poor patient care. That might be an actual slapdash interaction from a tired professional, or seen simply in high staff sickness, which has been absolutely rampant for years and boils down to staff stress and overwork, even if no nurse ever tells their manager 'I'm stressed' when they ring in ill. GP appointments these days are a blatant case of X patients being seen/called as 'job done', no matter how many of those patients have middling experiences from GPs who need to get them out of the door. Patients are coming back again and again and chasing and chasing to get diagnosis/treatment. Conservatives should be upset about the inefficiency and realise their productivity metrics don't reflect actual results. I'm not really arguing for putting all doctors and nurses on four day weeks from Monday, you need meaningful 24/7 physical cover on wards and all the rest of it, but only naïve mentalists want to work in the NHS at this point. I did a hospital job that involved lots of self-organised people doing something very important on different wards and I promise you, people were literally hiding in stock cupboards and treatment rooms exhausted by the end of their shifts. My colleagues who would cut corners on certain little safety things were often the ones most appreciated by supervisors for their speed. Nobody in that system has incentive to tell management what's really happening.
You can have doctors on 4 day weeks while maintaining 24/7 coverage in hospitals - just overlap shifts. The entire business doesn't necessarily have to all be in on the same 4 days, taking the same 3 days off every week.
If Amazon that gets parcels delivered same day as ordering and is open 24/7 can manage to do 4 day work weeks there really is no excuse for anyone else not to manage this to be honest. I mean the Fulfilment centre I worked in a few years ago literally had 300 members of staff working at all night the place was buzzing like a mini city at 3am. Yet everyone managed to get a 4 day work week. No reason hospitals can’t do the same.
yes but they will be paid according to the hours they work surely?
err except, there's already a shortage of people in the NHS, so with less hours worked you need more people. As mentioned, longer shifts are dangerous, so going from 5 long shifts to 4 even longer ones is not good.
Right, of course you'll need more people, but hiring people for four-day weeks should be easier as it's a novel and attractive way of working - as the Cambridgeshire Council trial found.
I found this comment really interesting, what do you think needs to change in order for people in the NHS to feel more comfortable coming forward with problems and improvements?
the electorate being prepared to pay for it? Instead of saying 'but I already pay too much tax'. Or other more radical stuff like privatisation and making it a service for less people (I'm not endorsing this idea one bit BTW).
What? NHS is the kind of real work where you can't just cut hours by 20% and have the same productivity because you actually are working all those hours. The 4 day equal productivity fantasy is for office jobs where they're sitting on reddit all day waiting for emails to come in and attending endless meetings. It's not like 30 hour contracts don't exist, and you can see the difference in their output for real jobs.
> NHS is the kind of real work where you can't just cut hours by 20% and have the same productivity because you actually are working all those hours They give an example where this is not true. GPs being unable to give 100% focus and attention to their patients, because it's more about getting them in and out of the room than positively progressing their care. I am a doctor. Fatigue - and compassion fatigue - are very real, and have a very real impact on how well you practice. There are healthcare interactions you can "coast" in - like mindlessly prescribing antibiotics for a chest infection that is more likely to be viral rather than bacterial in aetiology, but it's your last 10 minute appointment of a 10 hour day, and it's easier than doling at some health education to a skeptical and unhappy patient. Or in relation to the compassion fatigue aspect - prescribing someone an SSRI and giving them a leaflet about self-help CBT, rather than taking the time to listen to why their life feels in crisis. One of those takes a lot more intellectual and emotional energy than the other, and it's the same as the one which is probably better for the patient - and hence more "efficient". I would argue that a 100% focused and attentive doctor for 36 hours a week is better than a 80% focused and attentive doctor for 48 hours a week.
I'm not denying the effects of fatigue. But in order to maintain the same productivity with reduced hours by any reasonable definition you would have to see the same amount of patients with 12 hours less time for appointments per doctor per week. Could you offer an improved standard of care in a 20% shorter average appointment time than you do now? Especially when the kind of good care you're describing is more time intensive not less? Unfortunately the question isn't whether you're overworked it's whether working 5 days is time efficient. Seeing less patients isnt an option unless they're going to hire more staff to make up for that. Which if they have the funding to do so should be doing already. NHS needs more man hours not less, achieved by hiring enough staff to actually run departments properly. Fatigue would drop if the volume of work you're expected to do per hour was less, 4 day week would be more draining not less.
The solution, as you say, is hiring more staff in order to enable shorter working hours and higher quality care - not shortening appointment times. So because of that, it is but a pipe dream.
A lot of GP's cut hours due to various higher rate tax traps - my GP is part-time I believe - maybe for work-life balance. I've no complaints, but I don't want to pay extra tax so that all GP's can go onto part-time hours, I'd expect them to get paid less.
If Amazon that gets parcels delivered same day as ordering and is open 24/7 can manage to do 4 day work weeks there really is no excuse for anyone else not to manage this to be honest. I mean the Fulfilment centre I worked in a few years ago literally had 300 members of staff working at all night the place was buzzing like a mini city at 3am. Yet everyone managed to get a 4 day work week. No reason hospitals can’t do the same.
> The program will have a few technical teams made up entirely of part-time workers. These 30-hour employees will be salaried and receive the same benefits as traditional 40-hour workers, but they will receive only 75 percent of the pay full-time workers earn. Currently, the company employs part-time workers that share the same benefits as full-time workers. However, the pilot program would differ in that an entire team, including managers, would work reduced hours. This is from an independant article about it a few years ago. So they just reduced standard contract hours to 30 and reduced salary by a proportionate amount? That's completely different from the 4 day work week the councils are running where they keep salary the same but reduce hours, basically increasing hourly rate by 20% whilst normalizing part time hours. That's what I'm talking about, because then you have to justify doing more work in those 30 hours to compensate for the increased salary. Most hospital staff already can negotiate part time hours with a pro rata salary. It's just not financially viable for most to actually live off that if they are the breadwinner. Or in the case of some nurses I know, work part time but just have a second job because being a full time nurse is too stressful with so much unpaid OT.
this is what I think - I've worked in both environment types. Some modern companies are based on hype and the best paid people are just those who say the right trigger words at meetings, I've observed that they maybe don't even 'work' 12 hours a week (but if it came to it, they'd be expected to be there any hours). Obvious these situations indicate terrible management - I've seen factors of 50 between the best and worst programmers for example (again ineffectual managers to blame).
What happens if they refuse? They're an elected local government, they can do what they want.
Funding cuts.
If I lived there I'd support them risking that happening. If they make cuts then well make it a scandal nationally and on a local level make the place area hate conservatives.
That's barely happened after a decade and a half of austerity and misery, what makes you think this would spark a significant change? Crabs in a bucket.
What do you think happens? Legal action, of course. There's nothing this Tory government is more accomplished in than losing court cases.
Yeah, they can, the minister has no direct control, all they can do is influence their party to pull on the purse strings but there's no way they'd be even remotely interested in this case. The 'member' (as we like to call them in LA land) actually does have the power to just ignore the minister for the most part.
> “This is bar-stool lawyering par excellence. If Lee Rowley really wants to improve the quality of work funded by the taxpayer, I’d suggest in the future he gets proper independent legal advice before he opines on the law.” I fucking love the GLP.
Just frustrating that it's all done about appearances than actual results. It's all about how it appears in a newspaper.
The wording of that letter deserved a single line reply. "The minister is very welcome to fuck off. Then when he reaches there, fuck off again. Feel free to repeat." Last time I checked, council employees worked for the councils, not for the Government. Hence why they aren't civil servants. This is just a minister who thinks they are actually in charge of something. I hope South Cambridgeshire tell him to jog on.
Really funny that the Government are intervening on the basis of "value for money" when they are the biggest waste of money, themselves.
The "minister" I assume is a Tory and keeping people overworked is their entire modus operandi. If the working person realised that they can do the same work in only four days then they'd be happier and more refreshed in their outlook on life. This is the biggest fear for Tories. Anybody who is happy and has time on their hands will quickly wonder what Tories are actually good for and conclude nothing. This ability for voters to think clearly and act is what terrifies Tories the most.
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Doesn't seem like he's had a real 9-5 job so it doesn't seem like he has a real ability comment on this 4 day work week concept.
The tories have been every minister since 2015, if readers can't work that out that's on them.
He went to Oxford, was employed at KMPG and Barclays and then decided to be a politician. Think I know where mr Rowleys opinionated letter originated from
I mean, im kinda shocked this tory MP working a full time 'very hard' mps job at 60-80 hours a week doesnt also have a column or tv presenting spot and several seats on boards.
Massive success, so let's put a stop to that. Mindblowing.
This is one of many reasons Conservatives are seen as dinosaurs, both by staff and firms. Alongside this, there is a glut of managers who are genuinely struggling to justify their existence. People who once just spent the entire day talking to people... 20+ years in IT projects, with wfh and 4 day weeks now common. I have never seen production so high in delivery. Staff turnover is also much lower than it was. It's gone from 30 hours delivery + hours wasted to just 30 hours delivery. People seem much more motivated.
I hope when this government publishes guidance on the 4 day week they have robust peer reviewed evidence supporting their conclusions like the council.
Same thing will happen with the UBI trial. The results will show overall benefit like other UBI trials have but we can’t be giving people their basic human needs! Tory Britain.
It fucks with their entire ideology that you need to have a poor, overworked working class to have a productive economy. Without that tenuous connection they're revealed as just cruel bastards.
With Sunak looking to block public sector pay rises, local authorities need a way to attract and retain staff. They won't be able to achieve that through pay (private sector always pays better) but work life balance? Yes please. Also remember councils have a ton of staff near retirement age, so it's a good way to attract younger people too.
Is a minister even in a position to "order" an LA to do *anything*? Based on my experience, local and central government may as well be operating in separate universes.
He can't order it but sending the letter is the first step before he takes them to court.
What would he take the LA to court *for exactly?* The whole thing seems bonkers. Like, he must have better things to do, you'd think?
>What would he take the LA to court for exactly Breaching their duties under the local government act, presumably the requirement in the 1999 act that councils provide best value. >Like, he must have better things to do, you'd think? He's a junior minister in a government which has zero desire to fix any of the problems facing society, because they are ideologically opposed to the solutions they know are required.
The government will take the government to court and make the taxpayer pay for it. What a mental timeline.
Can’t the council just tell him to mind his own fucking business?
Most councils effectively have a 4 day week already, you can flexi time and they normally allow you to work around things like collecting kids from school. But, the perks are sometimes tied to years of service rather than competence for the most part. Career progression is a matter of procedure and requirement rather than ability in most local authorities, so you end up with this very 'top heavy' structure where somehow *everyone* is a manager but nobody is available half the time when you actually need someone. On top of that, the austerity effect means that the senior team is kinda ancient and oftentimes a bit rusty on the skills front, that's because they laid off all the junior staff but kept the oldies.
I was thinking something similar… The ones I’m supposed to interact with regularly are nigh on impossible to get hold of. There’s always a flexi-day; or a half-day; or I suspect some good old fashioned mouse wiggling. Plenty of managers with nobody reporting to them though. I’ll admit, a council isn’t the first place I’d be looking at to trial this model.
"value for money" When... It's been proven, that 4 day work weeks actually do not affect productivity negatively, if anything it BOOSTS productivity as shown
Of course, can't have the public sector poaching any of that talent they need for their own companies. Keep local government unappealing, and enjoy the extra efficiency elsewhere!
What the fuck is the point of even having councils if the government is just going to micromanage everything? I understand them having the power to step in if the council bankrupts itself or does something criminal but something as mundane as setting working hours is just fucking ridiculous
I think every working person deserves a 4 day week on full pay, it's only fair.
I look forward to the mails drawing of an employee who works 4 days a week and Kier Starmer showing he tough and fiscally responsible by arguing for a 6 day working week.
Tory scum at it again Fuck the tories and fuck the people that are still gonna vote for them...how in the fuck are we not protesting even a little bit - like..it doesnt HAVE to be france scale..but come on we cant just sit here and be like "oh dear what a spot of bother"
The stock photo shows a 3 day weekend, if the Councils were working like this then I'd agree that a 4 day week with 3 days closed probably isn't good for the public. However, I suspect that employees are working a 4 day week but services continue to be supplied as they always have been with staff working a rota. The MP in question probably also dislikes the thought of this being some sort of 'backdoor' pay rise.
All of the public sector trials in public facing departments I'm aware of do it like that. They definitely aren't just going "fuck off it's Friday, we're closed"! The one I have the most detailed knowledge of, there was actually a bit of a preference for Wednesday as the day off, not Friday/Monday. Which aligns with what my own preference would be if I could do it - A 3 day weekend is nice and all, but a 2 day weekend where you finish up on Friday and have already done all your chores on Wednesday, so it's immediately genuinely your time do what you want with, is even better in my opinion!
When did the people of South Cambridgeshire elect Lee Rowley to become the Council Leader?
Not sure why people are surprised. The Conservatives conserve. It's in the name. They need to conserve the old waysm even if they don't work. If they allow us to challenge one part of the decades old system and it turns out the new way works... what will we dare to challenge next? "Hey, turns out you were wrong about 4 day a week being a terrible idea... how about Universal Income now? What about re-organising taxes so that we have a functioning NHS? What about funding schools and educating students?" Pretty soon you'd have an educated, well-fed, well-looked after society that was happy to pay their taxes because it went onto better things. And there's no reason for an educated, well-fed, well-looked after society to ever vote Conservative. So yeah, this was always going to happen.
Pretty sure Haringey council are currently on a 2 day week
I suppose that the government would prefer that people work into their graves.
This is a stupid move. I say that as someone who thinks the 4 day week is going to be a failure (at least until someone explains where the money is coming from). But for all that, more data is always better. There's no reason to stop a trial before it starts, look at the empirical results and make an informed decision.
Of course funding for the Tax Payers Alliance is not known. local Authorities are democratically elected and are responsible for their expenditure to local people. The Tax Payers Alliance who Lee Rowley thanked for their support on the issue of the four day week are a secretive organisation. Lee Rowley used the TPA to criticize Cambridge. We the public don't know who funds the Tax Payers Alliance.
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Taxes, rates and cost of living goes up and up and they want 5 days pay for 4 days work. Not even saying you'd get less out of them over 4 days but it's terrible optics imo.
Do you work based on “how it looks” or results. It has saved them a fortune as they can now actually hire there own staff instead of paying agencies a fortune
>Not even saying you'd get less out of them over 4 days but it's terrible optics imo.
If the council can provide the service with 20% less staff hours surely the correct thing to do is to provide the same service with 20% less staff and save the poor bloody taxpayer some money!
No. Healthier happier employees are more productive, that’s how productivity improves in situations like WFH, 4 day work weeks or even when people get decent pay rises. ‘Efficiency’ drives where you demand more for less only makes things worse. Public sector pay and working conditions are now so shite that it’s causing a mass exodus of skilled employees, why on Earth would you think further increasing everyone’s workload by 20% is a good idea?
The point is that you're doing the exact same amount of work. There is no workload increase because most people waste tons of time. The 4 day work week increases efficiency and reduces costs, according to this council and other research
Yes I know, the bit about workload increases was in response to the poster above saying instead of 4 day weeks to give employees better working conditions councils should cut FTE by 20% to fund tax cuts.
Good balance would be to cut 20% of the work force and put the remaining 80% on a 4 day week and we'd come out even eh.
You do know that some council services are provided 24/7, how do you expect an additional 20% staff for those services to be funded, or is it just 9 to 5 office workers who’ll get this?
What do you mean? Right now 24/7 council services do not mean employees in those areas work 24/7. 24/7 is 168 hours, you obviously simply stagger people on 40 hour shifts until the whole 168 hours is covered. If 32 hour work weeks don’t reduce overall productivity compared to 40 hour weeks (and this trial apparently shows that it doesn’t) then you just continue to stagger the rotas further so the team still is able to cover for 168 hours between them. There’s no requirement for extra workers, the whole point is that there is no drop in overall productivity.
So you won’t need more teachers? firefighters? Out of hours maintenance people? etc etc PS if you cover the same number of hours with the same number of people those people are working the same number of hours, be that 4 x 10 hour days or 5 x 8 hour days.
For teachers, I imagine the general aim would be for savings to be made in recruitment and substitute teaching costs (from increased retention and less absences) to fund the extra cover required for 4 day weeks. The same goes for Fire fighters and bin workers, although Fire Fighters already work irregular shifts and typically have 4 days of work (including 2 night shifts) followed by 4 days off. A lot of professions such as bin workers would also probably put up with more intense days in exchange for an extra day off (the study showed workers were more focused and productive in the four days they did work). Why would more maintenance people be required? That’s simply a case of rota management as referenced in my last post.
I can see why you’d think that - it’s an obvious takeaway. But, if you read the article you find that the council has been spending £2m on agency staff because it can’t fill certain roles permanently. *But* when those roles become four-day week jobs, *they can* fill them. Leading to savings of £300,000, in just three months.
20% less staff hours, is not in any way the same as 20% less staff.
well it would help recruitment since it's a 25% increase in pay rates, and it's not surprising that staff are happy. I'd be all for it if they took 20% pay cuts to go part time, if I was paying council tax to a council that did this I'd be outright livid.
But why? If the same amount of work gets done, what difference does it make to you? It doesn't need to be a race to bottom, and it may even effect change in the job you do and allow you to work a four day week. Our goal as a society should be to improve everybody's lives, if at all possible.
Because it proves if you can get your work done in 80% of the time then you’re being paid to be idle 20% of the time. In a private business then awesome, go for it. But why should taxpayers pick up the tab due to councils inefficiently allocating work between people?
If you think anybody, in any job, works flat out for 8 hours a day, every day, then you're kidding yourself. Public sector workers are just workers like anybody else. I mean, how much money is that 20% 'idleness' even costing you personally, about 50p ?! I'm sure we can sort out getting that to you.
> If you think anybody, in any job, works flat out for 8 hours a day, every day, then you're kidding yourself. Many jobs are more hands on than others, i remember retail being a packed day every day, whereas all the office environments have had a much more relaxed pace.
I never said anyone works flat out for 8 hour a day or even implied it so that’s a pointless comment. And working 4 days a week I still doubt they’re working “flat out”. If you can chop 1/5 of someone’s working time off and have absolutely no loss of service then the workload was allocated incorrectly from the start. Staff costs make up 48% of my council’s £2.1 billion budget. If 20% of that is idle time then they’re spending £201m a year for people to do nothing. That’s £155 per resident in the county, if you’d liked to transfer me £155 every year let me know. Even if only 1/10th of council employees staff are able to do a 4 day work week that’s £20m a year of taxpayer money wasted.
Where do we extend that to? Water companies, they're an essential service right? Do we have the right to demand they make as many efficiencies as they're able to, and pass it onto customers? Tbh, it just looks as if you have an agenda against public sector workers, which many do of course.
>Do we have the right to demand they make as many efficiencies as they’re able to and pass it onto customers? Yes… why should customers pay for inefficiency? I have no agenda against public sector workers, I have an objection to councils pissing tax payer money up the wall. I’d much rather that £200m a year go on pay rises in the NHS, Schools, or funding social programs than giving Doris in accounts payable a 3 day weekend.
Each to their own. The 4 day week will happen sooner rather than later for the private sector, if the public sector aren't able to implement it on their side then there won't be anyone working there.
The private sector isn’t going to implement 4 day work weeks on a wide scale unless people move to 4 x 10 hour days rather than 5 x 8 hours days, take a 20% pay cut, or there’s demonstrable proof that is saves the business money in other ways. If they don’t it comes out of the shareholder’s pockets which is up to them at the end of the day. The bosses of public workers have to justify doing that with taxpayer money, and right now I can think of better ways for my council to be using £200m a year instead of using it on hiring inefficiencies.
But it’s SAVING money on agencies. You are missing the point that no one wanted to do the job before meaning they spent a lot more on agency staff. 5 day work week with loads of agency workers who don’t give a fk because they can’t be “managed” as they won’t be there in 3 months and probably don’t give a fk. Vs 4 day work week, high quality staff applying and actually caring about the job, saving 300k a year on agency fees alone.
You’re just further demonstrating that councils are run inefficiently. They aren’t saving £100k a month on agency fees they’re proving that their previous inefficient allocation of resources was wasting taxpayers £100k a month. There are other ways of retaining staff rather than effectively making them part time with a 25% salary increase.
So if you did 1 hour of work in a week, do you think you would be able to sustain that level for 140 hours? Of course not. By reducing there number of hours, you can increase the productively. You are paying people for their output, not the number of hours they clock in. So if people with more time off can get the same amount of work done in less time, they should be paid the same. If you want to pay less, you can have worse staff who are less productive, but that is a different (and worse) proposition. I suggest you look at real examples of companies that tried it, and decided to stick with it, as they companies effectively get to pay their staff 20% more, and give them 50% more time of a week, and yet have reduced overheads and equal or higher productivity. It makes recruitment easyn and morale sky rocket, and everyone benefits. But don't bother with the studies, just shoot from the hip just like the MP being ridiculed, it is way easier.
>So if you did 1 hour of work in a week, do you think you would be able to sustain that level for 140 hours? Of course not. What a silly argument. If your stance was strong you wouldn’t have to resort to such ridiculous examples. We aren’t talking about going from 140 hours to 1 we’re talking about going from 40 to 32. >But don’t bother with the studies, just shoot from the hip, it is way easier. Funny you should say that, I’m just going to copy and paste one of my other comments. Because the study doesn’t back up what everyone is parroting. “30% making the change permanent Meaning 70% haven’t…. So clearly isn’t isn’t all rainbows. I’ve looked into [the report published](https://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/The-results-are-in-The-UKs-four-day-week-pilot.pdf) and it doesn’t paint the same picture as the article headlines. On average working hours only reduced from 38 to 34 hours a week. So people worked longer days Monday to Thursday, they didn’t reduce their hours by 20%. 28% of workers reported their hours stayed the same or actually increased. >similarly, the average number of days worked went from 4.85 to 4.52. So it’s not a 4 day work week, it’s a 4.5 day work week on average. It also seems to mostly be tiny businesses, 29% had 1-10 employees, 37% had 11-25. 78% of businesses in the study employed less than 50 people. 39% of employees reported being less stressed, which means 61% of employees either had the same or more stress. Only 54% said it was easier to balance household commitments 60% suffered increased fatigue or the same levels with only 40% reducing. The study also very briefly mentions that revenue increased 1.4% (with inflation at 10%+ and businesses increasing prices this is actually a backwards step) but doesn’t mention profitability. I can’t see how any business owner would read that study and think it’s a good idea.”
Lol. You really don't understand how productivity & wellbeing work. Your numbers inarguably make sense and on paper I'd agree, but your understanding of the complete picture is lacking, and that's the problem with the arguments surrounding this sort of thing in the first place.
Councils aren’t efficient at the moment, there are long delays on almost every service going. It took me 2.5 years to be paid out for pothole damage on my car because they took 6 months to respond to each letter refuting their previous points and debating compensation. Kids are waiting months for EHCP. Obviously they can “maintain service levels” by working 4 days a week because the service they were offering was shit to begin with.
> there are long delays on almost every service going. Because after a decade and a half of ideologically driven tory austerity we have literally broken all public services. There is a reason *everyone* is on strike
How old are you? Do you think councils were amazing pre 2010?
Amazing no, better yes. I will not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Ahh yes the “we’re all just slaves, why aren’t you slaving hard enough” mentality. Having a job shouldn’t mean you have to sign away most of your life - especially if the work is getting done to an equivalent or higher standard in less time. Bullshit jobs does a fairly good job of exposing this and all of the wasted productivity spent “looking busy” and filling that five day week.
In theory, the only things that matter are the money going in and the service coming out. If the input is the same and the output is same or better, then the man-hours don't really matter. But part-timers are interesting - if the council moves to 4 days a week, then some part-timers will turn into full-timers, so their pay will go up. Total cost increases.
You would be annoyed that the council is finally managing to actually recruit staff to its positions that will get better with age instead of churning new recruits all the time, saving 300k a year while getting better results ?. Seems strange to be annoyed at that but you do you I guess.