Abstract
Something is in the wind and the pressure is building for the move to a four-day working week. The idea of a progressive reduction in working hours is not new and the notion that ‘Working to Live’ rather than ‘Living to Work’ was written about by the likes of William Morris, Bertrand Russell and Oscar Wilde. The five-day, 40 hrs week with a minimum of three weeks annual paid holiday has been one of the main achievements of the Trades Union movement over the past 200 years; in recent times, the European Union has consolidated these important advances underpinning the health and wellbeing of workers and their families – advances that could be threatened by the proposed Brexit from the EU. In the 1960s, there was much talk of a future age when everybody would have a life of leisure and in which the daily grind of unsatisfying work was a thing of the past, something which ran into the sands of faltering economic performance, the three-day week of Edward Heath’s 1970–1974 government and was then apparently lost forever in the ensuing years and the economic collapse of 2008. Today, we hear regular reports of work-related stress, zero-hour contracts and in-work poverty, in which even the long-fought-for lunch hour seems to have been lost for many people. The late Tessa Jowell, the country’s first Minister of Public Health, often drew attention to what she called ‘the maldistribution of work’ that was damaging to people’s health across the social spectrum.
The most recent interest in putting this important issue back on the agenda dates from a paper published by the New Economics Foundation in 2010 called ‘21 hours: why a shorter working week can help us flourish in the 21st century’. The Foundation recommended the move to 21 hours to address issues of unemployment, low wellbeing, entrenched inequalities, overwork, the demands of family care and a general lack of free time. Although that paper seems to have fallen on stony ground when it was published, recent reframing of the issue in public health terms seems to have had more traction. Following an article that raised the issue in this way in the Guardian newspaper in 2014, there was a spate of media coverage internationally and from across the political spectrum that was largely supportive of the move to a shorter working week. Typical of those falling in with the call were The Times, The Independent, The Adam Smith Institute, C.B.S. News, The New Statesman and perhaps not surprisingly The Idler. Eighty-nine per cent of respondents to a Guardian survey were supportive while only Management Today raised significant doubts. Notwithstanding the naysayers, there are already trends underway in the direction of a shorter working week around the world. During the 20th century, working hours around the world almost halved as a result of technological advance, increased productivity, rising wages, Trades Union activity and progressive legislation. France adopted a 35 hrs week in 2000 and in the Netherlands the average working week is less than 30 hrs. In New Zealand, some companies are now implementing a four-day week.
In recent years, those of us working in the fields of health and medical care have become aware of a silent revolution, as more and more of the younger generation opted out of the workaholic culture which so defined the experience of their predecessors. This trend is across gender and extends to other professions. We have entered a new information and robotic revolution every bit as dramatic as the agricultural and industrial revolutions that have gone before and we are facing massive change in the labour market. Along with this high-tech future, we will need many more high-tech and high-touch jobs, but unless we make the necessary structural changes the benefits will be unevenly shared. We have an opportunity to reframe the nature of work in ways which can optimise human health, wellbeing and happiness. Perhaps in the world of medicine, we can blaze a trail and at the same time give opportunities to thousands of youngsters who are faced with a zero-hours future and insecurity to realise their dreams.