UK should shift to four-day work week says poll

Six in ten people want the UK government to shift towards a shorter working week on the same pay, an idea particularly popular among Labour voters.

PM Keir Starmer has a lot on his hands at the moment, but the survey suggests that a four-day work week could prove an easy win. Starmer didn’t include shorter working hours in Labour’s election manifesto, while the previous Conservative government was much more against the idea. It even threatened to take action against local councils that trialled four-day working weeks.

The poll, by Survation but commissioned by four-day week backers The Autonomy Institute, asked more than two thousand Brits who voted Labour in the last election if they would like to see the UK moving towards a shorter working week without pay cuts by 2030. More than seven in ten (72%) Labour voters agreed, with two-thirds saying they’d like to see further trials run in the public sector. The idea was also popular among Green Party and Liberal Democrat voters, both above 60%.

Cross-party support

The idea has support across the political divide, with nearly six in ten (59%) of those polled who voted Reform saying they would also like to see a plan created to reduce working weeks. Tory voters were the least likely to back the idea, with just fewer than half offering support.

“Our polling shows that if Keir Starmer were to move ahead with policies to enable the country to transition to a four-day working week, he would have the support of vast swathes of the UK population,” said Will Stronge, Director of Research at Autonomy.

Indeed, in June, members of the UNISON union backed a motion demanding the government does more to help employers shift to shorter working weeks. That suggests that Starmer’s Labour party could win backing from unions and those on the right by supporting four-day working weeks, or a similar reduction in hours.

Overall, 60% of people polled support the move to create a plan to reduce working hours with no loss of pay, with 22% neither supporting nor opposing and 13% actively opposing the idea.

Burned out Brits?

Stronge added that the UK works longer full-time hours than most of Europe, adding that people haven’t seen a reduction in hours since the 1980s.

“Labour’s New Deal for Working People is a good start but what is absent is a serious plan around working time reduction: if the priority is health, decent working conditions and business innovation, this needs to be part of the programme,” he added.

However, that depends on which statistics you use: Eurostat figures suggest the UK has the same average working hours as the EU average, at 36.4 weekly. Still, that means the UK has a longer work week than Italy and France (both 36.2 hours), Germany (34.6) and the Netherlands (32.4), which has the shortest hours in the EU.

That said, research suggests European hours are beginning to decline, which is not happening in the UK. According to a Barclays report, working hours in the UK have fallen 5% over the past forty years, versus 10% in France, Italy and Spain.

Labour support for four-day week in UK

“After decades of working some of the longest hours in Europe, British workers are burnt out, overworked and in desperate need of a break,” said Peter Dowd, Labour MP for Bootle. “A four-day week with no loss of pay would give workers a much better work-life balance and the evidence shows it would also improve productivity.”

The next set of trials managed by Autonomy are set to start next month. According to Autonomy, 54 of the 61 companies that took part in the pilot held in 2022 have stuck with the four-day week – no surprise after the results showed the shift benefited staff while boosting productivity.

South Cambridgeshire District Council tested a four-day working week over 15 months across 450 office-based staff and bin collectors, a move that drew ire from the then-Tory government.

The trial’s extension sparked a demand from then Local Government Minister Lee Rowley to council leaders to end the “experiment”, calling it a waste of taxpayer funds. The trial continued, and the council reported better productivity in 11 of 24 areas, no change in 11, and issues in just two, both of which were pinned on external factors.

Related:

• Companies must wake up to four-day working
• “A four-day week would definitely disrupt the market, making those companies that adopt it much more competitive. Just imagine a three-day weekend!”
• How the world of work will look in 2030