The Guide to Reducing the UK’S Working Week from The Labour Party’s Conference.

On the face of it, it looks like the Labour Party is offering quite a deal: a reduction of the daily working week for all by almost a day, without a pay cut. Whoop whoop I hear you cry! A 32-hour week eclipses even the reversed 35-hour week policy of the French Socialists of two decades ago. It also appears to go further than the report on the subject, commissioned by the shadow chancellor, which was published earlier this month which said that imposing a four-day week would not be "realistic or even desirable".

My question is this - given the work pressures that we are all under, the stress and anxieties that so many of us face at “the coal face” of our jobs, the thousands of employees that covertly experience mental health issues but are too afraid to talk about, is a reduction to a working week a good or a bad thing?

However, this would not be a French-style cap on hours and would not be directly enforced on businesses. The Labour Part is openly attempting to massage the labour market towards a considerable reduction in the hours worked in the average working week over a decade which would be one hell of a change. 

In an average week in the UK, the total hours worked by the entire workforce is 1.05 billion!. If you assumed the workforce remained the same, then this policy would see total hours worked cut by around 100 million hours. 

This would have a significant effect on the economy. But the Labour Party argues not only that the policy will not cost the economy, but that individual workers will not get a pay cut. How on earth is this going to be possible? 

Personally, my concern is this – reducing the UK’s working week to 32 hours would require an epic increase in productivity and how much each worker actually produces which is something that has always eluded the UK economy. Businesses fear that this is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse, which would require a huge capital investment. The Labour Party, on the other hand, is merely trying to pin down the benefits of the next decade of technological advancements towards workers, rather than business owners.

There will need to be a new Working Time Commission which will be modelled on the minimum wage-setting Low Pay Commission, which will recommend increases in holiday entitlement from the current 28 days, if the reduction in working hours is not being met. 

There could also be a significant effect on labour-intensive public services, such as social care and the NHS. 

So, do I think that a reduction in the working week is a good or a bad thing for the mental health of the nation’s employees? I think it’s, without doubt, a bad thing.

I would love to hear your views on this whether you agree or disagree.