Listen to the Episode

 

Wayne: Today we’re going to be talking about, it’s a little bit topical at the minute, just come out in the news. Trade unions are lobbying for a four-day work week.

Cem: Sounds exciting.

Wayne: I think-

Cem: Which day would you go for? Which one are you going to cut? Are you going to go for the Friday? So you’ve got long weekend. Are you going to split the week up?

Wayne: I think split the week up personally.

Cem: I hear, Wednesday up, just get rid of Wednesday.

Wayne: Yeah, do like a Monday, Tuesday. Get rid of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Which frankly is my work week anyway to be honest. But yeah, that’s what I would go for, just tow days-

Cem: I think so, otherwise people are just going nail the weekend too hard.

Wayne: Yeah. And also nobody really wants to work on hump day you know?

Cem: Yeah, that’s true actually. When you’re that psychological on Thursday, you’re like “Thursday. Friday is coming-”

Wayne: And also I do think we just dive right in. I do think the whole productivity thing of going from Monday to Friday as somebody that works in admin for the day job, like I can tell you, everybody works their ass off on a Monday, and then doesn’t work at all it seems until Friday.

Cem: You just flow. You hover into the end of the week.

Wayne: Flow all the way to Friday, and then Friday comes, everybody goes, “Fuck.”

Cem: Or you get to Friday and be like, “I’ll wait til Monday to finish that off.”

Wayne: Or that, yeah. So, whereas I think if you did Monday, Tuesday, day off, so midweek, Thursday, Friday, you’d end up with basically Monday twice and Friday twice, if you think about it. Because you want your deadline done by Wednesday so that they’ve got it for Thursday morning, and then Thursday’s a new week because then all this new stuff’s come in.

Cem: So Wayne, tell us about this article. So what’s the actual … What’s the gist of the story?

Wayne: So, the news itself is this week, I think it finished yesterday, I think it was a two day event, was the trade unions conference. Which just to be a little bit boring for you for just a minute, the trade unions conference is basically where all the representatives of all the various trade unions gather. If you don’t know what a trade union is, basically it’s an organization that workers from various industries are members of, and they kind of lobby the government and also employers to make sure that the workers are being looked after and protected. The trade unions conference is a gathering of all of those trade unions and they send representatives, and they basically try and set their own agenda as trade unions across the country.

Cem: You’re right, it is boring, yeah.

Wayne: Yeah. No, I know, but … And so that’s happened this week. And one of the main things that’s come out of it is actually the trade unions have now decided that because of the advancements in technology, and automation, and artificial intelligence and robotics, etc. etc. That what’s happening at the minute is the employers are using those technological advances to gain profit but not to ease the workload of the workers. And so the workers are being made to work just as hard, if not harder so that the organizations can profit more. And what the trade unions are saying is, “Look, if you’re going to have all these technological advances that are going to make things more efficient, then how about you pay the workers the same amount but actually for their own health and wellbeing, allow them to have, so long as …”

Wayne: Essentially, this is the gist I got out of it, “So long as their deadlines are met and that they’re performing to the level that they should be performing at, allow them to take an extra day off a week but still pay them what they would get paid for five.” I think that might be a little bit idealistic in what their-

Cem: Yeah, I think they’re saying they wanted to go down to about 28 hours a week, they’re saying, which seems very low. But then I think they were also reading that, is it France that have already implemented this? And that anything over, I think 28 hours or something, they now clock as like overtime.

Wayne: I think it should be. I think it should be. But the whole thing raises quite a few questions I think, because it’s the thing of like, well how do you ensure that the workers are working just as hard? And I think you have to have that caveat as well. Well, if you’re not fulfilling your deadlines, we’re paying you for five days, so if you’re not getting your shit done, you will work five days.

Cem: I think it’s very industry specific as well, because like hospitality for my own business you’d think, well it doesn’t work four-day work week, because there’s always people that need to be available. Is like the business is open 12 hours a day, so it’s kind of like for that industry-

Wayne: So, you’d have to hire more staff.

Cem: Basically you have to hire more staff and probably pay them, I guess, more because of now people are getting a four … they can only work up to 28 hours. And so now you have to pay the same as if they were getting say 40 hours or something like that. So, I figure it’s very industry specific and I’m thinking they’re probably only looking at maybe more towards tech companies, and I think maybe it works for them. But I think, yeah, it has to be quite careful of how they do it. And I think people naturally are going to go, “Okay, well if I get paid the same I will still work …” People especially who are doing it for like more of the monetary gain, they’re going to be like, “Well actually I’ll work the five days, get my same pay and then actually just increase how much I earn.”

Wayne: Yeah. So it was interesting because a couple of days before this came out, I saw a video on Facebook of an organization that had actually tried to do a four-day work week. And actually what they saw was really, really interesting. What they found was really interesting. Productivity went up, and I think it’s because of, I think, what is called? Is it … not Murphy’s law. There’s a law, I can’t remember which law it is, but it’s basically says that the amount of time it takes to do something is directly linked to the amount of time given to it. And I’m definitely guilty of this at my day job. I come in, I look at my to-do list and I go, “Right, I need to get all of this done by 5:00.”

Wayne: And I’ll look at it and I’ll pace myself, and I’ll go throughout the day, and if I’m ahead of schedule by 1:00, then I’ll take my foot off the gas a little bit. And then by the end of the day I’ll just get that final task off the task list. Whereas, I think, if I was like, “I need to get this done by 2:00,” I’d power through and get it all done by 2:00 if I had to leave at 2:00.

Cem: Yeah. There’s that desire, though, isn’t it? For like you feel good once you’ve got something done. And that’s why a Friday people like crack on Friday night, get everything done so they can go into the weekend feeling like, “Ah, my head doesn’t have to be at work knowing I’ve got a lot to on Monday.” And so I guess by having that sort of mentality in the week, like if you say, we just take out the Wednesday, then Tuesday you’re thinking, “Look, I want to enjoy my Wednesday off and relax with the family. Let’s just get that work done.” And I think they had some examples in the article that I read for this, of some places, I think it was Wales, and they were just saying that you, because you know now that your employer is giving you that extra day off, you feel the urge to kind of really prove your worth. And say, “Look, I can crack out in four days.”

Cem: Obviously, you can’t underestimate how good it is for people’s wellbeing as well. Ultimately, we’ve always said like your work and what you do has to kind of compensate for your lifestyle really, of how you want to live. And so actually it’s not all about work and all the time. There was even one stat saying that, I think it was 1.4 million people in the UK actually work seven days a week.

Wayne: Yeah. I saw that stat.

Cem: Which is quite shocking really.

Wayne: I was.

Cem: And I don’t doubt it, because I do feel that people always felt like that wheel is always spinning now, especially we have like online and stuff like that. And so people feel the pressure to always be on, and the workload never stops. You never get to the end, it’s done. And so people want to prove their worth by working these long hours. But then I just think like at what cost really?

Wayne: Work is a working harder whilst things and more efficient, and they’ve kind of recognized that the equation doesn’t balance out because if they … It’s one of those where it’s like, just because you can get more done doesn’t mean that you should get more done at the expense of your workers.

Cem: Yeah, well, working with-

Wayne: Because the need for a five-day work week or even a six-day work week for some people or some businesses is they’ve got to churn stuff out in order to be profitable. But if they’re managing to churn more stuff out because things are more efficient, it’s greed that is keeping their workers in place for that many days. And actually if the business are making more profit, they can afford to pay the workers five days a week, whilst them working four theoretically. But I think, as you say, it’s very industry specific and it is very … I think it is also very business specific. I mean, I do work a essentially a four-day work week at the day job, and I think I could work five, but I don’t think I’d need to work five to get my job done.

Cem: So, my own work week is-

Wayne: Because I’ve made it so efficient.

Cem: My work week is essentially a seven-day. Like, I can’t ever switch off. There’s no day where we’re like, “Cem, don’t worry about work,” but at the same time it doesn’t mean that all those days are full on doing work. But then that’s again, it depends what kind of career you’re doing.

Wayne: Yeah, I agree.

Cem: So Wayne, are you for the four-day work week? Do you think it could work?

Wayne: Yeah, I think ultimately it’s only a matter of time now. I think we’ve got to that point where … Because look, this automation thing is happening. It’s coming, it’s happening, I’m finding since I’ve been implementing more technology into my own job, because I’ve been given the autonomy in order to do so, I have found that generally speaking, not always, by the end of the week my task list is a lot clearer than it used to be. And so that’s happening everywhere, so it’s only really a matter of time. Yes, you can create more work for the sake of creating more work, which is what a lot the businesses are doing, because this is the thing, right? I think a lot of the issue is the employers want to know that they’re getting value for their money. And the risk, I think of the four-day work week, and this is where I think you got to be careful, is that you’re going to be in a position where jobs could potentially be lost.

Wayne: Because what the employers are going to be looking at is, “Well actually, if I’m giving X amount of workers five days pay, but only paying them for four days a week. If I have given a five workers a four day work week on five days pay, then I’ve lost a member of staff essentially.”

Cem: Whereas the government probably thinks that actually now you’ve got those workers only working four days, you’re probably going to need to hire a few more, which means more people go into the work world. But actually that means a huge costs now to the businesses.

Wayne: So, I don’t know if the equation really balances out just yet. And I think it’d have to be very heavily regulated to make sure that it doesn’t get abused, because I feel like it could get abused, mostly like zero hours contracts have been. But I think in the long term, I think it’s only a matter of time before it happens. And I do think it’s a good move because I think really four days on, three days off, sounds much more balanced and always has done to me than five days on, two days off. Because really you’re working in order to be able to live, and we live in a society of abundance at the minute. And I think even if another recession hits, I feel like we might be in a similar situation still in terms of how cheap things are to manufacturer.

Wayne: So, if we’re living in a society of abundance, then it means that we should be able to do that and we should be able to live more. And I think that’s down to automation and technology. So yeah, I think it’s, as I say, only a matter of time.

If you want any questions answered, or if you have any ideas for anythings you’d like us to address, send us an email, Wayne@powerfulnonsense.com or Cem@powerfulnonsense.com, or you can look us up on the Twitterz @PN_Podcast, and we will take it into consideration. And also, please do leave us a nice little review on the old iTunes. It really does help get the word out there for the show. Five stars or more, greatly appreciated.