It’s Already too Late to Stop the Four-Day Week
Over the weekend, you may have seen headlines about Labour paving the way for a four-day week. Angela Rayner reassured the British public that it would be “no threat to the economy”, but you have to wonder if everyone feels the same way. Coincidentally (a bit too coincidentally, in terms of timing) Sadiq Khan has just offered Tube drivers a four-day week in return for them calling off industrial action scheduled for November 7th and November 12th.
As with so many of Labour’s proposed policies – such as the Assisted Dying Bill and farmers’ inheritance tax hike – they always have a random feel to them, as though sprung upon the electorate at a second’s notice. Before you have time to ask “who, what, where, why?”, Kim Leadbeater or whoever next has the first draft of her bill ready.
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Politicians Push Laziness to Destroy Britain
If these “workers” can do the “work” in four days, instead of five, then there are too many of them – 20% of them can be fired.
Just what I mean about the no day working week.
We are likely to see a lot of that when we are living in mud huts.
BTW net zero is a stupid idea because it implicitly means someone else is burning the carbon for us and we are capturing it at great expense to bury it in the ground where it will of course never ever leak from.
Imagine what staff turnover would be with a three hour working week.
Or indeed a no day working week.
Staff turnover would decrease by 100% – reductio ad absurdum.
What is the theory behind shorter working weeks being beneficial economically?
Might be worth a go if they could be made to work for 4 days vs not working for 5? Takes tongue out of cheek.
I am pleased to see that the inland revenue is still efficient though. I made a mistake on my business accounts and had to reset my accounts and my tax bill made out in 2.5 working days. My premium bond wins paid by post won’t be he for a week or two more, so it’s clearly a choice and priority thing
I renovated my late parents house. Any profit was always going to be taxed as income so I set up an LLP to do it. I was regarded as a contractor so I had to register as an employer even though I had no employees. Then I had to register as a contractor.
Before I could pay any builder etc for work I had to get permission from HMRC. I had to send monthly returns of who I had paid and how much within 7 days. A day late on a Nil return resulted in a £100 penalty. These increased if repeated.
The job has been completed for over a year. I cannot find out how to deregister so I seem to be stuck on a treadmill. Deregistering the LLP won’t help as they will come after me as the owner.
H E L P !
When I tried phoning the HMRC things just got worse. Time wasted and no answers.
That’s is what happens when you try to short change the mobster on his protection money.
“Idle hands”….As we slip further and further into decadence. Fall of the Roman Empire anyone.
On the other hand it might wake some sheep up to the extent that they realise they might actually need a proper job to give them something resembling a true sense of worth. That said, there’s few such jobs left in the UK now.
The way this left wing/woke thingy is going makes me wonder if it might be a good idea if someone somewere happened to set off a small tactical nuclear bomb. Maybe that would give the idle/I’m really suffering from long covid/Guardian reader types something to really worry about. Jolt everybody back to their senses – that’s what we need…..
I must’ve woken up in a bad mood today. Definitely getting well and truly annoyed now with this 4 year old and continuing Clown World.
OnlyTrump offers a glimmer of hope, it’s been entertaining thus far – Is it really true that The Guardian has offered its employees free counselling to overcome their depressionover the US election result?
Not for farmers. Not for the self employed. Not for strivers and entrepreneurs.
Not for family careers.
Correct. The role is to fund it unfortunately
This morning rail journeys to Heathrow are severly delayed because signal staff is/are sick. Back to the 1970s?
Correct , just the public sector !
The 4 day week is basically a 25% pay increase. That”s the scheme.
I never encountered an electorate that wasn’t up for giving itself stuff.
It’s also a 25% increase in something else as it’ll now (with a four day week) take 5 people to do the amount of work 4 people did before. This roughly means 135,710 additional civil service jobs if the level of service provided is not supposed to decrease¹.
¹ Extended to the NHS – certainly on the cards – it would mean about 375,000 more NHS employees, most of them probably qualified immigrants.
Just checking as I can’t post on News Round-up
work 4 days, get 4 days pay, reduce the tax bills to accommodate. See how fast people adopt it.
This article is lacking a counter-argument: What’s bad about the 4 day week? Doesn’t that sound rather nice? I’ll try to supply one:
It’s going to be a four day week for the civil service, anything else that’s even remotely public and possibly, also for people working for large corporations. It’s not going to be a four day week for the people who are expected to pay for this. who’ll have to work more (or earn less) so that others can enjoy this luxury.
I’ll pay Council Tax for 4 days instead of 5. Although getting 4 days work out of the Council would be a step forwards..
You’ve calculated that in the wrong direction: If the council introduce a 4 day week, this means you’ll pay council tax for 6¼ days in return for the same level of service the 5 you’re presently paying for buy you.
Four day week for non-producers – parasites on the taxpayer.
Two tier I’m no sure what the schools and teachers will think about this . 4 day weeks for the children ?? Or the medics and nurses. Where are they getting the extra workers from to cover the reduction in time at the front line?
You. Through more money to pay them from you in taxes and increasing the national debt with more borrowing.
And despite the huge national debt already Rachel Thieves is borrowing even more.
I’m sure the cattle won’t mind being milked only four days per week.
Anyway, aren’t we supposed to be reducing dairy consumption too? See C40 cities.
By mistake I downvoted you! I wanted to upvote but it didn’t seem to register! Sorry!
Two observations:
The problem with the 4 day week is that the working day is extended from a nominal 8 hours to 10 hours. The daily increase of 2hrs over an extended period will reduce productivity due to exhaustion or boredom. Therefore less production will occur in 4 days even with the same number of hours.
No commensurate drop in pay, I suppose??!! If not, it’s the equivalent to a 20% pay rise across the board. My husband says it’s a Bolshevik revolution by slow degrees, only this time with an utterly compliant king to make it look respectable. How long will they allow him to carry on, I wonder? I’ve paid £5 to see this article in full and be able to make comments!!
BTW, everyone should watch UK Column news live on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 1 pm (also available to watch after) to be kept up to speed on such organisations as Compass, Common Purpose, etc.
It’s important not to look at this simplistically. In those jobs which can run on a ‘crew’ system – e.g. train drivers, where it doesn’t matter which particular tube train you drive, or nursing where a patient can be cared for by different individuals who do the same task – duty rosters can accommodate work periods of different lengths. In other types of work which run on a case-work system – one person with sole responsibility for one particular package of service where continuity and consistency over a period of time is important – it isn’t so easy to deliver smooth and rapid service – ‘sorry, Fred’s not in til next Tuesday and I don’t know the background to your problem’.
There are other complications too – demarcation lines between tasks (hence the emphasis on multi skilling to improve flexibility) and problems with defining service quality or productivity. Public sector employers need to insist on changes in working practice as a condition of shorter working periods or other forms of flexibility or we shall end up paying more for less.
This gov’t is determined to destroy GB. Six weeks holiday per year. Looks like GB wilwill continue to be closed for business. No wonder so many young people have to leave GB for a proper job with a proper salary and a proper life.
Don’t you wish you had an Elon Musk and Vivek Varaswamy he,ping your incompetent gov’t make important decisions about the work week. Honestly folks, GB is going downhill so rapidly, even a kid in secondary school can see it.
Universal Basic Income to follow. This is money for doing nothing and will bankrupt us.
What a taxpayer-funded Quangoland we’ve become in our British ‘democracy’. Meanwhile the average voter still thinks that ‘democracy’ is about whether to vote for a lefty Starmerland or a slightly less lefty Sunakland.
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/take-me-to-your-experts ‘It would seem that our modern advanced societies are just stuck with their modern equivalent of Dickens’ Circumlocution Office. Stuck with both its dreary nannying state bureaucracy and its late-stage-capitalist blah blah.Nobody really has any idea how to run an advanced urban society without it. What could realistically be done about the general Kafkaesqueness of the interface between us as individuals and The System? You could vote maybe for a government Bureaucracy Czar charged with ruthlessly stripping away all unnecessary bits of it….but we all know how that would end.’