Employees will have the right to ask their employers to compress their hours into four days a week rather than five, but employers will not be forced to agree. Just what is the point of the government’s latest employment reform, as proposed by Baroness Smith of Malvern, the minister for skills? Surely employees already have the right to ask for a four-day week, and always have had. There is no law I know that prohibits an employee knocking on their boss’ door and asking for a four-day week, a day off to go to the races, to bring their pet gerbil into the office or, indeed, anything else. We have a legal system based on the principle that anything is legal unless it is specifically prohibited, so a reform to establish a right to be able to do something that is not actually unlawful is pretty pointless.
Unless, of course, the government doesn’t really mean the second bit – and that actually there will be some form of obligation on employers to agree to a four-day week. We are being promised the details in a bill which will be published in October, but no-one should be surprised if the small print doesn’t lay down some conditions before an employer is able to refuse to offer a four-day week. Maybe they will have to prove that a four-day week is impractical, and to present an employment tribunal with evidence to that effect. One of two things is going to be true: either the proposals will end up placing yet another burden on businesses – or they will be totally meaningless.
We can at least be grateful that the government’s proposal is for a four-day week of ‘compressed hours’ rather that what the vociferous four-day week campaign has been demanding for years – which would entail an overall reduction in working hours, based on the somewhat dodgy assumption that if people work fewer hours they magically become so much more productive that they achieve just as much as they did before. The example given by Baroness Smith – the former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – is someone working ten hours a day four days a week rather than eight hours a day five days a week.
Maybe some people work better that way – I wouldn’t presume to be able to know how every employee in every business in Britain functions. But Baroness Smith appears to have no such hesitation. ‘We think that flexible working is actually good for productivity,’ she said yesterday. Needless to say, no evidence was offered to back up this assertion. Why not leave it to business leaders and their employees to work out between themselves how best they might function?
Keir Starmer came to office promising to concentrate on increasing economic growth. But it is quite clear that the government’s mind is really focused elsewhere: on promoting more pleasant lifestyles for workers. The two things – higher productivity and better working conditions – are not mutually exclusive, of course, as you might well expect happier workers to be more productive. But when you have unions demanding ever higher pay for ever shorter hours, together with the right to refuse any change in working conditions they do not like, you do not have a recipe for rising output.
Every economic reform suggested by this government so far appears to have its roots in the union demands. Let’s give the unions want they want, and try to reassure business that it won’t be destructive to their interests – that is the modus operandi of this government. We await with interest any initiative which has employers’ interests at its heart.
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