Is a 4-Day Work Week the Future for Australia?

An employee adjusts her face mask as she stands at an information desk at Chadstone The Fashion Capital in Melbourne, Australia, on Dec. 26, 2021. Diego Fedele/Getty Images

Commentary

“There is no such thing as a free lunch” is an almost iconic popular phrase.

I am reminded of this when reflecting on the current trend in many countries to introduce the four-day working week.

For example, on Nov. 21, 2022, Belgium implemented a law that enables willing employees to transition to a four-day working week. Trials in the United Kingdom, Spain and Iceland have been hailed as “extremely successful.”

The purpose of the trials are to let employers and employees consider the benefits and disadvantages of a shorter workweek. They do not provide a definitive answer as to whether it really benefits all employees and the wider society, however.

This is exemplified by the Belgian legislation, which aims to introduce flexibility in the labour market, which hopefully leads to a drop in unemployment.

Indeed, as only 71 out of 100 people in the age group of 20 to 64 are employed, the reform may help combat high unemployment.

Further, employees may embrace the switch for its assumed health benefits and better work-family balance.

People walk and ride along the beach at Brighton in Melbourne, Australia, on May 13, 2020. Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

In Australia, the decision of a number of companies to trial a four-day work week is, potentially, as ground-breaking as the eight-hour working day achieved by the Stonemasons in Melbourne in 1856.

This spread to other industries after the Commonwealth Arbitration Court approved a 40-hour, five-day working week for all Australians in January 1948.

Is It Too Good to Be True?

The premise behind the push is simple, shorter work weeks without lowering salaries while maintaining productivity.

It is, however, necessary to investigate the assumed effect of the reform.

Proponents argue it will improve the work-family balance of employees and result in greater happiness.

A young family at their home in the Eastern Suburbs in Sydney, Australia, on April 20, 2020. Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

But what about productivity?

Such a claim is clearly contestable. On a superficial level, the four-day working week could be implemented by workers working longer hours for four days, thereby maintaining productivity.

In that case, the change will merely condense the five-day working week into four days.

If so, it can be argued that the change does not result in an increase in the take-home pay of employees. Workers would only enjoy a 20 percent increase in their salaries if the four-day working week did not include increased working hours.

Cost of Transition

Regardless of how a four-day working week was to be implemented, it is certain that it would provide the impetus to effectively reduce the working time to just 30 hours.

This was recently achieved by the employees at Oxfam Australia, who now have the option of working 30 hours over a four-day working week.

Nevertheless, even if the five-day working week were to be condensed into four-days (involving more hours of work), maintenance of productivity is not guaranteed because it could be expected that a longer workday would tire an employer’s workforce.

This problem could be combated by not allowing employees to work on consecutive days but to spread their four work days over the course of week.

An employee works at the Multi Slide Industries manufacturing plant in Adelaide, Australia, on Aug. 12, 2013. Morne de Klerk/Getty Images

In Australia, the report of the Senate’s Select Committee on Work and Care, which considered the four-day working week, also recommended the adoption of a year of paid parental leave and the right to disconnect from work outside of official working hours.

The effect of these proposed workplace changes on productivity is, as yet, unknown.

The economic costs of the contemplated workplace changes, especially the four-day working week, may well be substantial.

In this context, former Liberal senator Eric Abetz, writing in The Epoch Times, reminded his readers that: “Even the most uninquisitive mind would realise that a supermarket confronted with this scenario must increase shelf prices or direct even more customers to the self-service checkouts, putting even more shop assistants out of work.”

The “there is no such thing as a free lunch” phrase and the current workplace debate are also reminiscent of another iconic statement, this time coming from former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. In 1971, he stated that “Life is not meant to be easy.”

The words missing from this phrase provide an uplifting message, which could potentially enliven the current debates on the benefits and disadvantages of the four-day working week.

They come from George Bernard Shaw’s “Back to Methusaleh” where a child is told that “Life is not meant to be easy, my child, but take courage—it can be delightful.”

The four-day working week, if implemented universally, will not be cost-free. But most employees will certainly regard it as a “delightful” reform.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.