Unions to push for shorter working hours, including a four-day work week

Australians would benefit from a shorter working week – including a four-day model – under a proposal that unions will take to next week’s Economic Reform Roundtable.

The ACTU will argue that workers deserve to benefit from productivity gains and technological advances, and that reducing working hours is key to lifting living standards.

Unions will propose that Australia move towards a four-day work week where appropriate, and use sector-specific alternatives where it is not. Pay and conditions, including penalty rates, overtime and minimum staffing levels, would be protected to ensure a reduced work week doesn’t result in a loss of pay.

Sector-specific models for reducing working hours include adding more rostered days off, increasing annual leave, and redesigning rosters to provide increased predictability, security and work-life balance.

According to a peer-reviewed study recently published in Nature Human Behaviour, a four-day work week boosts performance, reduces burnout and improves employee health and retention. The study examined 2,896 employees across 141 organisations in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Trials in Australia and overseas have shown that well-planned 4-day week implementations with workers involved in the design of new workflows can deliver productivity benefits. One 2023 study conducted at Swinburne University of ten Australian companies trialling the four-day week resulted in productivity being higher at seventy per cent of the firms, and the same as pre-trial levels in the remaining thirty per cent.

Unions argue that Australia’s slow productivity growth is the result of a lack of investment by businesses in capital, research and people. 

Analysis by Dr Jim Stanford from the Centre for Future Work in his recent paper ‘Productivity in the Real World’ also shows the scale of the gap between productivity growth and wage growth. If real wages had grown at the same rate as productivity since 2000, average wages would be around 18 per cent higher – or about $350 per week – than they are today.

According to the Productivity Commission’s research paper ‘Productivity before and after COVID-19’, Australians have been working record-long hours, which has contributed to the productivity slowdown. The report notes that those additional hours have not been matched by business investment that would allow people to work more efficiently.

Quotes attributable to ACTU President, Michele O’Neil:  

“Shorter working hours are good for both workers and employers. They deliver improved productivity and allow working people to live happier, healthier and more balanced lives.

“Unions want all Australians to benefit from higher productivity – not just those with money and power.

“Productivity growth does not automatically translate to higher living standards. If that were the case over the past twenty-five years, the average worker today would be around $350 a week better off.

“For workers in some sectors, shorter working hours can be delivered through moving to a four-day work week. For other people, this could be achieved through other ways, such as more time off or fairer rosters.

“A fair go in the age of AI should be about lifting everyone’s living standards instead of just boosting corporate profits and executive bonuses.