We should make a claim for a 20% reduction in working hours retaining full pay and benefits. We should make this claim in all areas in public and economic life – but particularly in Enterprise Bargaining Agreement negotiations.
Since trade union victories in establishing the eight-hour working day and the weekend over a century ago, reductions in working hours for the working class have been only incremental. The 40 hour working week was adopted in 1947 and, in 1983, the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission introduced the 38 hour week, which is still the standard nearly 40 years later.
Despite massive technological innovation and productivity across the economy - including substantial mechanisation, automation and developments in information technology and communications – this has not corresponded with increased time to devote to areas of life outside the workplace.
The rate of exploitation of workers has massively increased since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s. Our wage rates have not corresponded with productivity increases. We work harder and smarter, yet we have no extra money and no extra time to show for it.
We should make a claim for a 20% reduction in working hours retaining full pay and benefits. We should make this claim in all areas in public and economic life – but particularly in Enterprise Bargaining Agreement negotiations.
A key fight for trade unionists has been to revitalise our movement and reconceptualise how we strategise and bargain for higher wages, better conditions and secure work. We look to rewrite industrial relations laws in favour of workers and secure state-led investment in industry policy.
A key aspect of our vision for the future must be that we want more time for ourselves outside of the workplace. There is a reason why the weekend and eight-hour day movement are such sacred parts of our movement’s history. Recreation and rest were never a given, they had to be fought for.
The same protests that come from bosses against a four-day week and benefits were made when the weekend was proposed. There is nothing new in their tired old arguments.
Over the next decade, we must take radical action to decarbonise our economic system to secure a safe climate future. We must switch from fossil fuels, make massive investments in renewables and engage in regenerative work to protect and restore the ecosystems upon which we depend.
Solving climate change is not just a technical fix, though - we must also consider that a sustainable system should involve us working less, with larger parts of our time and lives de-commodified outside the economic sphere.
The Four Day Week has the potential to be a substantially feminist proposal. The gender wage gap is significantly amplified after a woman has a child, due to an inequitable division of labour in parenting. Working mothers will have an extra eight hours to spend with their children while remaining on level footing with other workers.
Men will also have the same extra time to spend with their children and in the domestic sphere – which will support (as part of the broader feminist struggle) a reconfiguration of the existing inequitable division of labour to ensure that men take a fair share of parenting and domestic work.
The union movement will struggle unless we build in radical proposals like this into our claims and campaigns. Across the board, we are struggling just to secure wage increases above inflation. It’s noble work in difficult conditions, but we’ve got to start inspiring through a real vision for systemic transformation. We should adopt the Four Day Week as a component of that vision.
TAKE ACTION
The ACT Government is holding an inquiry into the future of the working week. You can make a submission here:
If you're a SEARCH member and would like to get involved in making a submission, send us an email at [email protected]
