Opinion | The Saturday Debate: Is it time for the four-day work week?

When it comes to the issue of a four-day work week, the conversation begins and ends with a single question: on your deathbed, will you have wished you spent more time at work?

For the vast majority of Canadians the answer is probably no. Even the minority among us with well-paid, highly rewarding jobs with great benefits and fantastic colleagues would still prefer to spend more time with friends and family than punching the clock.

That we willingly hand over five-sevenths of the best years of our lives for so little in return has always struck me as a peculiar arrangement — like we’ve been conned and are too embarrassed to admit it — particularly so given that for over 40 years our productivity has far exceeded our wages.

We are increasingly expected to go into serious debt to secure advanced degrees just to get a fair chance at a good job, and once we have it we’re expected to work harder and harder, often to the mantra of “doing more with less” bled out by the automatons of human resources departments.

At a bare minimum, Canadian workers should demand a four-day week. And to be perfectly clear, I mean four eight-hour days with no reductions to salary, benefits or paid vacation, and absolutely no expectation of taking work home with you either.

Simply put, you deserve better, and current research indicates that shorter work weeks both increase worker well-being as well as productivity.

The idea of ​​the four-day work week is neither new nor radical. It was once considered to be the logical progression of an evolving society that was becoming more affluent and for which the standards of living were gradually improving.

This was not the wild-eyed fantasy of utopian philosophy majors either, but the conservative, pro-business thinking of none other than Richard Nixon, who argued in the mid-1950s that the economic gains made by a prosperous society should result in the average American working fewer hours and enjoying a fuller family life.

John Maynard Keynes, a far more sober intellect than Nixon, was arguing the same point nearly a century ago. It still makes sense that a hard-working population that propels one of the world’s leading economies should be appropriately rewarded, yet this has hardly been our experience.

In the last 40 years Canadian workers have watched their wages dwindle to the point where it now requires two generous incomes to maintain the middle-class lifestyle that one used to provide, and most of us cannot count on the benefits, pensions or social safety net we once took for granted. The oligarchs that run this country have taken a lot from us, it’s high time we take something back.

The pandemic’s sovereign death toll has forced many of us to take stock of our lives and reconsider that which we used to take for granted about our society. Most of us were unhappy with our jobs and working conditions “in the before time,” to say nothing of the widespread inequities once considered tolerable, and so it should therefore come as no surprise that we are living through a dynamic and sustained period of labor militancy, unionization drives, and the so-called “Great Resignation.” Make no mistake, there is no labor shortage, there is a good jobs shortage, and workers, collared both blue and white, are feeling empowered to fight for what they want.

For those among us who are privileged enough to be able to work from home throughout this pandemic, you likely already have an appreciation for the hours of your life you’ve gained back by not having to commute to work every day. If being able to work from home has improved your quality of life, imagine how much more fulfilling it might be if you regained an additional day.

There are those who would oppose such a measure, just as the elites of a century ago argued against the radical Bolshevik proposal of the five-day work week, or who argued against child labor laws.

Today, big business’s political lickspittles propose weakening child labor laws to address the so-called labor shortage. Let this sobering fact be a reminder that the corporate-political class will never willingly advocate for a better quality of life for the working classes, this we must do for ourselves. It is entirely reasonable to demand another day off, and right now is the time to do it.

The idea of ​​the four-day week is certainly in vogue. However, I believe our sights are aimed at the wrong target. Instead of obsessing over working time, I present a novel idea; let’s treat employees like adults and let them do their jobs in the time frames that work for them.

The pandemic has left us feeling stressed, anxious, and burnt out, and many have channeled the blame toward an easy target; the amount we work.

Yet this knee-jerk reaction won’t fix the problem. When forced to cram five days of work into four, we can expect to work longer, more stressful hours per day, with quality leisure, rest, and family time being forced to pay the deficit.

Over the past couple of years, cases of stress and anxiety have been on the rise. A new survey by the American Psychological Association has found that one-third of American adults have developed symptoms of anxiety or depression, and one British study suggests that those who work primarily from home are likely to be hit worst of all.

The four-day week has been heralded as the antidote. Many point to the success of Iceland’s four-day week trial, with reputable outlets like the BBC branding it an overwhelming success. Yet the media seemed to miss a crucial point; this was not an experiment in the four-day week, but the 36-hour week. Indeed, the report of the trial only mentions the four-day week twice.

Our current working structure is no accident. It has been centuries in the making, supported by figures such as Robert Owen and his iconic mantra of “Eight Hours’ Work, Eight Hours’ Rest, Eight Hours’ Recreation.” A new four-day structure might see that mantra changed to something more like “Eleven Hours’ Work, Rest if Possible, Forget Recreation.” Losing a day of work will mean we compress five days into four, and we have to ask whether this is really worth it.

The human brain does not like long hours. A study of labor has concluded that as we work longer, our productivity decreases, particularly for those working at a desk. Some have estimated that the human ability to truly focus is limited to between four to five hours per day. Coffee breaks, scrolling, and lunch may flesh that time out to eight hours. Yet expecting that to extend to, say, 10 hours feels like a potent time-wasting recipe.

We have to be mindful of what this may do to our work-home life. In fact, one study found that working too many hours per day is associated with work-family conflict and lower life satisfaction.

My own research at Imperial College established just how disjointed many employees found working from home as the barrier between work-home life becomes increasingly blurred. When we combine longer working hours with the modern phenomena of “zoom fatigue,” I believe that many may feel that the price of an extra weekend day is simply too high.

Ultimately, the pandemic has eroded that concept of a five-day week in favor of more flexibility. A study from Cornell has expanded on the importance of hours fitting the job and the worker. The study suggests that where job hours are not appropriate, well-being suffers. The main takeaway from the study, however, is not that employees need more or fewer hours; they needed to be treated like adults who can manage their own time.

Pushing a person with family responsibilities, who might prefer a particular routine with guaranteed clocking off times, into a four-day week could do more harm than good. Patty McCord has shared these observations from her time as chief talent officer at Netflix, putting the onus of an effective and healthy corporate culture onto the coupling of freedom and responsibility. Employees know their jobs, their duties outside of their jobs; they should be trusted to get their work done, rather than adhering to a “one size fits all” scheme.

The pandemic may change the world of work for the better, but that won’t be achieved through the four-day working week. Instead, the pandemic should be the moment we realized that employees are not programmable algorithms that can be tweaked for more productivity. Instead, they are adults who know themselves and their jobs better than anyone else. It’s time to abandon the working regiment and let employees get on with it.