Bring in a four-day work week to beat Reform in next election, Labour told: 'There's no catch here'

It’s been a bleak few weeks of polling for Labour – but a four-day working week policy could help them turn things around. 

So says Peter Dowd, Labour MP for Bootle and the originator of a new amendment to the government’s Employment Rights Bill.

“[The four-day working week is] a potential vote-winner,” the backbencher told Big Issue, “because it would discernibly improve people’s lives.”

The next general election may be slated for 2029 – but Dowd’s party needs all the vote-winning policies it can drum up. Last week, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK overtook Labour in a national opinion survey for the first time, while a new Ipsos poll shows that nearly half (48%) of Brits think the government is doing badly at running the country.

• From a new UK pilot to union backing: The four-day working week has never been closer to reality
• The world of work is changing. Will 2025 be the tipping point for the four-day working week?
• Working from home isn’t ‘proper work’, ex-Asda boss says. Is flexible work really destroying Britain?

Labour was elected on a mandate for change. But the polls suggest a distinct pessimism amongst the electorate regarding its ability to deliver it. Only a little more than a quarter (27%) of Brits believe Labour’s rule will lead to positive change, while two in five Britons (40%) fear the Labour government will change Britain for the worse.

So what would change-for-the-better look like? “Actually improving people’s lives,” Keir Starmer promised during the election campaign. The four-day working week, Dowd says, could deliver some of this elusive improvement.

“It will improve people’s lives. It increases productivity, there’s research on that, but at the level of personal happiness: you’ll be working 32 hours and you’ll get the same pay,” he said. 

“Who would object? I certainly wouldn’t object to it, I suspect you wouldn’t object to it. Or, if you want to work five days, working a 40 hour week but you get a 20% pay rise. There’s no catch here.”

Dowd is leading a group of 13 Labour Party MPs – and one Green MP – to push for a shorter week to be included in the government’s flagship Employment Rights Bill.

Their proposed amendment – which will be voted on during a debate in the House of Commons – would commit the government to exploring a wider transition from a five-day working week to a four-day working week, with no impact on pay. If accepted, their pledge would see a new ’Working Time Council’ established to consult on the transition.

“Do I think the government are going to accept the amendment? No,” concedes Dowd. “But these debates have to start somewhere.”

“I don’t expect this all to be done in two years or three years. But change can happen – look at flexible working. And if we’re going to [win the next election], people have to see a discernible change in their circumstances… there are a lot of parts to that, [from] the NHS to clean streets, but work is a big one.”

What is the four-day working week? 

“Working nine to five,” Dolly Parton sings, “what a way to make a living.” 

For many of us, it’s an accurate depiction of the working week. Even for those with differing shift patterns, 40 hours is the threshold for ‘full time’ work. 

But it’s not always been the case. In the 19th century, industrial workers clocked in for up to 90 hours each week, sometimes working 15-hour days, six days a week.

Proponents of the shorter working week point out that work patterns have evolved in the past – and they can evolve again.

“The working week has remained unchanged for more than a century… meanwhile, there have been so many changes to how we work,” Dowd said. “Workers rarely see those benefits.”

Email, for example, allows a modern worker to send a message in a tenth of the time than a worker in the 1950s. But automation rarely translates into more leisure time for employees – indeed, Dowd says, things seem to have gotten harder. 

“Just look at the retirement age for women, it’s gone from 60 to 65. You’ve got a longer working life, why not have a shorter working week?” asks Dowd. “It’s a bit of a – well, not a quid pro-quo, but it’s a give and take approach.”

The shorter working week pattern – crucially, with no loss of pay – is gaining momentum in the UK. 

According to an Owl Labs survey of 2,000 UK workers in July last year, 6% of full-time workers – or around 1.5 million people – are already working the shortened week. And two-thirds of Brits believe that most people will enjoy four-day working weeks within half a decade, a recent survey by the Four Day Week Foundation has found.

Numerous trials have demonstrated the benefits of the model. Some 92% of 61 companies that trialled the model in 2022 made it permanent, citing improved employee wellbeing and productivity. 

Company revenue did not drop – in fact, it increased by an average of 1.4% for the 23 organisations able to provide data. New technology and automation means we can be just as productive in a shorter amount of time.

A shorter working week, Dowd says, does not threaten the government’s growth agenda. It “complements it”.

“The potential for growth is there because there’s better productivity,” he said. “You’re in this potentially virtuous circle of better working conditions, better retention, better recruitment growth, better productivity, etc, etc.”

But the reformed work pattern is not without its critics. 

The previous Conservative government was openly opposed to the idea. When South Cambridgeshire District Council trialed it, then-local government minister Lee Rowley urged them to “end your experiment immediately”, while Rishi Sunak argued that the council’s residents “deserved better.”

The right-wing press repeatedly mock flexible working as “not real work” – the Daily Mail described the government’s work bill as a “shirker’s charter”.

Dowd is unimpressed by this politicking. 

“You always get backlash to any positive change,” he said. “It happened with the minimum wage, people said, ‘Oh, it costs too much. Oh, there will be no private sector investment in the economy.’ And did that happen? Of course not.”

But in the midst of this escalating debate, Labour has retreated from its previous support for a shorter work week. The party’s 2019 manifesto promised a four-day work week, but this commitment was notably absent from the party’s 2024 policy platform. Starmer ruled out a four-day week for civil servants in 2023.

Nonetheless, supporters of the model hold out hope that party higher-ups may eventually back it. In 2023, now-deputy PM Angela Rayner voiced her support, telling a conference: “If you can deliver within a four-day working week, then why not?” 

Dowd himself thinks that the four-day week will eventually be the norm. In the midst of plummeting poll ratings, Labour should “get ahead of it”.

“Let’s get ahead of the curve on this,” he said. “What I’d say to the government, and to Angela, is let’s start the debate on it.”

However, there’s one group of workers he doesn’t think are heading for a four day week: MPs. 

“A member of parliament, we have 650 MPs and 650 different job descriptions, with constituency work,” he said. “So it’s a different job being a member of parliament. It’s not really a nine to five… so it’s not symmetrical.”

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