Four-day work week: ACTU to push shorter week | Australian Markets
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) will current a proposal advocating for lowered working hours, together with a four-day work week, at subsequent week’s Economic Reform Roundtable in Canberra.
This initiative goals to guarantee Australians gain from productiveness enhancements and technological advances, and say it’s “key to lifting living standards”.
Unions argue that a shorter working week is important for bettering workers’ high quality of life. They stress that such a discount shouldn’t include any loss of pay or circumstances, with protections masking penalty charges, additional time, and minimal staffing ranges.
For sectors the place a four-day week is impractical, unions recommend options similar to elevated rostered days off, prolonged annual go away, and redesigned rosters to improve predictability, security, and work-life stability.
Supporting their case, the ACTU cites latest peer-reviewed analysis revealed in Nature Human Behaviour displaying the advantages of a four-day work week, which embrace boosted efficiency, lowered burnout, and enhanced worker health and retention. This examine examined almost 2,900 workers throughout organisations in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, the UK, and the US.
Australian trials likewise help these findings. A 2023 examine from Swinburne University involving ten Australian corporations revealed that 70 per cent skilled greater productiveness during four-day week trials, with the remaining corporations sustaining earlier productiveness ranges.
The ACTU additional argued the nation’s sluggish productiveness growth, linking it to inadequate investment in capital, analysis, and people.
They cited analysis from Dr Jim Stanford’s evaluation from the Centre for Future Work, which exhibits a vital hole between productiveness and wage growth. It discovered if wages stored tempo with productiveness since 2000, average earnings could be roughly 18 per cent greater or about $350 more per week.
The Productivity Commission’s latest analysis notes that Australians are working file hours, however with out the complementary business investment essential to improve effectivity.
ACTU president Michele O’Neil is pushing the twin benefit of shorter hours, stating, “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.”
Ms O’Neil emphasised the union’s imaginative and prescient for equity amid technological change: “Unions want all Australians to benefit from higher productivity – not just those with money and power…”
“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.”
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