‘Work Less, Make More’: Labour Party Introduces Plan For 4-Day Work Week

As Labour’s 2019 party conference started yesterday, the party’s leadership was busy selling their slate of far-left policies.

In addition to support for a ‘Green New Deal’ (not dissimilar to the one from the US) and the abolition of private schools, the Labour Party is pushing a plan for a four day work week. But don’t worry: workers will still earn the same amount of money, they’ll just need to work less for the money.

By Labour’s reasoning, since the link between increasing productivity and expanding free time has been broken, it’s time for the government to step in and set the trend right. After all, increasing automation was supposed to allow Britons to work less, not more.

But with the next general election expected in the coming months, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell pledged during a speech on Monday that Labour would implement the 32-hour-work-week within 10 years if votes deliver a majority.

McDonnell’s pledge stopped short of making a 32 hour week compulsory, saying that only “average” hours worked would be cut. But he insisted that lower in the number of hours worked by most Britons is the right course of policy: “millions are exhausted from overwork,” McDonnell said to the audience at Labour’s Party conference in Brighton. And that must end.

“As society got richer, we could spend fewer hours at work. But in recent decades progress has stalled,” McDonnell added. “People in our country today work some of the longest hours in Europe.”

That’s actually not true, according to official EU data, which found that Greeks put in the longest work weeks (at an average 42.3 hours per week), followed by Bulgaria and Poland. The only western European nation that made the top ten was Portugal.

Before the conference, a report commissioned by crossbench peer Robert Skidelsky found that working fewer hours would be good for Briton’s wellbeing but that “a rigid four-day week was not realistic or desirable.”

But Labour clearly can’t resist the headline: A 32 hour work week! With no loss in pay!

Unsurprisingly, McDonnell received a standing ovation when he finished his speech. But just wait until this crosses the pond.

Biden: I promise a 4 day work week
Harris: I promise a 3 day work week
Warren: I promise a 2 day work week
Bernie: I promise a 1 day work week
Yang: I will pay you to never work again https://t.co/dnx73yM9Tj

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 23, 2019