This is no doubt terribly naughty of us but the initial set of thoughts is that we don’t believe much of it:
Quantitative research team
Prof. Juliet Schor, Boston College
Professor Schor has been announcing, for decades, that mediaeval peasants had 70 days holiday a year because there were 70 Holy Days a year. We are therefore predisposed to be very cynical about any report which contains her thoughts on working hours. As with Greg Clark’s early monograph on feudal working hours which is also oft used - the problem being that he measured the work done on the demesne in lieu of cash rent, leaving out all of the work done on the peasants’ own land. The simplest observation to counter Professor Schor’s claim is that animal-owning peasants who take 70 days off a year rapidly become non-animal-owning peasants and are therefore dead.
We’re also less than taken by the claims of revenue maintenance. The claim is that revenue rose by 1.4% over the time of the trial. Inflation was also around 5% over that 6 month period. We take that to be a real decline in revenue, not a rise at all. Certainly, there is no mention in the report of an inflation adjustment to their figures.
Our real complaint though is not about such details. Rather, to draw evidence from a different experiment carried out over the same period, Elon Musk’s actions at Twitter. Reducing the workforce from 7,500 to 1,750 (or so) and still having Twitter ambling along as before. Clearly it is possible reduce labour input and maintain output. But how? At which point we’d inaccurately quote the Twitter programmer who said that the major change is that he now doesn’t go to four-hour meetings about which shade of blue the site should use but amuses himself by actually working on some programming.
Or, from the report:
Staff also told us about the significant preparation period before the pilot. As part of the lead-in, the brewers studied their brewing process closely, breaking down the tasks involved, running their phone timers in their pockets, searching for new efficiencies, and developing a new set of production targets. One brewer describes an atmosphere of excitement, solidarity and challenge around finding ways to reduce working time.
A phrase we heard a lot in our conversations with staff was ‘mucking in’. On days where not everyone is present, staff could be required to jump in on tasks that may have previously been outside their remit, helping with brewing, packaging, or picking up the phone. The staff we interviewed celebrated the sharing of skills and sense of collective effort this involved. The manager said ‘the whole team now does what the manager does’, by forecasting busy periods and identifying what needs attention. When we asked him whether he was worried about work becoming more intense, he said they were busier, but less stressed.
The interesting point being that there’s no requirement for a four-day week here. That sort of more efficient use of labour - a rise in labour productivity - is possible with a five-day week too. Which would lead to, instead of a 20% reduction in labour input, a 20% rise in output. Or, at least, could do so. Or even, a 20% reduction in the number of people employed over a five-day week and the availability of that now surplus to this task labour to go and solve some other human need or desire.
More efficient working is, after all, more efficient working. There’s nothing here at all which suggests that the extra day off is the driver of this greater efficiency. Attention to removing inefficiencies, yes, but that can be done without the reduction in labour hours.
We’re entirely fine with people organising their working hours as they wish. We are, after all, the liberals around here. But this report is being touted as proof that the shorter working week works. Which it isn’t, not at all. It is proof that not having four-hour meetings about the colour blue can increase labour productivity. So, let’s not have four-hour meetings about the colour blue - or their equivalents, endless mutterings about whatever corporate nonsense is fashionable this week. Go to work to actually work that is.
The report claims that the four-day week brings these efficiency benefits. Which it doesn’t - or at least the evidence presented doesn’t show that. What it does show is that a concentration upon labour productivity increases labour productivity which is a somewhat less earth-shattering finding.
It’s entirely true that such an increase in labour productivity could be taken as more leisure, just as it could be taken as greater output and so more material wealth to be shared across the society. From which we can derive the actual liberal solution. Leave people be to decide upon such things for themselves and that split between more leisure and more stuff will be taken by the individuals concerned, the societal outcome being emergent from those individual actions.
That is, whatever we do, don’t have new laws about it.