To all those Labour MPs calling for a four-day week – whatever happened to growth?

A dozen rebel MPs are proposing an amendment to the Employment Rights Bill – they are well-intentioned but mistaken, writes John Rentoul

If a four-day week is such a good idea, it will happen, because employers will adopt it. Advocates claim that it makes workers more productive, but in that case why does it need an act of parliament to promote it?

The 12 Labour MPs (and one Green) who propose an amendment to the Employment Rights Bill are engaged in gesture politics, it would seem. It is a well-meaning gesture, aiming to improve working life for employees, but it is a mistaken one.

Some of the arguments for a four-day week are confused. Peter Dowd, the Labour MP who drafted the amendment, says it is needed because artificial intelligence will reduce employment – the latest version of the fear that robots will take our jobs that has haunted people since the industrial revolution.

Most recently, this kind of millenarianism took the form of advocating a universal basic income because automation would replace human work – yet recent decades have seen hardly any change in average weekly hours worked.

The amendment’s sponsors would be better off sticking to the argument that a four-day week would make us better off, but unless they genuinely believe that it is a magic productivity-enhancer that 99 per cent of Britain’s employers have somehow overlooked, they look as if they are arguing that shorter hours are more important than economic growth.

Unless the case for a four-day week is overwhelming, Labour MPs ought to be careful about contradicting their party’s supposedly single-minded focus on growth.

‘Given that four-day weeks are so rare in the private sector, Ellis and Ribeiro-Addy risk sounding as if they are advocating a cushy number for people employed by the taxpayer’ (Getty Images)

And the case is far from overwhelming. The 4 Day Week Foundation, a pressure group, says that 200 companies across the UK representing 5,000 workers have permanently reduced workers’ hours to 32 or less per week. But that is a tiny fraction of the economy, and the MPs who are pushing the amendment tend to make vague claims for the policy. A reduced working week “can have positive benefits for the workplace and for the wellbeing of workers”, says Bell Ribeiro-Addy, one of the Labour sponsors. But “can” is not good enough. She needs evidence that workers are more productive – and that the increase in productivity more than pays for the reduction in hours.

It was telling that Maya Ellis, another Labour MP supporting the amendment, gives the example of “public organisations”, claiming that a four-day week would result in an “increase in capacity we so desperately need to see in our public services”. Given that four-day weeks are so rare in the private sector, Ellis and Ribeiro-Addy risk sounding as if they are advocating a cushy number for people employed by the taxpayer.

It does not help that the best-known example of a four-day week is the deal secured by Aslef, the train drivers’ union, in what is in effect a public-sector industry. The union is now demanding the same for London tube drivers, in what is definitely the public sector.

That is why I thought it was unwise for Angela Rayner, the minister responsible for the Employment Rights Bill, to reverse the Conservative government’s objection to South Cambridgeshire district council moving to a four-day week. Of course, it is up to local councils to manage their employees as they see fit, subject to their accountability to local voters, but there is a danger that the scheme will be seen as a perk for public-sector workers only.

I think Rayner is political enough to see that danger, and so there is no chance that the amendment to her Employment Rights Bill will pass. But it still leaves her promoting a bill that will add significantly to burdens on employers. The government’s own impact assessment says that the additional costs of what the prime minister today boasted was the “biggest upgrade in workers’ rights in a generation” would be in the “low billions per year”.

We should be grateful that Rayner is unlikely to pursue some of the wilder dreams of labour market utopians, but she should look again at her Employment Rights Bill, which is already at odds with her government’s claim to put growth first.