THE ACT government is considering a four-day working week for Canberra’s public service.

A government Committee on Economy and Gender Economic Equality says the change could increase worker happiness, productivity and job commitment, with an inquiry report citing a range of research pointing towards the benefits.

For example, in 1926 Henry Ford, of Ford Automotive, became one of the first in the world to drop the working week from six days to five for factory workers. 

In turn, the company saw an increase in both productivity and profits, inspiring many other automotive manufacturers to do the same.

It was a similar story for cereal company Kellogg’s, whose factories saw a reduction in accidents by 41 per cent after introducing a six-hour work day.

Multiple countries are considering or implementing the change.

One 2015 study in Iceland, which carried out a trial program of a four-day working week found no reported drop in productivity.

And this year, Belgium passed laws making it one of the first countries in the world to introduce a four-day working week.

Belgian citizens have the choice of a normal five-day roster, or they can add two hours to four working days in order to score a three-day weekend, a model known as the “compressed workweek”.

However, the proposal in Canberra suggests a work-time reduction altogether, rather than a compression of working hours, and without any loss of pay.

The inquiry report says it could also prove beneficial in reshaping attitudes about gender roles.

According to the report, women are four times more likely than men to give up paid work to do unpaid care work. The report says a reduction in work time could promote greater equality and reframe the value of jobs that are traditionally regarded as “women’s work”.

The ACT public service has embraced the proposed change, saying in a submission to the government’s inquiry that it could make Canberra “one of the most progressive cities in the world”.

But while the benefits seem attractive, how feasible is a reduced working week?

Dr Bruce Baer Arnold, an associate professor of law at the University of Canberra, believes that such a change could cause major unequal disparities across different industries and sectors.

He says the government’s proposal doesn’t consider the lived experience of insecure workers and their families.

“Those working for a big hotel or Maccas or a coffee shop, they’re not there on long-term contracts, they don’t get the benefits associated with long-term contracts and it’s quite common for people in these environments to get a call to work on the weekend,” he says.

“The committee’s discussion paper does not engage with issues in contexts where these highly skilled but precarious workers are tacitly required to work longer, in other words in their own time and under greater scrutiny, for a chance of another short-term employment opportunity.

“Little of the theorisation offers a robust analysis of whether the productivity gains would indeed enable corporations to shift to that three-day weekend without reductions in remuneration, job reduction or increases in insecure employment.

“We could hope that all employers would play nicely, but it’s quite likely many of them will behave in ways that we would think are just wrong.”

Dr Arnold said the repercussions could extend to workers in the public sector, with around 23 per cent of the ACT public service currently insecurely employed.

“What we’ve seen increasingly is a casualisation of work. In the public service many people are now contractors, they are employed on a year-by-year basis,” he says.

“The paper appears to be premised on the notion that the reduction of work time for secure employees will result in productivity gains sufficient not to require additional staff, in other words, will not result in opportunities for secure employment of people who are currently insecure workers.”

Dr Arnold says that any realistic implementation of such a change that would mitigate these financial and social costs would require a coherent national approach.

“This is very much a feel-good proposal, it looks nice, but it’s under analysed,” he says.

“It is necessary to recognise that the Legislative Assembly has significantly weaker authority than the national government to reshape the working environment of people who are in secure and insecure employment, in particular through work time reduction.

“I think there are real questions about the proposal in absence of a real social agreement about overall working conditions.

“I suspect that for a lot of businesses in a lot of sectors it’s just not going to work and we might indeed be harming people rather than benefiting them. 

“We need a more meaningful public discussion.”