Tory Minister torpedo council's experiment with four day week.

[GusB]

I observe that many of the participants were in consultancy/ PR/ creatives etc. One chippy. The report is light/ silent on downsides- there must have been some- not all are continuing. Evidence from schools, hospitals, railways??

The number of businesses involved in the pilot was small and I was left wondering how things would work out for hourly-rated employees, rather than those who are salaried; a shorter week means that there's a corresponding deduction in pay. Then again, those who work on an hourly-rate basis tend to be the lowest paid anyway, so an uplift is probably necessary.

We had flexitime in the 1970s- I worked a nine-day fortnight in local government. People work better if trusted without close supervision. Happy workforce is an effective workforce. Life's short. Retrain slave-drivers. Wishing Lee Rowley MP well with the greasey pole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Rowley.

I had a friend who worked for the local council and she was always going on about flexitime and how it provided extra days off because she was able to go in early on some days and finish late on others. It's not exactly a new thing!

One thing I have noticed in this discussion is that some of the naysayers have either retired already or they're nearing that point in their lives. Perhaps there's a bit of jealousy going on?

I would ask those people who have been vehemently opposed to the 4-day week; if your boss offered you the chance to work one day less for the same remuneration, would you refuse on principle?

 

[Falcon1200]

Do we actually know how long they’re working on each of the 4 days, and how many hours they were doing previously on 5?

That actually is a good and valid question.

I don't know whether you're at the wind-up here or just simply unable to grasp the complexity of the topic at hand. I'll presume the latter, so allow me to shine some more light for you.

Thank you so much for (rather superciliously I have to say) 'shining some more light' on my utter ignorance. However something which you have clarified, for the first time I think in this topic, is the hours, rather than days, worked; Quite an important point, and working fewer days but for around the same number of hours is IMHO a Good Thing; During much of my career 12-hour Saturday and Sunday shifts were the norm, to give us more weekends off.

We don't need to imagine, we know. The evidence is in the 4 day week report.

I observe that many of the participants were in consultancy/ PR/ creatives etc. One chippy. The report is light/ silent on downsides- there must have been some- not all are continuing. Evidence from schools, hospitals, railways??

Indeed, and while it is stated that revenue was not affected, has customer satisfaction been measured and maintained? In particular, of course, among the Council Tax payers of Cambridgeshire?!!

A belief that local government employees should work themselves to death every hour of every day because it is MY COUNCIL TAX that pays them (and I tend to resent them getting anything above minimum wage, if that). N.b. Not my personal opinion.

If you are referring to my comments, I do not believe either that government employees should work themselves to death, or be paid the minimum wage.

 

[Richardr]

I observe that many of the participants were in consultancy/ PR/ creatives etc. One chippy. The report is light/ silent on downsides- there must have been some- not all are continuing. Evidence from schools, hospitals, railways??

With a central government that mandates that no one in the public sector can take part in such trials, then we won't get such evidence

 

[DarloRich]

Is this a 4 day week or staff working 4 days a week across 5 in that services operate for the same 5 days but the staff are spread out rather than everyone working Monday to Friday?

I know plenty of people who work 4 day week but work the hours of a 5 day week. it isn't hard or new and different. More flexible and more modern ways of working have been given a huge kick by the pandemic. The world of work has changed.

What we need to get away from is people parroting thier favoured Tory baw bag, GBeebies pratler, Daily Mail balloon or right wing social media clown and look at whether or not this works.

That is hard when you are conditioned by the above "blob" to consider everyone working in public service to be a lazy, scrounging, feckless idiot who is stealing your money! I would ask why Tories and thier media clients want you to think like this! Why do they want you working as you always have in a way that suits them rather than a way that suits you? Why do you fall for it?

Funny how Mogg can send passive aggressive notes to civil servants about working in the office but has time for a day at the cricket. One rule for them eh?

 

[yorksrob]

There's definitely a bit of a contradiction between the Government wanting everyone back in the office to support city centre economies, but railing against an additional day off which will give the population more opportunity to stimulate the economy.

 

[nlogax]

There's definitely a bit of a contradiction between the Government wanting everyone back in the office to support city centre economies, but railing against an additional day off which will give the population more opportunity to stimulate the economy.

This government continues to be an absolute basketcase of contradiction and hypocrisy. A government minister sticking their oar in is unwelcome but unsurprising, and I imagine the four day work week will be viewed more positively eighteen months from now.

 

[185]

....would you also claim that agency nursing are any less effective than the NHS fully employed ursing staff?

In our modern NHS, things are very different from before. Many NHS-trained regular nurses have quit, moved to ad-hoc staffing agency NHS 'P' (Ltd, Private Company 06704614, of Hemel Hemstead) and in some cases are paid almost double other workers, with even higher costs for the money that company takes costing the NHS about four times the cost of a regular nurse, so no, I say they are only +/-25% as effective as a regular nurse.

 

[WelshBluebird]

(*subject to some redistribution, as the business rate take in Westminster is a scale higher than that in, say, Hartlepool.)

The issue there is that there will have to be a lot more than just "some" redistribution given in general the councils with lower incomes from rates etc are the poorer areas that need more money spent on them.

What is wrong with it is that before the 4 day week was adopted, staff were working 5 days but apparently only managing 4 days worth of work!

Shock horror, human beings are not robots. They need time to relax and be human beings outside of work. If you work people too hard, you will hit diminishing returns where you get LESS work out of people than you would if you worked them less hard. That is exactly what we are seeing with the five day working week. We understood the same concept in terms of working hours per day well over a hundred years ago. This is no different.

 

[THC]

The issue there is that there will have to be a lot more than just "some" redistribution given in general the councils with lower incomes from rates etc are the poorer areas that need more money spent on them.

Indeed so. I could bore the bijaysus out of you on the issue of local government finance but couched it in simple terms upthread to avoid taking the debate down a rabbit hole.

THC

 

[sprunt]

Are these the same Tories that often clamour for deregulation and less state intervention?

The very same. The same ones who thought it was any of their business when some private companies came to agreements with their staff about how much of their working week should be spent in the office and how much could be worked from home.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

In our modern NHS, things are very different from before. Many NHS-trained regular nurses have quit, moved to ad-hoc staffing agency NHS 'P' (Ltd, Private Company 06704614, of Hemel Hemstead) and in some cases are paid almost double other workers, with even higher costs for the money that company takes costing the NHS about four times the cost of a regular nurse, so no, I say they are only +/-25% as effective as a regular nurse.

Yet again, financial understanding does not follow the ability reasoning. My contention in the postings that I have made upon this thread are solely concerned with the ability of agency staff to perform tasks specific to the role that they are brought in to do, not their remuneration. Your example above of agency nursing staff who had left the NHS to become agency nursing staff would still have the same skill and experience level that had when they were employed by the NHS.

If one were to look at the NHS employed staff, in financial terms, there are matters such as employer pension contributions and other financial overheads such as training costs to be borne in ind when making financial contributions. One point common to state employed staff such as teachers, nursing staff, police et al is the reasons why those state employed members chose to leave and become agency workers.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jul 2023 ==

The very same. The same ones who thought it was any of their business when some private companies came to agreements with their staff about how much of their working week should be spent in the office and how much could be worked from home.

Yet it was the same Conservative Party who have poured vast sums of finance to Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester to fund his aspirational re-regulation of "Bee Network branded" yellow liveried public transport. I take it Bee stands for Burnham in that respect, despite his view that the bee is a symbol of Manchester.

 

[sprunt]

Yet it was the same Conservative Party who have poured vast sums of finance to Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester to fund his aspirational re-regulation of "Bee branded" yellow liveried public transport.

How is that relevant to what I said?

I take it Bee stands for Burnham in that respect, despite his view that the bee is a symbol of Manchester.

Its not "his view" that the bee is a symbol of Manchester. The bee has been a symbol of Manchester since a coat of arms including seven bees was granted to the Borough of Manchester in 1842 although I'm sure those whose knees jerk whenever he does something would be able to conjure up a conspiracy theory that he was somehow involved in that event.

 

[185]

Its not "his view" that the bee is a symbol of Manchester. The bee has been a symbol of Manchester since a coat of arms including seven bees was granted to the Borough of Manchester in 1842 although I'm sure those whose knees jerk whenever he does something would be able to conjure up a conspiracy theory that he was somehow involved in that event.

Did I just read right that someone thought that our Manchester Bee from is merely a monogram of GM County's elected (67% majority) mayor?

As a county, choosing Burnham's policies, we eligible voters directly voted for those yellow buses all under one banner.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Did I just read right that someone thought that our Manchester Bee from is merely a monogram of GM County's elected (67% majority) mayor?

As a county, choosing Burnham's policies, we eligible voters directly voted for those yellow buses all under one banner.

Was that yellow-liveried colour scheme a specifically highlighted election item when the said election was held, as appears from the wording of the posting above?

It does see strange that the Bee wording referred to in terms of public transport was never a livery-featured item when Manchester Corporation ran buses in their red and white livery in days of yore and issued thick paper bus tickets headed MCTD which United fans jokingly said meant "Manchester City Two Down"...

 

[Mag_seven]

Can we ditch the discussion about the colour of buses in Manchester please - this thread is about South Cambridgeshire Council being asked by the government to drop a four day working week trial.

thanks