The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: It’s time to embrace a 4-day work week

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

COVID-19 presented a monumental shift in the way people work. Home offices replaced commutes and cubicles, ZOOM calls took over from conference rooms, and communication went from in person to over Slack. Some people believe now is the time to re-think other conventional work practises as well, specifically the five-day work week. Companies that have experimented with fewer workday hours showed an increase in productivity, better employee retention, higher recruitment of skilled workers, and overall happier staff. Shorter weeks, proponents of the 4-day work week argue, also promote gender equality by allowing mothers and caretakers more flexible hours to do their work. Companies do better when their staff are happier, rested, and live more balanced lifestyles. Others argue that trimming the work week without affecting the bottom line is a fantasy. Companies would require extraordinary gains in productivity to make up for lost hours, and access to services would decline. Certain public service professionals, like doctors or teachers, simply cannot do more work in less time, thereby requiring the government to hire more workers at great cost to the taxpayer. And finally, many hourly wage workers depend on the five-day work week to make ends meet. Awarding a long weekend to the laptop class while requiring everyone else to work 40 hours will deepen divisions in the labour market and exacerbate already existing inequalities.  Arguing for the motion is Andrew Barnes, founder of Perpetual Guardian and author of The 4 Day Week: How the Flexible Work Revolution Can Increase Productivity, Profitability and Well-being, and Create a Sustainable Future. Arguing against the motion is Julian Jessop, former Chief Economist at the Institute of Economic Affairs. QUOTES: ANDREW BARNES “A 4-day work week is good for business, it's good for our people, it's good for our countries, and it's good for our planet.” JULIAN JESSOP “The idea that almost everybody could expect to work four days rather than five and still get the same pay they did before is unrealistic.” Sources: Euronews, BBC, WGRZ-TV, KTLA The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail]. To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are options, and that's why we need to take this opportunity seriously. There's no way you can prevent global warming unless China is part of the solution. This is not normal male behavior. This is predatory behavior. We don't know how bad this bug is. We don't know what this bug does. All of that was thrown away in those eight minutes and 46 seconds, and that's the moment that I became an abolitionist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode we've provided. provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you, the

listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. It's time to embrace a four-day work week. With the coronavirus pandemic, forcing much of Europe back into a second lockdown, many employees are once again working from home. The government's chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Valence says there's no reason to change the working from home advice, despite the Prime Minister earlier this week, urging people to go back to their workplace if they can safely.

We know the pandemic changed the American workforce, and those changes continue. Employees are craving flexibility and companies are adapting. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard-Griffis. Well, COVID-19 has fundamentally transformed the way people work. Home offices, Zoom meetings, and Slack channels have become the norm for millions of workers around the globe. Now, some believe it's time to build on these innovations by adopting an even more profound revolution in our work-a-day lives, the four-day work week.

Here's California Representative Mark Takanako, who recently introduced legislation in Congress, calling for a reform of the five-day work week. What this bill does is it's responding to, I think, a deep reservoir of desire among Americans, and indeed, workers across the globe who believe they need a better work-life balance, They need to take care of their health better. They need to spend more time with their children. CEOs who have experimented with fewer workday hours point to an increase in productivity, better employee retention, higher recruitment of skilled workers, and overall happier employees.

Companies do better, they argue, when their staff are well-rested and have their work and personal lives in better balance with their lifestyles. Others argue that trimming the work with work with. without affecting the bottom line is a fantasy. Businesses would require extraordinary gains in productivity to make up for lost employee hours and access on the part of governments to services would decline. And cutting back hours could be detrimental to hourly wage earners who depend on the five-day 40-hour-plus work week to make ends meet.

Awarding a long weekend to the laptop class, critics argue, while requiring everyone else to work a regular work week, will deep, deepen divisions in society and exacerbate economic inequality. On this installment of the Monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be resolved. It's time to embrace a four-day workweek. Arguing for the motion is Andrew Barnes. He's the founder of New Zealand's largest corporate trustee company, Perpetual Guardian, where he implemented a four-day work week for his employees, and is the author of The Four-Day Workweek, how the flexible work revolution. can increase productivity, profitability, and well-being, and create a sustainable future.

Arguing against the motion is professional economist Julian Jessup. Julian is the former chief economist at the Institute of Economic Affairs in the United Kingdom, and the past chief global economist at the Independent Consultancy Capital Economics. Andrew, Julian, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thank you. Great to be here. Thank you. So looking forward to this debate of the many things that the pandemic has disrupted. I think we would all agree that work is close to the top of that list.

We've just gone through a, and since, a massive global experiment on disrupting the traditional work space, work life. We're all trying to figure this out as we contemplate a return to work may be very different in terms of structure, style, and approach than the work that we left when the pandemic began in the spring of 2020. So the opportunity to have a big picture debate with both of you on our resolution today, be it resolved. It's time to embrace a four-day work week is a privilege indeed. Andrew, you are arguing in favor of our motion today. So I'm going to put a couple minutes on the clock and turn the program over to you for your opening statement. Well, thank you.

I think the basic proposition that we have in the four-day week movement is that the way we work today isn't fit for purpose for the 21st century. And largely that's because the five-day week itself is a construct of only 100 years ago and indeed a construct of repetitive manufacturing industry brought in by Henry Ford. It is no longer appropriate for the information age. Now, one of the challenges that we have is we continue to think about time as a surrogate for productivity. And what we're arguing for is in fact, if you turn that round, if you say that the output that people derive from a working week is the key issue, then if they can produce the same or more output in four days rather than five, then that should be fine. We as employers should be able to embrace that. because not only does that mean that our businesses are more profitable and more productive,

it also means that our people have the ability to be the best they can be in work, as well as the best they can be outside of work. Now, that then moves on into impacting areas like addressing the imbalance in gender pay, addressing the imbalance in terms of care. it also potentially delivers things in the health sphere. One in four, one in five of our employees, any point in time have a stress or mental health issue. Working less would help that point. And then finally, not going into work in that form.

Taking a day off actually also is probably the most environmentally friendly thing that you could do. And so if we bring all that together, not only is it good for business, it's good for our people and it's good for our countries and it's good for our planet. Thank you, Andrew. Concise, focused opening statement, really appreciate your contributions off the top of this debate. It's now an opportunity to get the opposite view on our resolution today, arguing against the motion, be it resolved, it's time to embrace a four-day workweek is Julian Jessup. Julian, I'm going to turn the program over to you. Similarly, an opportunity

here to make your key points as we begin this debate. Well, thank you. First of all, opposing a four-day week sounds a bit like opposing motherhood or apple pie. And I think it's certainly the case that working fewer hours can make people happier and more productive. And if employers and staff agree that's best for them, then obviously I don't think anybody should stand in the way of that. But, and this is a really big butt, I think there are a number of problems with rolling this out across the whole economy. The first is simply that I think it's unrealistic. A four-day week would mean a reduction in the amount of work. And I think there's done for most people. And it would require an enormous increase in productivity if they're going

to add as much value and therefore expect the same pay and benefits. So I think you may be raising expectations that can't be met. There are also some specific threats to particular sectors. If you think about public services, for example, it's very hard for doctors to treat as many patients or teachers to teach as many students in four days as they can in five. So either service quality is going to go down or costs are going to have to go up or possibly some combination of the two. I'd also be worried about the impact on inequality. We obviously want the labour market to be as flexible as possible to give as many people the best opportunities that are available. But those most likely to benefit from a shorter working week are probably people like

professionals and managers and those whose jobs can be augmented by technology. There are lots of people who probably can't benefit from this. So people in low-paying customer-facing roles, for example, I think it would find it very hard for them to earn as much in four days as five. Finally, the timing isn't great. I mean, COVID has obviously shaken up the economy. It's shaken up the labour market and there are some silver linings from that in terms of rebooting the economy and productivity. But the short-term problem is a lack of labour. And if a lot of people did start working fewer hours, well, the global economy is still recovering from that shock. That could exacerbate those labor shortages and cause all sorts of problems for the economic recovery.

So I'm sympathetic to the idea that in many cases, a four-day week would make sense, but I still think that's probably the minority and now isn't necessarily the best time to press ahead with rolling it out across the whole economy. Thank you, Julian. Great opening statements from both of you. I love a debate where I'm now thoroughly confused as we go into rebuttals as to whether I'm pro and con. So, bravo, gentlemen.

Andrew, your opportunity now to come back on Julian's open. statement. What are the issues that you want to take exception with? Well, one of the key things here is that people always say it won't work in certain industries. And the reality is it does. Now, I'm not talking about theoreticals here. What I'm talking about is practical examples where companies, businesses, sectors around the world have been able to improve productivity as a consequence of implementing the four-day week. Now, one of the key ones that Juno referred to, for example, is looking at manufacturing what is not office-based. Well, the Metal Union in Germany has negotiated a four-day week on five days' pay for German car workers. In America, you have

school districts that went to a four-day week, primarily because they couldn't attract and retain teachers and they thought they could, found they could then attract those teachers and then found that educational standards went up. So the thing that has to be recognized here is that actually, A, it does work across multiple sectors. And what we are finding statistically, on average, in companies that implement the four-day week, wherever they are in the world, are seeing a 25 to 50% overall increase in productivity. And that is because we are measuring at the moment, we're viewing time as the surrogate for productivity.

And the reality is a lot of studies indicate that people are only truly productive for three hours a day. Change that equation, and you're therefore able to work less but deliver more productivity. Well, I'm both glad that you're giving us 40 minutes of your three hours, of productive output today. This is a privilege indeed. Thank you for that rebuttal, Andrew. Julian, your opportunity now to react to Andrew's opening statement or what you've just heard. Well, just on the many pilot studies, I'm a little bit skeptical about these for a number of reasons.

One is that they do seem to be often quite self-selecting. So they are industries that perhaps where there are big gains that can be made in terms of productivity. So you're pushing, if you like, against an open door. I'll be more interested in those, in the sense. studies of industries where, you know, there aren't such big gains of productivity to be made. And then I think we might see a bit more of the downside. One particular example that comes to mind is that there was a test done recently in Iceland with the civil service where apparently Icelandic civil servants were able to do at least 25% more work in a day if they're working four days a week rather than five. But if you look into the detail of that study, it did rather

suggest that that's telling you more about the inefficiency of the Icelandic public service to begin with rather than the gains that could be gained simply from working four days rather than five. So I am skeptical about these pilot studies. That said, of course, if companies want to experiment with it and they find out that it works for their particular industry, the particular business model, their staff, it suits them, then absolutely fine. But I suspect that if we rolled it out across the economy as a whole, it would be very difficult to achieve anywhere near the sort of 25% gains and hourly productivity that you'd need in order to justify people being paid the same for doing four days work rather than five. Thank you, Julian. Our debate today is, be it resolved. It's time

to embrace a four-day work week. My opportunity now to kind of join the conversation and think up some questions that are top of mind for listeners. And come to you first, Andrew. I think a lot of people hearing this program are wondering, well, what are the origins of the current five-day workweek? You mentioned Henry Ford. I think people would think, well, you know, we've done this for over a century now. there must have been something that was working. There must have been some understanding that we just didn't, you know, land on five days by happen chance and continue on five days by happen chance. I want to hear a bit more about your critique, possibly the origins of the five-day work week and why maybe you think, as you've tagged for us earlier, that this somehow is out of sync with our 21st century working lives. Well, I think let's go back.

I mean, at the time when Henry Ford implemented the five-day week, I'm sure there were a whole pile of grey-bearded, studious-looking men who were all saying, how dare you drop to five days? Our six-day week, which has been working brilliantly for 100 years, is perfectly adequate. But Henry Ford moved to five days. Now, of course, part of that is the genesis of the 12-hour day movement, the 10-hour day movement, the six-day movement, the eight-hour day movement.

each of those things was evolution throughout the 19th century. But Henry Ford brought it in not because necessarily he thought it was going to be better for his manufacturing business. He brought it in because he needed to give more free time to people to buy his product. And that, of course, is the Model T Ford. And so what he was looking to do was to give the working man more leisure time. And his thesis was if the working man had more leisure time, they would buy a car. Nothing to do with employment efficiency at all.

So, Julian, to come back to you on this, I mean, why perpetuate a system that now is over a century old that finds its origins in the primitive assembly and factory lines of, you know, Henry Ford's plants in Detroit, America? I mean, why not acknowledge that one of the key features of modernity is this incredible disruption of time and space. And why shouldn't the workplace be disrupted along with everything else? Well, no, I fully accept that it should be.

I think the question is, what direction does that change take you? Now, I think it should take you towards a far more flexible labor market where rather than thinking in terms of, say, a five-day week or four-day week or a six-day week, you do a mixture of things.

some people who I think a five-day week is probably still more appropriate, but perhaps working fewer hours. So, for example, if you've got family or other caring responsibilities, then perhaps working, say, 10 to 3, 5 days a week, fits around the school day rather better. If we think about the gig economy, there are probably lots of people in the gig economy on these sort of multiple short-term contracts or freelance work for whom it might make more sense to the same amount of work over six days, you know, a few hours here or a few hours there. So I'm absolutely in favor of more labor market flexibility, but arguably shifting from a sort of standard five-day week to a standard four-day week actually isn't improving flexibility, particularly if it's sort of one-size-fits-all

policy dictated for all sorts of different types of business. So, okay, this is good. We're moving this to big forward. So, Andrew, come back on that. I mean, you're just replacing one straight jacket with another straight jacket. It happens to be called a four-day workweek. So that sounds great, one last day. But it's still a kind of static, less responsive acknowledgement of, again, this profound disruption that we're all in the middle of. Well, it would be if that's what the four-day week movement stood for. And actually, it's not quite. Four-day week is a bit of a clickbait because people can understand it.

They can go, actually, I am working 80% of the time. We use this statement of 180-100, 100% pay. 80% time provided we get 100% productivity. So it's very clear. We're looking for the same levels of productivity. We're looking for a reduction in time. And this is where I actually agree with Julian. I mean, you can't just come in with a one size fits all.

So in my company that has been doing the four-day week or productivity policy since 2018, we have people who take a day off. We have people who take two afternoons off. And we have people, as Julian said, that come in, five days a week and work compressed hours. The key thing is it's the structure, the time off has got to be the time off that is important to them. And if you give somebody that time off, it's that incentive that then drives the changes of

behavior that then in turn drives improved productivity. So, Julian, that's the key point here, is that, yes, we're all becoming more flexible, adaptive, maybe more of us become gig workers than we'd like. but work is cannibalizing our lives. We all know this. We live this with these devices that are binging at us, buzzing all night, all weekend.

What Andrew's arguing for is a kind of return to some kind of separation. And you have to do that with a bit of formality and with some government involvement. Otherwise, we are all going to be electronically tethered to our work,

burned out, stressed out, dealing with mental illness, that's the future in a sense that your adaptive, flexible model, heralds. Well, I'm not convinced about that, obviously. I think there are a number of advantages of the sorts of flexibility that I'm outlining. Obviously, there are hard cases. If you look at any of the forms of flexibility, whether it's the, you know, some forms, the gig economy, we have something in the UK called zero hours contracts,

which are contracts that don't guarantee a fixed number of hours. of work or even any work at all. And some people are very much against those. And you can usually find a few people who are on those contracts who are unhappy about it. But the large majority of people who are taking advantage of this flexibility see enormous benefits from doing so. So, for example, you know, students who will be able to fit a few hours work around their studies or, or nurses who are doing what we call in the UK bank work where they are sort of available to work if there are opportunities, but they don't necessarily need to take work if it's offered to them. that provides enormous numbers of opportunities,

particularly for people who would otherwise be marginalised from the labour market. The alternative way that you could go, and I'm not suggesting that Andrew is advocating this, is a sort of very rigid four days a week model, which is simply five days a week condensed into four, with the idea that everybody has to take, for example, Friday off. Now, not obvious to me that would be an improvement on a situation where people can pick and choose far more freely

exactly what it is the sort of work that they would want to do. I think that's clearly in the interests of employees, but arguably also employers, allows them to match supply and demand more efficiently. It'll probably increase employment opportunities as well because if they know that they can top up labour when they need it through these flexible contracts, then they're going to be more jobs created.

So I recognise that this is disruptive and there will be some hard cases where people are not obviously better off as a result. But in general, I think flexibility is the way ahead, and that should be sort of bottom up led by employers and their staff, rather than any sort of big campaign to say four days a week rather than five or worse still, government imposing something from the top. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a 10 plus year library. of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts.

You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world, and you get a specially curated Friday weekly Monk Members Only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www.munkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. So, Andrew, I want to talk a little bit more about the productivity piece because one of the major assertions that you've put forward in your opening statement and throughout this debate is the idea of large scale and sweeping productivity gains.

I want to hear a little bit more of your rationale for that because I think economists, observers would say that one of the kind of hallmarks of advanced Western economies over the last decade or more, frankly, has been declining productivity, that our problem is on the other side. We have real risks here in terms of our collective wealth, our per capita incomes that come about as a result of this perpetual problem to rediscover the productivity that we witnessed in the 50s, 60s and the early parts of the post-war period. So let's hear a bit more of your case for why a four-day work week boosts productivity, in possibly, in your view, very dramatic ways?

Well, first of all, it's very important to say that this is a, the lack of productivity is often a real problem in the anglo sphere more than anything else. If you look across Europe, you will find countries, and certainly northern European countries, that often are viewed as some of the most productive countries in the world are actually working far fewer hours than you're seeing in either the United States or the United Kingdom. So that's reflecting the fact that, We are not as productive, arguably, as they are.

The question then is why. And there's interestingly that studies on this go back, the first one I've read is a British munitions factory in 1917, that dropped the working week and found, hey, presto, that productivity went up and quality of output went up. And one of the problems that we've got is that we assume that just because you work longer, you will be more productive. Now, there is study after study that indicates,

that is not the case. And in an information economy for the most part where creativity, empathy, and that can sway across both industries from hospitality through medicine all the way through into the information industries, that actually time to think, time to recharge, time to actually have good judgment, all of that will actually improve markedly productivity. And probably one of the best examples of this was Microsoft in Japan that introduced it and got a 39.9% improvement in productivity merely by restricting meetings to five people in a meeting and no meeting longer than half an hour. We waste a lot of time at work. What the four-day week does is it addresses that problem. So, Julian, let's hear your rebuttal on that because, you know, there's that old –

Maxim, I think it's Parsons Law, you know, work fills the time available. So why, why in not compressing the work week do we not eke out these productivity gains that Andrew is talking about and pointing to these specific examples precisely because we're not productive all the time? We look to work for many other things other than the productive utilization of our resources. We look to work for socialization, for intangibles that don't really get. to this productivity crisis, frankly, that we are facing in many Western developed economies. Well, again, there might be some points of agreement here. I think anybody who's worked in sort of professional role or as a manager will recognize that there is plenty of time wasted in

meetings. But that's only a particular type of work. If you were, for example, somebody working on a shop floor in a frontline nursing role or some of the sort of customer facing roles, like some bar work, for example, we probably don't spend a lot of time in meetings. So, you know, working a four-day week isn't going to allow you to do as much work as you would otherwise have done in five. I was slightly worried also of some of the statistics that you could band around him. I absolutely accept that people are likely to be more productive when they're working fewer hours, but they have to be an awful lot more productive. And, you know, the figure that I think we're setting on here is a gain of at least 25% in hourly productivity in order to

produce the same amount in four days as you are in five. And I'd still argue that's very hard to achieve. I'd also be very wary of, you know, pointing to countries where, you know, productivity is higher and where people are working fewer hours and necessarily, you know, saying that one has caused the other. It might simply be because, you know, productivity is higher for some other reason. So, for example, better levels of education or better levels of investment in a machine or in equipment or the types of jobs that people are doing. And it's that that allows people to earn the same while working fewer hours. It's not that the fewer hours and sales are necessarily making them so much more productive than what otherwise have been.

So, Andrew, respond to that. I mean, the picture your painting here is really accessible to a kind of this four-day work way is accessible and maybe would be enjoyed by, you know, the white-collar managerial class. But there's a lot of other people who depend on their livelihood and income in ways that Julian has just described that involve, yeah, being productive five days a week. Because at the end of that week, they want to realize a pay. paycheck, a financial payment that rewards them for that sustained productivity over a duration

in a period of time. So I'm curious, Andrew, but how you make this case for the four-day work week for everybody and how you can say to everybody, you're not going to end up being paid less, being less wealthy on a per capita basis across societies writ large to adopt four-day work weeks. Well, the start point is one of the start point is one of the first. the first things that people always ask is how do you measure productivity? Now my answer to that is, well, you're asking me how to measure productivity in your business? How are you measuring productivity? And the answer that comes back again and again, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, is that we are not measuring productivity, not productivity per hour, not productivity

per person. And as a consequence of that, we are using time as a surrogate. So that's point number one. Point number two is that a lot of studies have indicated that people are only truly productive for three hours a day. So you're right. Julian's are absolutely right. You need a big increase in productivity. But if you're only productive for three hours a day, you only need to find 45 minutes of additional productivity in each day and each eight hour a day to replace that lost day. And that's the point about this. The point is that we are not.

productive for every last minute, every last second of a working day. And if you can change behaviour, if you can change process, if you can change attitude, and if you can give people an incentive to get their jobs done, which is time off when they want, you find that this works right the way across all sectors, all industries. Because remember, when you come back to the guy at the bar. It's not how many people he serves. It's whether he serves you a more expensive drink than that cheap pint. If he can get you into a double whiskey with a rum chaser at the same time as he's got you a pint of beer, actually you don't care as a business owner. And it's understanding output, not activity that's the key point here. Julian, do you want to come back on those points?

That's a very interesting example. I was thinking, scribbling down lots of examples of people who basically are going to have to do a lot more work than three hours a day. So if you're a plumber or a doctor, for example, if you're a barista, to say that you're only productive for three hours a day, I think sort of begs the question of what do you think people are doing at other times? So what about somebody working on a till in a supermarket? There are lots of these typically sort of customer-facing roles where you're providing a sort of one-to-one service where it is very hard. to boost your productivity by as much as 25%. I think it is different in some other areas. We mentioned earlier the example of automation in the car industry. And that was the key point

that there were machines that allow people to produce more. Their sort of labour augmenting machines. In the past, we've had a situation where's like 90% of people work in agriculture because they didn't have the machinery that they needed to be more productive. And many of those people working in agriculture probably worked seven days a week, let alone five or six. But technology has allowed those jobs to change and people to move on to other higher value activities. But this has primarily been driven by technology, by sort of broader changes in the economy. It's not by people suddenly deciding to work four days rather than five. Things have arisen that have allowed them to be more productive. And I would be wary that you might be creating unrealistic

expectations that can't be met. I've seen a number of polls of people suggesting that's an 85, 86% of people would, you know, very happily work fewer hours for the same pay. Well, of course they would. I mean, who wouldn't? I'd like to work fewer hours for more pay if that were on the table as well. But I think you have to recognise that, you know, there are lots of businesses and particularly in areas like public services where that simply isn't possible. Will it be better to move to a more flexible model generally that may include, you know, shorter hours for some people, but more forms of flexibility for others. And I think we should be looking at all sorts of ways of improving the labor market flexibility rather than simply focusing on moving from five days to four.

The other issue I want to have both of you weigh in on is the other big trend in our workforce and in society at large. And it's the graying, the aging of many advanced economies around the world. And this growing and sometimes alarming. ratio of increasing numbers of elderly or retired people in society who require significant public subsidies vis-a-vis government for health care, for long-term care, and a shrinking working-age workforce that through taxation has to pay for those benefits, the needs of that that graying older society. So, Andrew, tell us a little bit how you think the four-day work rate, because I assume you do, plays into these dynamics and could be a productive and ameliorating force to address this big demographic shift that we're seeing in its profound economic consequences.

Well, I think it addresses two key issues, and that is that there is a large portion of our population that are not productive in the traditional sense because they are dealing with care responsibilities of ageing. parents or what have you. And often that's women. And if you look at, say, Ireland, for example, recent study there indicated that 85% of care responsibilities landed on women. One of the things we have to do if we are going to share that burden is it's all well and good to keep trying to pull women up. But if we don't push our guys out of the businesses, if we don't say to them, it's okay to take time, family time, take care responsibilities. If we don't create that environment, which you do create with a four-day week, you end up with a large portion of your society that are not being productive,

you also end up with these big problems. The four-day week itself, of course, by creating more time, will also in turn mean that the burden that lands on the government of having to put in place care to substitute for the care that used to come from family members means the government will pick that tab up. So I think there's both a social and an economic benefit attaching to society with reduced ours working. Thank you, Andrew. We are debating today the motion be it resolved. It's time to embrace a four-day work week. Julian, I want your analysis and insights here on this question of these big demographic shifts, the aging of our workforce.

the aging of people out of the workforce in large numbers. And unfortunately, for many Western developed countries, a challenge going forward of a smaller working age population that have to meet the costs, the social costs of a graying society. Well, first of all, of course, in a sense, it's a nice problem to have. It's because people are living longer and more active lives, that we do have these sort of demographic pressures on the labour force and on the public finances because in particular the healthcare costs that that involves. So it's a nice problem to have.

I would accept that maybe a four-day week could be part of the solution to this, because one of the things that we presumably want people to do is to work longer, so to retire later. And I think for a lot of people moving to a shorter working week as they get older might be an attractive compromise between the sort of two extremes of continuing to work five. days a week or not working at all. So shorter working week could play a part there. But I think it's only one of a number of potential solutions. I mean, it's interesting that a lot of people who now participate in the gig economy in the UK are often older people who might otherwise have retired completely, but can now pick up, you know, 10, 20 hours work a week doing whatever it might

be, you know, driving taxes or any other sort of things that you can do working in shops on a part-time basis. So I think there are lots of ways that a more flexible labour market can encourage people to work longer and for other people to have the flexibility to take on additional caring responsibilities. And I think I mentioned this example earlier, but from the point of view of somebody who has to maybe take a child to school and pick them up afterwards, assuming that that child is going to school five days a week, then it makes sense for the parent to work five days a week as well, but perhaps between, say, the hours of 10 and 3. Now, that requires. requires a lot more flexibility, perhaps, on the part of the employer. But what we need to get away

from is sort of, you know, one size fits all model. And if it suits some people to work five days a week, but fewer hours, then that's great. Other people, four days a week, perhaps. Other people, perhaps six days a week, but only a few hours every day. So the flexibility is the key. And I think that will help contribute to solving the challenges of an aging population, because it'll encourage people to work longer and retire later than it would otherwise have done. One final question for you both before we go to closing statements. Andrew, you know that that old adage that, you know, there's the world as we wanted and then the world as we see it or we have it. And in our society, in 21st century Western economies, in many ways capital is power.

To what extent do you think that capital, employers, the people who are at the commanding heights of the economy are in any way receptive? to this idea because right now it seems that there is a strong commitment, a strong consensus amongst the capital owners that Fordism worked, it's worked for the last century, it's going to work in this century, we are not radically uprooting and changing our workforces and how people go about their jobs. We're perfectly happy with the status quo. Well, I think the reality is the great resignation that's going on in the United States is an indication that that's no longer the case. And you will have seen that Tim Cook said, you know, this is the way we're all going to go back to work flexibly at Apple.

And the workforce said, thanks very much, but no, it's not. And so because we now have pressure on attracting and retaining staff, we actually have to listen to the employees a lot more than we did before. And so I would put this a different way around. I would say that, you know, I did this as a business owner. I didn't do this for work-life balance. I did it because I wanted to test an assumption about an improvement in productivity in my business. And that wasn't just productivity. It was about attracting and retaining the best staff, which often, for example, in low-paid jobs in the hospitality industry or in supermarkets,

The big cost is not the person on the checkout. It's the fact that they have to keep retraining people on the checkout and recruiting new people on the checkout because the staff will even go and do something else. So when you start to look at this and say, actually, if we are going to change the model for the 21st century, we've got to find a way that actually enables us as business people to actually have a more robust model.

And then finally, think about COVID. COVID is like the ultimate four-day week when suddenly you have an employee comes in, test positive, and half your workforce have to go home. How do you make your company more resilient for that? Well, I can tell you that in the New Zealand workforce, all but 200,000 people were taking government subsidies because their profitability are dropped. My company, two months of record profits and one month when it missed a record profits by $27,000. because working flexibly through a four-day week structure made us far more resilient. We have to rethink those models. It's good business to rethink those models. Thank you, Andrew.

Let's go to closing statements, gentlemen. We've been debating today the motion, be it resolved, it's time to embrace a four-day work week. Julian, you've been arguing against the motion as per debate convention. We're going to ask for your closing statement. First, what are the few key points? the last rebuttals that you'd like to make of Andrew's arguments, give those to us now? Well, first of all, I'm 100% in favor of flexible labor markets. And if there are people who can and want to work for four days rather than five,

then, of course, they should be free to do so. But my problem here is, you know, what is the market failure that prevents this from happening already? You know, why aren't more businesses embracing the four-day week? We might think that bosses perhaps are evil, but are they stupid? are they really not seeing the opportunities here for big gains? I think the reality is that there are still lots of businesses where a four-day week wouldn't be practical, that you wouldn't get the large gains in productivity that you need,

especially in areas like public services. I'm also concerned about raising unrealistic expectations. I don't think people should promise what they cannot deliver. And the idea that almost everybody could expect to work four days rather than five and still get the same pay they did before, I think, frankly, is still unrealistic. Thank you so much. Consice focus to the point. We always appreciate that at the Monk debates. Okay, Andrew, you've been arguing in favor of our motion today, be it resolved, it's time to embrace a four-day workweek.

We're going to give you the last word in this debate. Well, thank you. Look, it comes down that over time, businesses have become far and more productive than they were before, and that as a consequence of changes in technology. that has not necessarily been shared with the employees. And one of the problems, therefore, is that a way that we work is still stuck back in the 21st century. It's still stuck in an old style model. Where I agree with Julian is it needs to be a flexible approach. But the reality is there is always a better way to do things. there is always a better way to work.

And the people who argue against the four-day week are saying that the way we work today is the pinnacle of human achievement. And there is nothing better. And I believe that is fundamentally wrong. Well, Andrew, Julian, thank you for such a far-reaching informative debate. I feel like I've learned a lot. I'm still pretty undecided. So I'm going to have to reach out after this podcast to our monk members to see where they come down on this conversation.

This, though, will be an issue, I'm sure, that we're going to continue to debate in the months and years to come. And I want to thank you both for your civility, your substance, the rigor and the analysis that you've brought to our conversation today. So on behalf of the monk debates community, Andrew Julian, thank you so much for coming on the program. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Andrew and Julian. They certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard,

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