Would you like to be paid the same amount of money for working fewer hours? It sounds like it’s too good to be true. And at least when it comes to the public sector, it very definitely is.
At the Labour party conference, John McDonnell announced that the party would, over the course of the next decade, cut the average working week to 32 hours (from the current figure of 37.3 or 42.5, depending on which data you use). In other words, from five days down to four.
This policy, championed and welcomed by the trade unions, would have big implications for businesses. But it would also have a huge impact on the public sector.
On the face of it, you’d either need to hire 20 per cent more teachers, nurses, civil servants and so on. Or else ensure that those already working there used their working hours 25 per cent more productively, to make up the lost day.
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