I’ve got a better idea for the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which is demanding civil servants be allowed to work just four days a week for no loss of pay, claiming that a shorter working week is ‘essential for a happy and healthy life’. Why not put civil servants on a zero-day week? That would surely be even happier and healthier for them. It would certainly be happier and healthier for taxpayers.
Virtually no private business would have allowed employee numbers to get so out of control
It would be little wonder if the civil service can do in four days the work it used to do in five: its numbers have exploded in the past decade. In 2016 we had 2.9 million civil servants employed by central government; now we have 3.79 million. True, you can argue that we needed more administrators during the Brexit process and again during Covid, but both those things are over now.
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