Why Labour’s four-day week plan could backfire

Employees will have the right to ask their employers to compress their hours into four days a week rather than five, but employers will not be forced to agree. Just what is the point of the government’s latest employment reform, as proposed by Baroness Smith of Malvern, the minister for skills? Surely employees already have the right to ask for a four-day week, and always have had. There is no law I know that prohibits an employee knocking on their boss’ door and asking for a four-day week, a day off to go to the races, to bring their pet gerbil into the office or, indeed, anything else. We have a legal system based on the principle that anything is legal unless it is specifically prohibited, so a reform to establish a right to be able to do something that is not actually unlawful is pretty pointless.

Unless, of course, the government doesn’t really mean the second bit – and that actually there will be some form of obligation on employers to agree to a four-day week.