Is this four-day working week plan a good idea? Or is it a bad joke at workers’ expense?

Here‘s the BBC:

Full-time workers’ rights to ask for a four-day working week could be strengthened under government plans to increase flexible working.

Employees would still have to work their full hours to receive their full pay but could request to compress their contracted hours into a shorter working week, as first reported by the Daily Telegraph.

Since April, workers have already had the right to ask for flexible working as soon as they start a job but firms do not have to agree.

The four-day week being discussed would allow someone to work 10 hours a day for four days instead of working eight hours a day for five days.

Employees already have the right to request flexible working. Employers must deal with requests in a “reasonable manner” but can turn them down “if they have a good business reason for doing so”.

Earlier this year, Morrisons scrapped four-day working weeks for its head office staff following feedback. In order to make the four-day week work, staff had to work some Saturdays, which resulted in complaints and dissatisfaction.

In July, Asda shelved a four-day week trial after staff complained that their longer shifts were too demanding.

So it seems a four-day week brings problems of its own.

Or have employers merely been putting obstacles in the way – forcing people to work when it was not convenient when they could have hired others to work then instead, or asking people for too much during the longer working days?

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