Spencer, DA orcid.org/0000-0002-7803-6105 (2022) A Four-Day Working Week: its Role in a Politics of Work. The Political Quarterly, 93 (3). pp. 401-407. ISSN 0032-3179
Abstract
From a fringe idea with limited wider support, the goal of a four-day working week has moved into the spotlight in contemporary policy debates. Indeed, a growing number of businesses have agreed to pilot a four-day working week. This article examines what the turn to this goal means for a politics of work. It argues that its adoption by business interests can dilute its impacts, while its stress in some radical circles can distract from other pressing goals such as higher wages and improvement in work's quality. The article is sceptical that a four-day working week, as currently conceived, would necessarily transform work for the better. Building on a different politics, it proposes an alternative agenda that would allow for fewer work hours alongside higher quality work. The barriers to the realisation of this agenda reinforce the fact that radical change in society requires deeper institutional reform, including within workplaces.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. |
Keywords: | four-day working week, power relations at work, quality of work, work time reduction, post-work, workplace democracy |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Economics Division (LUBS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 13 Jul 2022 15:19 |
Last Modified: | 30 May 2023 22:36 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/1467-923X.13173 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:188714 |
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