To think 'Full time' should mean less hours?

Presumably any industries that require 24hr/7 days a week service would be staffed on a rota basis, just as it is currently. A 4 day working week doesn’t mean the service is closed to users on the other 3 days, just as the current 5 day working week model doesn’t mean the service is closed on the other 2 days.

Tell me what quiet quitting looks like in practice.
Im a teacher so I don’t think this option is available - apart from taking a lot of time off maybe (and plenty of teachers do that, so maybe it’s the equivalent).
Teachers HAVE actually had a pay rise before anyone jumps on me. It’s just that I am outside the main system (a very recent change) so not on teacher’s pay scale.

I had a job like this and I've never been so depressed. Now I have the opposite, and I'm stressed but that's preferable to being depressed.

Well, 37 hours doesn't apply to those jobs anyway so it's irrelevant. My onsite 'full time' is contracted to 48 hours, not 37 - but I get long holidays to counteract it.

I think this sounds like a lovely idea. Less work for the same pay - who wouldn't want that! But I don't think employers would go for it. And I couldn't be in favour of sonething that increases our use of AI.

I ‘Quietly Quit’ some months ago. Have used 4 of my 5 annual paid sick days (tbf I was unwell but previously would have pushed through) and plan to use the 5th before Christmas. I do no more than I have to, take every unpaid lunch (used to work through).

Yeah employers wouldn't accept it.
Sadly. Staff would be delighted I'm sure.

Whenever I didn’t get an appropriate pay rise I just worked less hard and/or looked for another job. I thought everyone did this? I’m not getting an effective pay cut and there being no consequences for my employer.

I think it's a great idea. We're told everyone is already using AI and that AI will reduce workloads. It should follow that we can work less. Especially as we're all getting a pay cut every year

I am sure you aren’t. But your proposal is to try to justify being so. Swearing at me does not make your argument stand up any more.
I understand many people work hard, and may feel they should earn more. During my working life I know I worked hard too. And our work area went years without any pay rises or promotions whatsoever.
At some point hours will reduce perhaps, and pay improve. But you will not get anyone to sanction an approach to work which is to work less for the money you presently are paid. That attitude is not helpful to society.
You make assumptions about a shorter week for the same money meaning everyone is happier. Or even environmentally friendly. I doubt any of that would happen at all.
Businesses would charge more for having to cram into four days what they did in five. Eg. Your bin collection. The number of bins needing collection would not reduce. But the vehicles to collect and personnel would be working longer to do so. Ditto your supermarket even. All sorts of places.
Sorry OP but it is wistful thinking.

Also, I would be careful of saying you can do in four days what you can do in five. Many will point and wonder if you should be paid for four days instead.

I voted YANBU as it’s a fair idea.
BUT, the NHS would fall apart if all the non-medics went from 5 to 3.5 days a week to reflect their wage loss since 2010 (medics have won pay rises through strikes).

With using AI your suggestion could definitely work. However, the more confident the company gets to AI’s use, the more they will make it do, and eventually many staff will be replaced by it completely.

I work in a small family run business and my techie DH is in his element getting the donkey work done through AI. It’s really improved our productivity and we’ll be able to expand the company now. However, we’re safe as it’s all family working there, no one will lose their job we’ll just benefit from being able to work less ourselves at some point without our wages being affected.

Big corporations and the public sector will just reduce their staff costs to increase profit.

This is essentially the argument for a 4 day work week. Studies have shown that going down to 4 days often doesn't result in any less output/productivity.

Unfortunately businesses have no incentive to do this, or improve working conditions in any way.

I worked with people like this. We had to work harder to make up for their laziness.

We really struggle to recruit and retain in my area as private sector pay far more and lots of local government perks like wfh are now in private sector too. Talking around £20,000 difference in pay.

Yes, and public sector get the great pensions - earn less now and have far more to spend in retirement. you can't have both!

DC1’s full time work is 9 days every fortnight, so every other weekend is 3 days.

Sorry but this is an incredibly ignorant take. There is an awful lot of research done on exactly this and how things would work. In many cases it would create more jobs, so practical things like your example of bin collections would still be done, but by more people each working fewer hours. Just because you haven't thought through solutions to these issues doesn't mean there aren't any.

And OP is absolutely not trying to justify being lazy. What exactly sounds lazy about making meals from scratch, exercising, and starting a side hustle? You sound like an incredibly jaded retiree. I'm sorry you had a difficult working life but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ever try to make things better.

Sounds great but for those o us struggling to get all the work done in a normal 5 day 37 h week , would this not just lead to a backlog of work? And my employer can't afford to take on any more staff meaning it wouldn't lead to job creation.

I work in a 24 hour service we couldn’t just not show up, we would have to employ more people which would cost more….

because it still costs to do that.

BIL’s company brought in a 9 day fortnight a couple of years ago and it’s made a huge difference to morale and staff retention. Their output actually went up after it.

Interestingly they’ve found that not having a fixed day off also worked better. They initially tried people having a set day, but find that a moving day (rotates through the week so one fortnight you have a Monday, the next one a Tuesday and so on) actually works better for people as it feels more like a bonus free day off.

How will that work for doctors/ nurses / teachers etc where hours are majorly busy and not enough to cover the work anyway?

Clearly it is not going to work for every sector.
It could work for some roles, others it wont.

I am not proud of it as I have always had a good work ethic, but I have done some version of this. Especially since my POE treated me like crap anyway. I had it drilled into me that you do NOT ring in sick, unless you're half dead but I rang in sick a couple of weeks ago just because I felt a bit knackered/under the weather.
They used to get 100% now they get roughly 30. I do the bare minimum.

@Foreverbear The majority of full time positions require work that is well above and beyond a 40 hour week.

I'm not lazy thanks. I work really fucking hard

You work really hard, but you're only working 37 hours a week? How did you come to that conclusion?

If people had the same salaries but more time (say 30 hours working week instead of 37), they could use the extra time to do a whole load of other things that would benefit society as a whole or save the individual money:

People do submit flexible working requests to reduce their working hours (like doing a 4 day week of 30 hours for example).

Why don't you just submit a flexible working request and say you want to work 30 hours across 4 days?

@IDontHateRainbows Sounds great but for those o us struggling to get all the work done in a normal 5 day 37 h week , would this not just lead to a backlog of work? And my employer can't afford to take on any more staff meaning it wouldn't lead to job creation.

They could afford to employ you for 37 hours and have you work more hours than that, but they're just greedy and they don't want to.

Your manager receives a performance-related bonus for cutting costs, such as getting staff to do work above and beyond their normal contracted hours.

I keep hearing the job market is terrible but for whom?

I don’t see a bad job market from where I am.