Full time work to be re-defined as 30 hours a week

The working week has reduced from 45 hours to 37.5 in the time I've been in the workforce - I entered in the early nineties. The unemployment rate has increased steadily throughout that time.

Can you answer the following questions for me?

1. Why would reducing the hours worked caused unemployment to go down when this clearly hasn't happened in this country within our recent history?

2. How would implementing this idea affect the decision makers at the big multinationals who choose which EU countries to set up business in?

3. Where does overtime fit in to this plan?

Wouldn't work. I work 60+ hrs per week, oh works 55 hrs per week. So 115hrs between us. If we only did 30 each we would loose 55 hrs a week of pay.

Living in central London I doubt many can afford 55 hrs less income a week

It's almost funny when people say one person works 37.5 and the other stays home but it's all so exhausting! Hmm really? Really?

Making full-time 30 hours a week does not improve equality and does not mean the economy contracts. Many would fill their spare time with additional jobs to make up the shortfall in household income or they'd opt to be self-employed. Tax credit claims would go through the roof. The gap between rich and poor would widen because giving poor people less opportunity to make a living does not mean the rich see their income reduced. There would be a short-term lift in employment rates as 1.2 people were required to do the work of 1. However, many of those extra people would be brought in from overseas as the local population works out that it's not worth going to work any more. The extra costs involved in recruitment would mean goods would cost more in the shops.

No-one has yet managed to stop any society being materialistic.

Ariel - I guess you're assuming the cost of living stays the same? If everyone worked fewer hours then the economy would contract and things like rents and house prices would go down so 6.50 an hour would go much further in real terms.

The wicked problem - which no one in govt has solved yet - is how to ensure that the shrinking pool of money is fairly distributed while the economy shrinks. The danger is that, as usual, the poor and vulnerable in society bear more than their fair share of the lost income.

30 hours???????? Don't be absurd. Say you were earning £6.50 an hour?

Well I like the idea as long as the 30 hours are over 4 days. In my ideal world both DP and I would work 4 days per week so we each had a day looking after the kids. But DP has always said (and I'm sure he's right) that going part-time harms your career and there is no need for both of us to do so. So I work 3 days and am almost always the one to take time off for doctor's appointments, sick children, sports day etc etc. My company recently said that anyone that wanted to reduce their hours to 80% (i.e. 4 day week) could do so automatically. But like others have said, they would have welcomed the saving but not reduced the workload.

I think there's a lot to be said for more regulation around working hours. The American system of long hours and very little paid holiday (ten days a year if you are lucky) is terrible for children and families generally. The French 35 hour week and longer paid holidays has got to be better in the long term for society.

To win the argument though on shorter working hours, you'd need to persuade people that the measure of success should shift from GDP (which ultimately is a failed system, in that it requires ever increasing, unsustainable growth) to GNH (gross national happiness). There are some great academic articles on GNH and I think Treasury is doing some work on how to start monitoring it too, so it's not pie in the sky stuff. The economic model has to change because what we've got now is fundamentally broken.

YABU. Not everyone's a parent. Not everyone is in a couple. Quite a few of us enjoy what we do for a living. Why should we limit everyone's earning potential in this restrictive way just so that some can sit about at home doing nothing?

EFA - I'm really struggling to understand this idea.

If you're talking about the forced sharing out of jobs, nobody can work more than 30 hours a week, etc etc, then .. oh, there's no argument here.

The uber rich will still be uber rich, and the poor will still be poor. The people in the middle will likely feel no different.

I don't understand what you're getting at, tbh...

So you want to put everyone on the same hourly rate as well? I don't see how this idea would work.

Per annum, I mean, not per hour.

In one of my past jobs full time staff worked a 32.5 hour week as standard. It was amazing. The pay wasn't significantly less than in other comparable organisations.

How would that make income distribution less extreme? Someone working 30 hours a week for £7 an hour will still be poorer than someone with an hourly rate of £200

(not that last bit - equality is obviously the way forward. This is not the way to do it)/

I think it's bollocks.

(sorry)

"Interestingly, so far it is only me who thinks this is a good idea!"
employers would think it is a good idea - pay the same amt of people less for the same amt of work!
govt would think its a good idea - pretend to create more jobs by not actually creating a single extra job or any growth whatsoever
can't imagine that anyone on a FT contract would like it though

By that I mean that I don't think that if all jobs were reduced to 30 hours, that it would create more jobs. It wouldn't.

I'm just failing to see how it would actually help anybody. In lots of households one person works more than the other, and their combined hours may well balance out to 30 hours each a week for paid work.

It would mean less in pension contributions, less money available for large purchases like a house or car (and yes, these may rectify themselves but it would take years!) It may also take away the option for one parent to stay at home while the other works.

Sorry, I don't like it.