Calvert Jump, Robert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2967-512X and Stronge, Will (2019) Get Real: accurately costing a four day week in the public sector. Report. The Autonomy Institute, London, UK.

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Abstract

● Labour have proposed moving to a 32-hour week over the period of a decade, with no loss of pay.
• ● The Conservative Party and the Centre for Policy Studies estimate that this ‘four-day week’ would cost the public sector £17 billion annually.
• ● This estimate does not take into account various factors that would be at play in the event of a 32-hour week in the public sector, including a number of significant cost reductions that we can expect.
• ● On Autonomy’s calculations, taking into account tax contributions and the current costs to public services of overwork-related sickness across the economy, the net cost of a 32-hour week would be £3.55 billion on modest estimates and £2.85 billion on less conservative estimates.
• ● The higher estimate of £3.55 billion is less than one fifth of the figure that the Conservative Party and the Centre for Policy Studies have estimated. It is over 6 times less than the annual Department for Work and Pensions’ budget for housing benefit (£22.9 billion).
• ● The four-day week would therefore still require state expenditure but not nearly as much as the Centre for Policy Studies suggest. This cheap price tag is even more striking considering that in the process of the transition to shorter hours, the public sector would be creating over 500,000 new jobs, greatly improving job quality for millions of public sector staff as well as reducing the carbon footprint of the sector.

Item Type:	Monograph (Report)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	working hours
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > HF5601 Accounting H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Greenwich Business School Greenwich Business School > Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA) Journal of Economic Literature Classification > Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA) Greenwich Business School > School of Accounting, Finance and Economics
Last Modified:	18 Feb 2025 16:17
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/49760

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