Life

Australian workers led the way on the 38-hour week, but now that we are working more for less, with productivity slumping, calls are mounting for a four-day week. By Sean Scalmer.

The case for a four-day work week

A Sydney office block empty of workers.

Credit: iStock

The treasurer’s economic round table starting on August 19 will explore ways to arrest a worrying and longstanding slide in Australia’s productivity – measured, simply, as output per hour worked. While business has lobbied for reduced regulation and others have proposed changes to taxation, some unions have sought to broaden the debate.

Any discussion of productivity improvements, says Steve Murphy, of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), “needs to include how workers fairly share in it”. The “best and most logical way” to do so, he says, “is for workers to not have to work as many hours, and to move to a shorter working week”. On Wednesday the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) announced its support for a four-day week.

Murphy’s contention connects with a long lineage. Between the middle 1850s and the late 1940s, the productivity of the Australian economy greatly increased. In a related transformation, the Australian working week was also fundamentally reshaped. The weekly hours full-time employees spent at their jobs fell from about 60 hours to 40. An eight-hour day became a social norm. The modern weekend was born.

The increasing speed of these reforms, combined with the prospect of profound technological change, raised expectations for a further lightening of the burdens of labour. Famed British unionist Tom Mann suggested in 1903 that a six-hour day should be labour’s new priority. In a celebrated 1930 essay, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, John Maynard Keynes was still more hopeful, imagining a working day of only three hours.

As automation reshaped blue-collar employment in the late ’60s, strongly unionised employees in coalmines and on the waterfront secured a 35-hour week, and employees in the oil industry followed. A campaign by manufacturing unions in the early 1980s helped to make the 38-hour week a common standard. By that stage, Australian employees were world class at winning time away from work.

Since then, however, there has been a reversal. From the 1980s, standard full-time hours worked began to increase: to an average of 45 hours by 1994. Though falling back unevenly in the years following, they remain above the levels that prevailed four decades ago. Research from The Australia Institute in 2024 established that, on average, full-time employees in Australia worked just over four hours of unpaid overtime every week. Recent OECD examinations have found Australia consistently rates poorly for “work-life balance” – placing in the bottom third of 38 member countries.

Official measures of time in paid employment understate the social crisis. Many Australians piece together multiple jobs, each with their own rosters and complications. Casual employment and the gig economy demand that the prospective worker jumps to command, increasing both their anxiety and their uncertainty. Commuting times have lengthened and, for employees in large cities often poorly serviced by public transport, it takes longer to get to work than in most comparable countries.

Australian women are disproportionately burdened. As more have joined the paid workforce, the wearying duties of the household and of caring for others have not been more evenly shared with men. More than three times as many women as men undertake more than 30 hours of domestic work every week. Most men do only five hours or less. The overall picture is one of polarisation: a man is more likely to work full-time for long hours and to spend less time running a household; a woman is more likely to work part-time, and to carry the bulk of the domestic load. These unequal domestic arrangements shape broader inequalities of income and wealth.

The result is burnout. The University of Melbourne’s “State of the Future of Work” report from 2023 records that half of Australian workers providing care for others – overwhelmingly, women – say they are exhausted. Almost one third report that they find it difficult to concentrate in their jobs because of outside responsibilities. Nearly one in three also report that they have less time to get their work done.

Unsurprisingly, the concept of the four-day week has become more popular. Like the prospect of an eight-hour day to workers of the 19th century, its simplicity promises an alternative scale of values as much as a rearrangement of weekly routines. Its radicalism captures a desperate sentiment that things cannot go on as they are.

Though the private sector has, since the 1980s, led the charge to longer and more irregular hours of work, a few business leaders have bucked the trend. British-born, New Zealand-based entrepreneur and philanthropist Andrew Barnes helped to popularise the concept of a four-day week when he successfully tested it for his estate-planning firm, Perpetual Guardian. Barnes joined with fellow business leader Charlotte Lockhart to found the advocacy group 4 Day Week Global in 2019.

This organisation has helped to spearhead and publicise trials of new arrangements across six continents, with impressive results. Most recently, a study led by researchers from Boston College evaluated the impact of a four-day week across 141 organisations in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States – with reductions of hours ranging from one to eight and no cuts in pay. It found improvements in job satisfaction and mental and physical health. Other trials have found reduced absenteeism and increased productivity.

In Australia, several companies have tested a four-day week – Medibank being perhaps the best known – but there’s still resistance to widespread adoption. While private sector advocates note the potential for a shorter work week to lift profits, this can be achieved in other ways, including longer days, and may also be imperilled by reduced working hours.

Unions have attempted to take the lead. Several have begun securing trials of a four-day week in enterprise agreements, without sacrificing pay. Working through the Australian Services Union, employees won a four-day week trial at Oxfam. The Finance Sector Union has managed the same at financial services firm Insignia.

Other recent agreements negotiated by unions have won, instead of reduced hours, expanded annual leave combined with greater flexibility in the arrangement of weekly work. In addition to providing for a fifth week of annual leave, Bunnings and the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association have agreed to a pilot that allows employees to condense their 38 hours within four rather than five days. A similar proposal has been seriously advanced in bargaining with Woolworths.

If the energy of the union movement is increasingly evident, political reinforcement has been less obvious. The first Labor parties, formed in the 1890s, included an eight-hour day in their founding platforms, and state Labor governments in New South Wales and Queensland legislated a 48-, 44- and then 40-hour week over successive decades. But Labor has so far been unwilling to champion further reductions. Then party leader Bill Hayden opposed a 35-hour week in the early 1980s; no Labor leader has since attempted a new campaign.

The 2023 Senate Inquiry into Work and Care, led by Senator Barbara Pocock, recommended the Australian government trial a four-day week. Michele O’Neil, president of the ACTU, publicly supported the experiment. The recommendation was merely “noted” in the Australian government’s formal response. The ACTU plans to revive the issue at next week’s roundtable, despite the treasurer’s apparent reluctance to explore it.

The utopian vision of a four-day week is becoming clearer and better known. Its appeal is undoubted, and the benefits – for both wellbeing and productivity – are waiting to be reaped.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 16, 2025 as "The long weekend".

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