Need another reason to support a four day week? Look no further than climate change

The longer we work, the worse our carbon footprint becomes. Working fewer days isn’t just about having more leisure time – it’s about saving the planet too

It seems like every week a new article appears promising the most effective ways to improve your work/life balance. The advice is usually as follows: “take on less”, “work smarter not harder”, “leave work at work”, “change the structure of your life”, and “limit time wasting activities and people”. Aside from offering the same predictably banal advice, these articles share another common theme: a belief that separating work and leisure is the sole concern of the individual. But as secure positions with stable hours become an increasingly rare privilege, and overtime a de facto part of most careers, “take on less” simply sounds like a cruel joke.

The truth is that work/life balance is not an issue of individual time management, but one of social policy, as Labour’s recent commitment to a four-day working week recognises. Appreciating the broken link between rising productivity and expanded free time, John McDonnell told the Labour Party Conference that “We should work to live, not live to work”, in a speech that committed the party to cutting the working week to four days, with no associated loss in pay.

While this may seem radical, it’s worth remembering that the length of the working week is not a natural fact, but a historical contingency born out of the struggles between workers and business. The weekend did not just appear one sunny April morning, but was secured by US unions and later exported to Europe. Since the 1980s – with the smashing of the unions and decreased productive investment, our working hours have been creeping up, despite the fact there has been no explicit shift in policy away from the 37.5-hour week. Indeed, the UK now endures some of the longest hours in the EU - on average 42.5, a fact emphasised by Lord Skidelsky’s recent report on work time reduction.

It hardly takes a genius to link this fact to the correlative rise in work-related stress, which over the twenty-first century has grown into a mental health crisis of epidemic proportions. Stress – and related conditions such as anxiety and depression, now account for the majority of days taken off work due to ill-health. If we had more time away from work, more time to recuperate and relax, we would not find ourselves in the position where we have to take time off simply to survive.

Thankfully, it appears this culture is set to change. The hard work of grassroots movements like the Labour 4-day week campaign and the think tank, Autonomy – of which I am an affiliate, has culminated in the prospect of a four-day week within a decade.

Yet, Labour are only codifying what is already best practise. The data marketing company, Normally, proudly declare on their website’s homepage “We work 4 days a week – every week”. Intrepid Camera, Lara Intimates, and Elektra Lighting have also recognised a four-day week not only benefits the worker but business too. Happier, healthier workers - with more free time for family and friends, are more productive – who would have guessed?

Beyond the immediate health benefits, a reduction in work time may go some way towards addressing the twin crises of our time: climate breakdown and technological automation. Studies show that the most carbon intensive countries are those with longer working hours, in part due to direct consumption of resources, but also the ecological costs associated with work-based travel. The catastrophe facing us requires an all-together more drastic reduction in hours spent devouring resources, but a four-day week at least offers some kind of start.

More obviously, a shorter working week shows that automation can be as much a promise as a threat to workers. Predictions suggest that as much as 57 percent of current jobs will disappear over the next twenty years, meaning we will have to work less. Under the current system, working less means less income, meaning less opportunities and – in the crudest sense - less chance of survival.

On a societal scale, this spells disaster: rising poverty, desperation and a turn to far-right politics. A reduction in working hours but with no loss of pay, however, brings the benefits of more free-time but without the catastrophic implications. In the end, this is a political decision – and one that Labour has realised is paramount to future stability.

Paradoxically, as our work culture approaches collapse, it threatens to overflow into all areas of life. Many of us, in a desperate effort to escape the rising tide of underemployment, spend our leisure time anxiously trying to boost our employability prospects over LinkedIn and Twitter. Our free time is filled with work towards jobs that increasingly don’t exist.

A more rational system would harness automation to place work at the service of leisure - an idea that haunts the writings of twentieth century economists. Most famously, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2020 technological advances would gift us 15-hour weeks. This now seems like an anachronism – the future as envisaged in a grainy 1960s sci-fi film. But a four-day week at least captures the sentiment of Keynes’ prediction: we should be working less.

At the next general election, Labour have given us a choice: do we want to spend our time perpetuating our personal and planetary suffering, no less through work that is increasingly pointless, or enjoy more free-time and better mental and physical health? By comparison, The Conservatives favour a no deal result that spells a bonfire of workers’ rights – the very regulations that stop us from working more.

The stakes of the next election are far bigger than Leave or Remain; they represent the two paths our economic future might take. One - a scorched earth, where the many work themselves to death for the few; the other - greater wellbeing, less suffering, and more free time for us all.