The Australian Services Union is the first union to get a four-day work week in an enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA).
The four-day week is a global push to change long-entrenched working hours.
It might sound ludicrous when you first hear it, but that was also the community reaction to other new workplace concepts such as child labour bans, the five-day week and the eight-hour day.
The idea isn’t to compress the standard 38-hour work week into four nine-hour days, something recently floated by hardware giant Bunnings.
Instead, it seeks to cut down hours to a four-day, 32-hour work week, with no loss of pay.
Most use what’s called the “100:80:100” model. It tries to make workers work better, but in fewer hours, by getting employees and bosses to agree to 100 per cent of their previous pay, for 80 per cent of the work time, with a commitment to 100 per cent productivity.
Most of the companies that have started a four-day week have been smaller, with the idea at the instigation of a founder or chief executive.
The ASU’s role in negotiating the shift — and the other agreements they’re close to finalising — suggest the concept will soon shift to larger workforces.
A key date will be November, when large consumer goods company Unilever completes a year-long trial of a four-day week with 500 of its Australian employees.
Absenteeism has fallen 34 per cent, work stress dropped by 33 per cent and work/life conflict fell by 67 per cent.
Bring it on!