Sir Keir Starmer has rejected civil servants’ calls for for a four-day working week, hours after a minister stated: “We’re not living in the 1970s.”
Civil servants who’re members of the PCS union have been campaigning for a four-day working week and on Wednesday launched analysis they stated may save the federal government £21.4m a yr in a single division.
Nonetheless, Sir Keir Starmer’s official spokesman stated it’s “not government policy to support a four-day working week”.
“The civil service is working to deliver for working people day in, day out,” he added.
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The PCS referred to as the federal government’s response “knee-jerk” and “disappointing”, and stated ministers had been being close-minded.
Pensions minister Emma Reynolds was extra forthright in her response than Quantity 10, as she merely stated civil servants “won’t get one”, in reference to a four-day week.
Requested why not, she informed Occasions Radio: “Because we’re not living in the 1970s.”
Beneath Edward Heath’s Conservative authorities in 1973-1974, a three-day week was launched to preserve electrical energy amid main strikes involving coal miners and railway staff.
Ms Reynolds added that she didn’t consider a four-day week for Division for Surroundings, Meals and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) employees would save £21.4m a yr.
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Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman stated the federal government wouldn’t help a four-day week for civil servants. Pic: PA
PCS normal secretary Fran Heathcote stated: “The government’s knee-jerk response is disappointing, especially as they ignore the evidence in front of them that a four-day week can lead to real gains, including financial savings, for employers and workers.
“Enlightened companies are more and more adopting the four-day-week for his or her employees as a result of can see the clear advantages.
“Ministers should not close their minds just because the right-wing press has.”
“The world of work has changed and more progressive employers are looking at different ways of working,” she informed Occasions Radio.
Farmers reacted badly to the PCS DEFRA analysis after the federal government introduced they’d now not be exempt from all inheritance tax.
Steve Ridsdale, chairman of the British Farming Union, stated he was pissed off civil servants had been asking for a four-day week “when asking us to work our socks off to pay a tax bill”.
The PCS research, which noticed greater than 1,200 DEFRA employees interviewed, estimated employees turnover would scale back yearly by 57% in the event that they labored a four-day week, liberating up £21.4m a yr, which may rent a further 2,345 workers.
It stated the sum is roughly equal to the division’s flood defence finances for Northumbria, an space at excessive danger of flooding.
The research discovered illness absence may drop by 65%.
In February, it was revealed many of the UK corporations that took half on this planet’s largest-ever four-day working week trial had made the coverage everlasting.
Of the 61 organisations that took half within the six-month pilot in 2022, 54 (89%) had been nonetheless working the coverage a yr later.
