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THE Communication Workers Union (CWU) has successfully tabled a motion to Labour conference that would push the party to fight for a four-day working week.
The postal workers and communications union will put forward the motion “A four-day week for a fairer, more sustainable society” to delegates meeting in Brighton next week.
The motion, which points out that Britain has “some of the worst public and statutory holiday entitlements” in Europe, says that Labour should campaign to achieve either a 32-hour gross week or a standard four-day working week within the next decade.
It notes that Labour has already pledged to introduce four new public holidays, but pushes for the party to “go beyond” its previous proposals.
It says that this would be a proper response to new technology and automation and would redress the current “intensification of work,” which has “not delivered benefits to workers.”
Included in the demands are that the change would not mean a loss of pay for workers and that sectoral collective bargaining would be guaranteed in workplaces.
A similar motion has also been put forward by the Labour 4 Day Week campaign, which calls for a recognition of the “growing consensus around reductions in working time” among trade unions and Labour MPs.
It also urges Labour to include a four day week with no loss of pay in the party’s next election manifesto.
The campaign publicly congratulated the CWU for its motion, which it says has “huge levels of ambition.”
