Worker delight as four-day week spreads, with union agreements locking in expansion of scheme to new employers
ABC News
September 11 2023

Momentum.

That's the word union official Imogen Sturni uses as she describes the spread of the four-day week in industrial agreements she's negotiating with employers.   

"The Australian Services Union (ASU) was the first union to get a four-day work week in an enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA), which we're very excited about," she says.

Imogen Sturni
Imogen Sturni is negotiating more workplace agreements that include a four-day week or a trial of it.
Since then she'd inked one more deal, with "another five to 10 organisations currently in discussions" around whether the scheme will be a part of the agreements between employers and workers that detail pay and conditions.

"It's really exciting that we're seeing that momentum picking up in Australia".

Four-day what?
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 like child labour bans, the five-day week and the eight-hour day.

Eight Hour monument Melbourne
The Eight Hour Day Memorial sits on the edge of Melbourne's central business district and gives thanks to those who fought for shorter standard working hours.
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.

There are many models, including closing offices for a certain day each week or rotating teams so that the doors stay open.

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.

A government report recently called for agencies to begin trying the concept, and a trial in Australian businesses recently concluded with almost all (more than 95 per cent) continuing with the concept.

Maximum value
Anti-poverty agency Oxfam Australia signed the deal that the union negotiated on behalf of employees.   

Chief executive Lyn Morgain says with an organisation committed to human rights and feminist ideals, it made sense to look at what could drive a good culture at work.


Lyn Morgain is the chief executive of Oxfam Australia.
"There was already a live conversation around how people organise their work, how employers can best look after people as they undertake their work, and how we can best organise ourselves to ensure we're getting maximum value out of our work," she says.

But with the organisation reliant on donations, Ms Morgain had to be sure that the idea wouldn't reduce how efficient staff were.

"We take funds from the Australian public to support critical work overseas. So for us, the question of value was central.

"We needed to be confident that nothing we were considering was going to damage our ability to do that, and to do that as well as we can," she says.

Day design
A key criticism of the four-day week is that it "couldn't work where I work".

This criticism is correct on the surface.

But it ignores years of research about the need to redesign working patterns and tasks to improve productivity and get more done in a shorter time.

It's for this reason that most four-day weeks start with a period before the trial.

Some businesses have shut down email, slashed meetings or killed off certain tasks.

Two women and two men in a meeting. Some have laptops on the table in front of them.
Yay! A meeting. Workers in trials of four-day weeks have often voiced that time spent in meetings could be used more efficiently.(Unsplash: rawpixel)
At Oxfam Australia, the plan is being "co-designed", meaning bosses and workers sort out what wastes time and what brings value.

"That's setting what the productivity expectations are, how we measure quality, how we ensure people's health and wellbeing," Ms Morgain says.

"We anticipate that we'll see all the gains that other organisations have seen, but we want to make sure that whatever we settle on works for the colleagues that are doing the work".

Momentum building
Imogen Sturni is the secretary of the private sector branch of the ASU.

Constantly stepping in and out of multiple workplaces, she's seen a shift in how businesses and workers are treating the concept of work, hours and life.


With an extra day off, workers on four-day weeks have tended to complete tasks they'd normally try to squeeze into their lunch breaks or weekends.
"I guess we've had this concept of 'nine-to-five, Monday to Friday' for some time now," she says.

"Really, with COVID, though, I think we did see a bit of a reassessment around 'maybe there are better ways — or at least other ways — of doing things'."

Oxfam Australia has more than 100 employees, making it one of the larger employers undergoing a trial.