Four-day Week Trial

Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 2:43 pm on 25 January 2023.

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Photo of Mick Antoniw Mick Antoniw Labour 2:43, 25 January 2023

Can I thank the Member for raising this? I think it is really important that these ideas are raised within this Chamber and questions is an appropriate way to actually do that. It does remind me that the controversy suddenly when the suggestion was made that we could potentially move to a four-day working week—I think probably that controversy existed when we moved from a seven-day working week to a six-day working week, when we moved from six days to five days, et cetera. It was probably the same controversy when we talked about stopping children from having to work down the mines and so on.

What we're interested in is economic efficiency, economic productivity, but also the well-being of society, the well-being of the people who work in society, and how flexible working and different types of working can actually be more productive. I think that's why there have been so many pilots. I'm looking at the moment—. I know that, across Government, we are taking a close interest in the evidence around the shorter working week. We don't have legislative competence in employment legislation, but there are many areas where we can influence. We have, of course, the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and of course we have the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Bill coming through as well, which seek to influence well-being and ethical employment and issues like that.

But, there have been trials. I'm looking at some of the research around this. Scotland is looking at this closely at the moment. That is, I think, something of interest. North America has had trials. Iceland has had trials. Spain is doing a pilot. Australia is looking at a pilot. So, this isn't just something that has come out of the blue. There are progressive and modern governments all over the world that are looking at ways of better working, better for the people who work, but equally better for the economies as well. The Spanish pilot was launched in 2022, and that's expected to run for two years. So, this is something where we have to keep an open mind. We have to want to seek to make change where change will improve people's working conditions, and we have to look at the evidence from the pilots that are produced. I know that this is something that Welsh Government will be very interested in.