The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) proposed a shorter working week — including the possibility of a four-day model — to the federal Labor government’s Economic Reform Roundtable in Canberra, over August 19–21.
The ACTU has urged a national move towards a four-day workweek where it can be applied, while introducing sector-specific alternatives in industries where different arrangements are more appropriate.
The ACTU stressed that pay and conditions — including penalty rates, overtime and minimum staffing levels — must be protected so that workers are not forced to sacrifice wages for shorter hours.
The ACTU suggested sector-specific options for reducing working hours, including more rostered days off, longer annual leave entitlements and redesigned rosters.
“Unions want all Australians to benefit from higher productivity — not just those with money and power,” ACTU president Michele O’Neil said. “Productivity growth does not automatically translate to higher living standards.
“A fair go in the age of AI should be about lifting everyone’s living standards instead of just boosting corporate profits and executive bonuses.”
Peter Boyle, a regular Green Left writer and member of the Socialist Alliance, told GL that it was positive the ACTU had raised the idea of a shorter working week at Labor’s roundtable, because it poses the question: should productivity gains benefit all of society, or just the capitalist class?
“If greater productivity is really to serve society, then the benefits need to be shared with workers in the form of shorter hours with no loss of pay, alongside real wage rises,” Boyle said.
Analysis by Dr Jim Stanford from The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work highlights the stark gap between productivity growth and wage growth. In his recent report, Productivity in the Real World, Stanford calculated that if real wages had kept pace with productivity since 2000, the average worker would now be earning about 18% more — about $350 a week.
Lessons from history
The history of the struggle for shorter working hours in Australia is instructive. The country was the first to achieve an eight-hour day, won first by sections of the building trades in Naarm/Melbourne in 1855.
James Vassilopoulos wrote in GL in 1998 that “in the 1850s, the 12- or 10-hour day was not uncommon. But the gold rushes, an upturn in the economy and the demand for labour strengthened the bargaining position of workers.”
Construction workers, such as the stonemasons, struck successfully for a six-day workweek and “eight hours to work, eight hours to play, eight hours to sleep and eight bob a day”. That slogan became the rallying cry of the Eight Hours Movement.
“Other unions like the plasterers and the carpenters soon followed,” Vassilopoulos wrote. “The fight for an eight-hour day was not just an industrial movement, but also a political one.
Large rallies and public meetings eventually forced all building employers to concede the eight-hour day. By the 1890s, the eight-hour day was enforced in most Australian colonies, although other industries took longer to secure it.
The struggle for a shorter workweek continued in Australia throughout the 20th century.
“The campaign for a 35-hour week with no loss in pay was catapulted into prominence by the August 1979 Union Carbide strike and occupation at Altona, Victoria,” Vassilopoulos wrote. “The workers began their campaign with overtime bans.”
To neutralise the company’s attempts to bring in scabs, workers occupied the plant for 51 days.
The metalworkers and other unions continued the battle for years, holding mass meetings and strikes. Eventually, in December 1981, metalworkers voted — at the recommendation of the union leadership — to accept a 38-hour week, which soon became the standard across industries.
Precarity
Since then, part-time, casual and insecure work have become widespread, reducing the average working week. According to the International Labour Organisation, Australians now work an average of about 32 hours per week — slightly fewer than workers in Canada and New Zealand. However, the apparent reduction disguises the reality that while productivity has continued to rise, the share going to wages has fallen, with profits claiming the lion’s share.
“Since the 1970s, productivity increases have gone almost entirely into profits while real wages have stagnated,” Boyle said. “Many workers are now working longer hours, and a record number are forced to juggle multiple jobs.”
This helps explain the strong public support for a shorter working week. A Resolve Political Monitor poll reported by the Sydney Morning Herald on August 20 found that 66% of respondents favoured a four-day week on the same pay, while just 13% were opposed.
However, the way the question was framed — asking if people would accept the same pay for fewer days if the same amount of work had to be done — points to the danger of speed-ups and increased work pressure if bosses use the reform to squeeze more out of workers.
“The trade union movement should not be offering trade-offs in working conditions, or promising a higher intensity of work, in return for a shorter working week,” Boyle said.
Boyle added that business claims about wanting higher productivity are disingenuous, because “the rate of productivity increases has slowed primarily because big business has invested less in new machinery and technology”.
“They can make more money, with the help of lucrative tax concessions, speculating in the housing and finance markets.”
“The bosses are pretending they are seeking greater productivity through this roundtable,” Boyle said. “But what they really want is more public subsidies, tax concessions and weaker environmental and building standards — and Labor seems set on giving them what they want.”
“The ACTU should not legitimise these self-serving demands.”
History shows that shorter hours are never handed down by employers or governments, Boyle said. “Workers had to fight for the eight-hour day and 35-hour week. Unless the ACTU is prepared to organise such a struggle, it won’t be won.”