Patrick Carlyon: Why stop at demands for a four-day work week?

Forget a four-day week for public servants, why not three and more holidays? Public servants would be happier, and the rest of us wouldn’t notice the difference.

There are calls to pilot a four-day working week for the public service.

Why stop at demands for a four-day work week?

Three days’ work seems far more appealing.

Imagine a four-day weekend – every weekend - of new routines, such as Friday arvo golf and Monday morning hangovers from Sunday drinking sessions that no longer need to end?

The idea that public servants should work less hours is a bold initiative, given every non-public servant is wedded to the conviction that public servants don’t work much, anyway.

The notion of same work output, but in less hours sounds like a hard sell, and inspires the loaf of bread analogy – if the loaf is smaller than it was, how could it feed the same number as it once did?

This seems especially true if you’ve ever tried to ring a public service agency and discovered that your time isn’t at all important to the agency.

But the four-day work proposal, submitted by the Community and Public Sector Union, opens so many more possibilities.

Why does a work day typically start at 9am? It’s unfair to those who require two to five hours to start functioning each day. Let’s make it 11am.

The idea that public servants should work less hours is a bold initiative, given every non-public servant is wedded to the conviction that public servants don’t work much. Picture: iStock

As for afternoon peak hour traffic? No one needs that. Why not duck off at 3pm?

As it is, there are 13 Victorian public holidays. We should double the number. After all, the Footy Friday holiday before the grand final has been embraced, even though no one knows how it came about. How about Tennis Tuesday during the Australian Open, and Thirsty Thursday for the food and wine festival?

Many of us embraced home leisures while in lockdown, perhaps grew attached to dressing gowns and sloshes of Pinot, zoom meetings notwithstanding, when a collared shirt was plucked from the dirty clothes bin, but deodorant, mouth freshener and pants were not required.

Why not reduce office days to just one a week, not only because some people now find the expectation of grown-up clothes rather confronting, but because some workers don’t enjoy spending a third of their days with co-workers who reheat tuna in the office microwave?

Four weeks annual leave is the going rate. But many people have done the maths, and doesn’t 48 weeks of work a year sound so tiresome?

It limits public servants to taking family vacations during times of peak rates, and everyone deserves cheaper holidays under any decent workplace agreement.

The above initiatives should be applied at once.

Public servants would be happier, and non-public servants wouldn’t notice the difference.