Four-day week on full pay gets nod for Oxfam Australia

Workers at the not-for-profit Oxfam Australia have won the right to a four-day week on full pay – the first such deal formally embedded in an enterprise bargaining agreement.

Oxfam has committed to a six-month pilot during which permanent full-time employees working 35 hours a week can choose to have their weekly hours and entitlements varied to 30 hours a week over four days without any loss of pay.

Workers at the not-for-profit Oxfam Australia have won the right to a four-day week on full pay – the first such deal formally embedded in an enterprise bargaining agreement.

The deal, which will likely encourage more workers to push for a shorter working week, was secured by the Australian Ser­vices Union and covers Oxfam’s 140 full-time and part-time staff.

It adds to the push for a four-day week ahead of the expected release at the end of April of a comprehensive trial of the model at 29 Australian companies.

Oxfam has committed to a six-month pilot during which permanent full-time employees working 35 hours a week can choose to have their weekly hours and entitlements varied to 30 hours a week over four days without any loss of pay. Permanent part-time employees will have their working hours and entitlements pro-rated.

ASU Victorian private branch secretary Imogen Sturni said the trial showed Oxfam recognised “productivity comes in different forms and work-life balance is essential for workers’ mental and physical health”.

“The rigid Monday-Friday, five-day working week is a thing of the past and no longer serves a modern workplace or its employees, particularly workers with caring responsibilities,” she said.

Last year, about 3300 people across a range of businesses in Britain took part in the world’s largest trial of a four-day work week. “The results were enlightening,” Ms Sturni said. “Employees reported feeling more productive and less stressed, while employers also gave the new working pattern the thumbs up, with some businesses reporting their financial performance improved as well as the increased retention of staff.”

Andrew Barnes, co-founder of Australian-based advocacy group 4 Day Week, which helped run the British trial and is running the local pilots, on Wednesday said he was very optimistic about wider adoption.

“We have gone from this being a little experiment in New Zealand in 2018 to it being a mainstream topic of conversation,” he said. “Employees absolutely love it and I think it’s only going to keep going.”

Mr Barnes said there was increasing support from companies that were looking at results of trials in Britain, the US, Canada and Ireland that showed it was possible to get “100 per cent” output from workers with 80 per cent of time spent on the job.

“We are seeing increasingly that governments around the world are thinking about how to address some of the problems we face around family cohesion and gender and climate,” he said.

The UK trial revealed most British companies involved in the six-month test decided to stick with the four-day model because of a reduction in worker turnover and absenteeism and no drop in productivity.