Henry Ford is credited with introducing the five-day week to the US, and is often cited as the man who created the American middle class. Might Toyota, through expediency rather than design, be bringing us the four-day week?
The Japanese
Henry Ford is credited with introducing the five-day week to the US, and is often cited as the man who created the American middle class. Might Toyota, through expediency rather than design, be bringing us the four-day week?
The Japanese car company, facing a 40% collapse in many markets, is considering putting its European factories on to a four- or even three-day week.
It's grim news for the income of workers at its Burnaston factory in Derbyshire, who could lose 20% or more of their pay. But it's rather better than sacking one-fifth of the labour force or cutting pay rates.
We have a lot to learn from the Japanese, who have coped with a two-decade-long economic downturn and deflation. Despite near-zero economic growth, unemployment has stayed far below western levels. Japan has chosen social cohesion over the quick-fix cures popular among Anglo-American economists.
We have a choice. We can sack millions of workers and widen the already severe social gulf between the haves and the have-nots. We can fortify our homes against the inevitable spike in crime as joblessness soars. Or we can share the pain, reducing our hours – and total pay – to "rightsize" output.
Importantly, we should not accept lower pay rates but lower pay through shorter hours.
Is this utopianism? Critics will point to the "failed" 35-hour week experiment in France. But is it really so outlandish? Factory workers used to work a five-and-a-half-day week – one reason why football matches traditionally kick off at 3pm on a Saturday.
Nobody despairs that we have lost Saturday morning working. And who should despair a move towards a three-day weekend?
Interestingly, we have tried this before – albeit in 1974, during even more calamitous economic times. The three-day working week lasted from 1 January to 7 March in 1974, as Ted Heath's government battled with striking miners.
What happened to our national output as a result? According to Hansard, the index of UK industrial production fell from 109.2 in the fourth quarter of 1973 to 103 in the first quarter of 1974 – ie a drop of just 5.7%. So we worked 40% less but produced only 5.7% less. Seems like we are wasting our time going to work for almost h