Campaign for four-day week aims to sign up more firms after UK trial success

theguardian.com:

The organisers of the world’s largest trial of the four-day working week have launched a drive to persuade more companies to try the idea, after receiving global coverage.

The 4 Day Week Campaign said it aimed to persuade hundreds more companies to adopt the four-day week – crucially with no loss of pay for workers – after the six-month trial concluded this month. Autonomy, a thinktank supporting the campaign, said it would help companies in the transition during a national rollout programme.

Of the 61 companies that entered the six-month trial, 56 have extended the four-day-week policy, including 18 that have already made it permanent.

The campaign aims to shift the norms of work culture from 40-hour, five-day weeks to 32-hour weeks. The five-day week was itself an improvement from the six-day week that was common before the trade union movement emerged in the late 19th century.

The trial gained global media coverage and commentary, including from Bernie Sanders, the prominent leftwing US senator who campaigned for the Democrats’ presidential nomination in 2016. Sanders tweeted: “Workers must benefit from technology, not just corporate CEOs.”

Proponents of the four-day week argue that improvements in productivity across the economy should mean that employees can in many cases produce the same output in less time. Productivity growth has been key to the improvement in living standards over the course of decades.

However, the UK government has so far not shown any enthusiasm for the