PRESS RELEASE: The Institute of Employment Rights publish ‘Winning on Working Time: Pressing the Case for a better work-life balance’

“A wind of change is blowing in favour of shorter working time”- IER Report on changes in working time arrangements across industrial sites offers evidence-based approach to pressing the case for better work-life balances.

The second phase of the IER’s report on forming a robust evidence-based case for a renewed campaign for shorter working time, commissioned by the Alex Ferry Foundation and facilitated by the CSEU, has now been published.

The report releases the findings from a series of interviews with convenors, senior stewards, or reps at 13 plants in the manufacturing, engineering, automotive and shipbuilding industries in the UK. The report also establishes the current arrangements for working time and hours in the plants across the sector, evaluating successful methods used by unions to achieve reductions in working hours – providing a valuable resource for unions to push for reductions in working hours with no loss of pay.

Despite findings from phase 1 of the report, which saw that 93% of workers supported reductions in working time without loss of pay, reductions in working time have been minor over the past three decades. In six plants the decrease from 39/40 hours to 37 took place in the early 1990s, with other minor reductions occurring across sites more recently.

Mental and physical health benefits from reducing working hours are clear- with the case for shorter working time the best bet in potential for reducing sickness absence.

One site convener, Bentley’s (Crewe), stated shorter working time meant that

‘Morale is a lot higher, productivity is better, people doing a better job because they are less fatigued, happier going home at three, they are off sick less, less chance of getting injured.’

Interviews revealed a general reduction in levels of overtime working in the aftermath of Covid-19, possibly because time spent away from work, with family or friends, had become more important to workers, with one site convenor saying, ‘people understand the value of not being here’.

What’s next? The report finds that a powerful national campaign, empowering unions, and members to fight for and negotiate an overdue reduction in hours and changes in the distribution of working time, can bring significant improvements to workers’ well-being and working lives.

Prof. Phil Taylor, Emeritus Professor of Work and Employment Studies at Strathclyde Business School and author of the report said:

“This report shows the lived experience of workers negotiating beneficial gains in working time through their unions – like being able to spend more time with their loved ones, and having more meaningful rest and recuperation from work.

“The negotiations were different across sites, but where unions engaged around productivity and efficiency, workers and employers were usually able to agree a deal.

“This report demonstrates what impediments there were to working time negotiations, and how those impediments were overcome. The report should provide a blueprint for success for workers in other employment sectors to consider how to navigate negotiations on working time with their employer”

Ends

Notes to editors

1. For more details on the IER’s ‘Winning on Working Time: Pressing the Case for a better life-work balance’ publication and to download a free e-edition, please see: https://www.ier.org.uk/product/winning-on-working-time-pressing-the-case-for-a-better-work-life-balance/
2. For further information or to arrange interviews, please contact Donya Jeyabalasingham on donya@ier.org.uk
3. The IER is a think tank on employment rights and labour law. It has existed for 35+ years to inform the debate around trade union rights and labour law by providing information, critical analysis, and policy ideas through our network of academics, researchers, and lawyers.
4. The IER’s 35+ years of work culminated in 2016 a ‘Manifesto for labour law’. This, and its following publication ‘Rolling out the manifesto for labour law’ are widely acknowledged as the blueprint for what eventually became the precursor policy documents for the government’s Employment Rights Bill. As the originators of these policies, the IER is well placed to analyse whether the government are sticking to what they have promised to do.
5. Recent publications have been on:

• AI and workers’ rights
• Pay review bodies – their past and their future.
• Redistribution of working time: achieving a better work-life balance
• Migration and work in post-Brexit UK
• Working for climate justice
• Work and health: 50 years of regulatory failure.