The debate over the future of the 9-5, five-day working week, ever-present since the pandemic’s shake-up of established working norms, shows no sign of letting up. This week, the news that the government plans to strengthen the rights of workers to demand a four-day week as part of their New Deal For Working People dominated headlines.

What often went missing in the small print beneath those headlines was the fact that the government’s proposal is to strengthen the right to a compressed hours four-day week — not  the reduced hours four-day week for which the 4 Day Week Campaign has been pushing for years.

A lot of people don’t know they already have the right to ask for greater flexibility at work, which includes compressing hours into four days instead of five. Under the existing legislation, however, employers currently have no legal obligation to grant these requests. Labour’s plans have yet to be fully laid out, with the new legislation planned for October, but it is expected that they will make it harder for employers to deny such requests, entrenching compressed hours as a right rather than a privilege.

Those of us at the campaign have welcomed this move from the government because we feel it recognises that the future of work is a four-day week for all. Compressed hours can sometimes be an important first step on the road to a true four-day week. But reducing overall working hours is crucial. Ask anyone working a compressed hours four-day week, rather than a reduced hours four-day week, and they will tell you these are totally different things. Compressing a 40-hour week into four days only means four very long 10-hour days, which can risk exacerbating burnout and stress.

While Labour’s plan recognises the importance of flexible hours and acknowledges that the four-day week is the future of work, the policy’s exclusive focus on flexibility is at the expense of the wider benefits of the true four-day week: a 32-hour week or less, spread across four days, with no loss of pay.

In 2022, we ran the world’s biggest trial of a true four-day week in the UK and found that stress for employees both significantly declined. 71 percent of those employees reported lower levels of burnout, and levels of anxiety, fatigue, and sleep issues fell, while mental and physical health improved. Further benefits the trial highlighted included a greater work-life balance, a more equal split of childcare duties between genders, and a marked decrease in the likelihood of employees quitting, all alongside either on average maintained or increased overall revenue for participating companies.

As the government moves towards consultations with trade unions and businesses over the next few months, we are entering a crucial time for organised labour to make the case for a proper 32-hour, four-day working week, building on the workplace flexibility won in the pandemic’s aftermath. Major unions, including Unison and the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), have already urged the government to adopt the policy. The more that join them, the greater the pressure will be to move the focus away from compressed hours to a true four-day week for all.

This autumn, we’re running a second big four-day week pilot, which we’ll present the findings of to the Labour government next summer. The reaction to Labour’s announcement on Friday showed the strength of support that already exists for a four-day week after years of campaigning. The pandemic proved decisively that the future of work can, and should, look different: if we come together and demand it, we could be well on the way to a four-day week by the end of this parliament.