A minister has dismissed calls from civil servants to move to a four-day week, telling advocates of the reform “we are not living in the 1970”.
Members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) have said that working a four-day week is “critical to attaining a good quality of life” and could save the government more than £21 million a year.
But ruling out the change in an interview with Times Radio, pensions minister Emma Reynolds said: “I don’t believe them”.
The PCS, which represents civil servants, argues its research shows sickness absence could also drop from 4.3 average working days lost per staffer annually to 1.5 days.
Officials in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have also said the arrangement would more than halve staff turnover and free up money to hire an extra 2,345 workers.
Some officials are campaigning for Defra to carry out a pilot four-day week scheme within the department so that managers can assess the arrangement.
In a survey of 1,200 members carried out by the PCS as part of its research, 80 per cent of respondents said a four-day week would give them health and wellbeing benefits.
PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said the study suggested any opposition to employees working a four-day week was “purely ideological”.
“Why else would an employer stand in the way of progress?” she said.
“Our members are resolute in their belief that a four-day week is critical to attaining a good quality of life, improving their health and wellbeing and helping them to meet caring responsibilities, while all the time increasing their productivity.”
But Reynolds hit back on Thursday morning, telling Times Radio: “I see the benefit for those who want to have the flexibility to be able to work part time. I’m a mum of two young children. And you know, sometimes I wish that I worked part time. But I don’t think as a whole that civil servants as a general rule should work four days rather than five.”
She added that civil servants wanting a four-day week “won’t get one… because we are not living in the 1970s”.
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