One of Britain's leading doctors has called for the country to switch to a four-day week to help combat high levels of work-related stress, let people spend more time with their families or exercising, and reduce unemployment.

Bringing the standard working week down from five to four days would also help address medical conditions, such as high blood pressure and the mental ill-health associated with overwork or lack of work, Prof John Ashton said.

The president of the UK Faculty of Public Health said the five-day week should be phased out to end what he called "a maldistribution of work" that is damaging many people's health.

"When you look at the way we lead our lives, the stress that people are under, the pressure on time and sickness absence, [work-related] mental health is clearly a major issue. We should be moving towards a four-day week because the problem we have in the world of work is you've got a proportion of the population who are working too hard and a proportion that haven't got jobs", Ashton said.

"We've got a maldistribution of work. The lunch-hour has gone; people just have a sandwich at their desk and carry on working," added the leader of the UK's 3,300 public-health experts working in the NHS, local government and academia.

I am on a four day week.
Granted, those are 12hr shifts I'm doing, but it's still a four day week.

Mark

Four night week surely

Four night week surely

I'd like to do 4 days, but i think I would end up doing just as much work but paid less. Currently average 1.5hrs unpaid overtime everyday


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Try this out for an interesting take on capitalism: http://t.co/kQRvbbrlgr

The problem with a four day week is that there's no politcal (or more importantly - corporate) will to do anything.

20% pay cut for 20% less work seems fair. Could people afford that? I doubt it.
0% pay cut for 20% less work. Could businesses afford that? I doubt it.

The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor. So for as long as there has been capitalism, capitalists have said the same thing about any effort to raise wages. We’ve had 75 years of complaints from big business—when the minimum wage was instituted, when women had to be paid equitable amounts, when child labor laws were created. Every time the capitalists said exactly the same thing in the same way: We’re all going to go bankrupt. I’ll have to close. I’ll have to lay everyone off. It hasn’t happened. In fact, the data show that when workers are better treated, business gets better. The naysayers are just wrong.

Try this out for an interesting take on capitalism: http://t.co/kQRvbbrlgr