Labor might be losing friends in retirement with their super plans and business with just about all its ideas lately, but it could have hit on a great “make friends and influence voters” idea — the four-day working week on full pay! Dolly Parton could be forced to write a new hit!

That’s bound to be a vote-winner and business killer, so let’s see what the thinking is to see if the idea has merit. Oh yes, The Australian reports, not surprisingly, that ALP and Greens senators have supported the initiative, “in principle”.

A Senate select committee, which has clearly been smoking something, also suggests paid parental leave for a year and a right to disconnect from work outside paid hours.

Ewen Hannan writes that the committee has put forward this idea: “…the government undertakes a four-day-week trial based on the 100-80-100 model where employees retain 100 per cent of the salary while reducing their hours to 80 per cent and maintaining 100 per cent productivity.”

It been recommended that the Government trials with a university to measure the impact on productivity, health and wellbeing and cultural impacts. It’s also recommended that different industries and geographical areas be used in the trial.

As a former academic, I must say that at least university academics have been used to four-day working weeks. In fact, many of my colleagues used to do pretty well on three-day working weeks!

This is socially an idea with merit but is this really the time to contemplate four-day working weeks when the workforce has undergone one of the greatest structural changes ever?

Statista.com reveal this about the trend: “In September 2022, workers in New South Wales, Australia, spent approximately 31.4 percent of their total working days working from home, equivalent to 2.53 days. This represented the highest numbers of WFH days among Australian states in the surveyed period. According to the source, Australians worked for an average of 8.09 days within the two weeks prior to the survey, 2.13 of which were WFH days.”

Looking at those numbers, it looks like many Aussies are already accessing a four-day working week in real terms.

Like most politicians, it looks like this ‘select committee’ is made up of out-of-touch, overpaid timewasters, who think employers are living the life of Riley (whoever he was!). Many are still trying to get over the losses generated by the pandemic, record-rising interest rates, excessive government regulation red tape, a lack of foreign workers pushing hourly rates up in many industries, along with a lack of workers and the work-from-home trend that has seriously hurt CBD businesses.

By the way, the RBA’s efforts could create a recession, where too many workers might be given a no-day working week with zero pay!

How about we create a booming economy first and actually see what has happened to productivity over 2021 and 2022, when the work-from-home trend began?

May experts think we will see a real drop in productivity, which might coincode with the falling handicaps of many Aussie golfers, who now seem to be getting more time on the greens since working arrangements changed since the pandemic.

I suspect city golf clubs and other leisure businesses would love a four-day working week, except when it comes to the workers they’d want to employ.

“The report calls for a new right to care, alongside the right to work, and identifies access to paid sick leave as a first-order issue for working carers,” Hannan says. “The committee recommends the government consider legislating an enforceable “right to disconnect” under the National Employment Standards, giving all workers a right to disconnect once their contracted working hours have finished. Under the proposal, employers would be restricted from communicating with workers outside of work hours, except in the event of an emergency or for welfare ­reasons.”

The one good idea of this committee, which should be implementable ASAP, is to create measures to reduce the chances of wage theft and I’d throw in the non-payment of super.

One last point, these are the ideas of the Senate, but I suspect PM Albanese and his Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers will give this idea little regard, unless they want to be seen as a joke by those Australians capable of sensible thinking.