Covid has shown flexible working is a benefit only for the privileged few

theguardian.com:

It feels strange now to recall that two years ago we had just entered a three-month stretch of government-enforced hermithood as the battle with Covid was joined. I lived alone, forbidden from spending time with anyone else, so my social life consisted of Saturday nights in front of my laptop doing a virtual pub quiz. It quickly became the new normal, but now I wonder how I ever adjusted.

One of the aspects of lockdown living I would like to reintroduce, though, is cutting my working week. As a freelance, for a while there was just less work available. And so, having written about the theory of the four-day week, I found myself living it in practice. Lucky enough to afford to take the hit, I discovered I loved having more time to myself – even though there wasn’t actually that much to do.

It has made me a more enthusiastic proponent of shorter working hours. So I will watch with interest the results of the world’s largest four-day week pilot launched last week. The trial will involve 3,000 workers across 60 British companies, who will be paid the same salary for a shorter working week.

The case for a four-day week starts with the insight that human progress should not just be measured by the accumulation of “stuff”, but rather of time. One hundred and fifty years ago, Britons worked on average a 62-hour week, an appalling thought. Who’s to say our current conception of full-time work, the five-day week, is right? As technology from the wheel to the widget means societies can produce more and more with the same human input, it seems a no-brainer to think that we should bank some of the gains by enriching our lives with more time spent with people we love on the things we enjoy, rather than more consumer goods.

There are other