We are finally seeing some substantive argument about policy, with Scott Morrison supporting a cut in real wages, and Anthonly Albanese opposing it. I’ve drafted a response (over the fold)

Also here on my Blogstack

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I just got invited to put a short entry on the 4-day week in the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of HRM . It’s over the fold

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Four Day Week

The five-day working week and the two-day weekend, have been standard for so long, it is hard for many to imagine anything different. But, as a normal way of working, it dates back only to the middle of the 20th century. Before that, Saturday was a normal working day in Western countries and only Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, was normally taken as a day of rest.

The advent of the weekend, and the associated standard workweek of 35 to 40 hours was the culmination of a long series of reductions in working hours from the peak, of 70 hours or more reached in the early 19th century. At the time, it was expected that these reductions would continue, as technological progress reduced the labour input needed to produce any given volume of output.

Reductions in annual hours, through increases in vacation time and other forms of leave continued during the middle decades of the 20th century,. However, with the increase in the bargaining power of employers which began with the neoliberal ‘counter-revolution’ in the 1970s, progress towards reduced working hours halted and was, in many cases, reversed.

The shock of the pandemic has created conditions for a resurgence of interest in reduced working hours and, particularly, the idea of a four-day week. The pandemic exacerbated existing disillusionment with working arrangements, and showed that alternatives are possible. As a result, a phase of experimentation has begun.

Proposals for a four-day week differ regarding the associated change in working hours. At one extreme, some proposals leave weekly hours unchanged, compressing five days’ work into four. At the other, daily working hours are unchanged, and the number of hours in the standard working week is reduced by 20 per cent.

It’s also necessary to consider whether a four-day week should take the form of a three-day weekend, extended to include Mondays (or perhaps Fridays). One alternative is an extension the rostered day off prevailing in some parts of the building industry, where all workers have one day off each fortnight, but the number rostered on any given day is constant. Another option, drawing on the experience of the pandemic would be a core 3-day week (Tuesday to Thursday) with workers having either Friday or Monday off.

One way or another it seems that the four-day week is now firmly on the policy agenda.

John Quiggin

References and selected further readings

Quiggin, J. (2022), ‘There’s never been a better time for Australia to embrace the 4-day week’, The Conversation, 14 February https://theconversation.com/theres-never-been-a-better-time-for-australia-to-embrace-the-4-day-week-176374,

Schor, J. (1993) The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, Basic Books,

That’s the latest post from my Blogstack, responding to recent inflation figures. Text over the fold.

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From Gallipoli to Ukraine

The latest at my Blogstack, over the fold

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A quick response to the latest IPCC report on climate change, published as Time’s up: why Australia has to quit stalling and wean itself off fossil fuels

Because of tight deadlines, the editor added a fair bit of material to my draft. I stand by all the content, but not all the language is mine.

The latest from my new Blogstack

I can’t remember any previous time when I’ve been in unqualified agreement with Chris Uhlmann, but his description of the current election campaign as a policy-free contest between “a pathological liar, which is what the Labor Party seems to be calling the government, and a gutless fraud, which is what the Prime Minister essentially has dubbed you,” Of the two, I’ll give the higher preference to the gutless fraud, after ranking all acceptable candidates ahead of them, starting with the Greens.

To preserve my mental health, I’m going to refrain from any further commentary about the major parties. I may offer some comments on the Greens, the only party putting forward any serious policy proposals in this election, some of which I support and some I question.

Feel free to try and dissuade me. In particular, if anyone can make a better case for Albanese and Labor than “not Morrison and the LNP”, I’d be glad to read it.

And having sworn off election commentary, I’ll do my best to give you something interesting to keep your minds off the whole sorry process.

I’ve decided to migrate my regular newsletter from Mailchimp to Substack. Having done that, it seems worthwhile to try out Substack as a blogging platform. For the moment, I’ll post here at johnquiggin.com in parallel with the Substack blog.

My first substantive post is over the fold. I’m hoping for good discussion, so it would be great if commenters here could also take part at Substack.

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Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has upended all kinds of certainties, created new possibilities, and closed off old ones. We can certainly see this in relation to nuclear power. Here are a few developments related to the war

• Russia’s capture of the Chernobyl plant, and the associated fire, have raised new concerns about nuclear safety
• Belgium has announced that its planned closure of a nuclear plant will be deferred, possibly until 2035, in order to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas. There have been hints that Germany might do something similar
• Finland has cancelled its proposed Fennovoima nuclear plant which was to be built using Rosatom’s VVER technology. Coincidentally, a few days ago, the Olkiluoto EPR plant was connected to the grid, twelve years late and way over budget

My guess is that the need to wean Europe off Russian gas over the next few years will outweigh enhanced concerns about safety.

On the other hand, the implications for new nuclear power are unambiguously bad. Projects started now can’t come in time to help with the transition from Russian gas, and the safety concerns will add to cost

Looking ahead, no one will want to deal with Rosatom any time soon, and Chinese proposals are also coming under more scrutiny. The cost over-runs on EPR plants create huge difficulties there also. These come together in Hinkley C (EPR) where hte UK government is trying to push China’s CGN out of the project, but having trouble attracting private finance to replace it.

The great remaining hope is Small Modular Reactors, most notably those proposed by Nuscale. But this hope has been around for a long time, with the arrival date always about 8 years in the future.

Here’s my semi-regular newsletter, and a followup with links to a couple of recent articles about climate change and the disastrous floods in eastern Australia.

I’ve been using Mailchimp to send out the newsletter, but it’s mostly oriented to marketers. So, I’ve decided to move to Substack, which quite a few commentators have already done. One option is to move the blog there. That would be a big shift for me, as I’ve had the current site for most of the nearly 20 years I’ve been blogging. The main difference for readers would be the option of getting email alerts when new posts go up. If you like or dislike the idea, say so in comments

Over the page the followup email with links:

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I had a couple of article come out today on the flood disaster. Amazingly, the Courier-Mail ran a piece pointing out the link to global heating and the fact that the costs of climate disasters far outweigh our earnings from coal.

Also, a piece in The Conversation, explaining why terms like “1 in 1000 year flood” need to be retired in favor of probabilities, updating using Bayesian reasoning.

And an interview here with Chinese agency Xinhua on implications of Putin’s war on Ukraince (hopefully this won’t put me on any watch lists)