The Four-Day Working Week: Remember when Old Moore’s Almanac predicted that the four-day working week would move from pipe dream to genuine possibility in 2026? Well, the almanac’s prophetic pen has done it again. The evidence is piling up, and this time it is coming from a very unlikely corner of the globe.
Australia, not exactly a nation famed for slowing down, is making serious noise about overhauling its entire working week. Unions representing millions of workers have put formal submissions to the government calling for a standardised four-day week at full pay.
This is part of the first review of Australia’s National Employment Standards in 13 years. The Australian Services Union, which represents over 135,000 workers across transport, local government, airlines and beyond, has cited the rise of AI and the growing complexity of modern working life as reasons the change is not just desirable, but achievable.
The Four-Day Working Week: Union Action
The Australian Council of Trade Unions has separately launched a bid to raise minimum annual leave from four to five weeks for full-time workers, arguing that the four-week standard has been left untouched since the 1970s. That is half a century without so much as a day added to the pile. Australian workers already clock an average of four and a half weeks of unpaid work every year. So the unions are simply asking to claw back one of those weeks.
While business owners already grapple with rising costs and taxes all over the world, for employees, this sounds amazing. Will there be conversations about a four-day working week and more holidays in Ireland?
The Prime minister of Australia has been somewhat coy on the matter, saying there are “no plans” to legislate a four-day week just yet. But the seeds are planted, the conversation is happening at government level. That is exactly what Old Moore’s foresaw, a turning of the tide.
More time at the pub?
Now, Ireland?
It is not just Australia that is pondering the 4-day working week. As we reported earlier this year, more than twenty countries are now trialling, legislating, or actively championing the shorter week, from Iceland (where 86% of workers already enjoy reduced hours) to Belgium, Japan, and South Korea.
So what would we actually do with a three-day weekend? Go to Mass twice? Take a proper ramble along the Wild Atlantic Way without racing back before dark? Perhaps finally tackle that renovation of the back shed? Have an extra day in the pub?
For the Irish worker, chronically pressed for time and seasonally deprived of daylight, an extra free day is a tantalizing idea. Hard pressed business owners might have another thing to say about it.
