UK’s biggest trade union says we should be paid the same for working less.
What it means: In the last few decades, human beings have invented a bunch of cool stuff that could help us out in the workplace. Robots, automation and artificial intelligence (machines that can do creatively smart things like playing video games or putting together Ikea furniture) are expected to add £200 billion to the UK economy in the next decade.
TUC, an umbrella group of British trade unions, say we should use these extra billions to give people more time off. They’re lobbying the government to shorten the working week to four days without reducing salaries. TUC say employers won’t lose any money by doing this because all that tech we’ve created is going to make us so much better at our jobs that we’ll produce more in four days than we used to in five.
A Welsh company called IndyCube actually tried the four-day workweek out. They say it was super successful: their staff ended up doing more work in less time. Sweden found something similar when it experimented with reducing the average workday to six hours. So it's good economics to work less. You can tell your boss we said so ;)
