John McDonnell says Labour will reduce working week to 32 hours in a decade

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has committed Labour to reducing the average working week to 32 hours within a decade.

He also promised to eliminate in-work poverty in the first term of a Labour government.

In his conference speech he said: “Transforming people’s lives means ending the modern evil of in-work poverty. Labour has traditionally been committed to full employment.

“We have always believed that getting a job should mean you are lifted out of poverty.”

But under the Tories that link had been broken, he said.

He added: “We should work to live, not live to work.

“In the 1860s people worked a 65-hour week. Thanks to past Labour governments – but actually mainly thanks to the trade union movement – by the 1970s the average working week had been reduced to 43 hours.

“As society got richer, we could spend fewer hours at work. But in recent decades progress has stalled.

“People in our country work some of the longest hours in Europe.

“Since the 1980s the link between increasing productivity and expanding free time has been broken. It’s time to put that right.

“So I can tell you today that the next Labour government will reduce the average full-time working week to 32 hours within the next decade.

“It will be a shorter working week with no loss of pay.”

CWU senior deputy general secretary Tony Kearns, speaking before Mr McDonnell, outlined the case to move towards a four-day 32-hour working week to be achieved within a decade.

He said: “Investment in new technology isn’t done to make your job any easier, it’s done to extract more profit.

“The problem isn’t artificial intelligence, the problem is capitalism – it’s the faster, cheaper race to the bottom that we have to stop.

“The New Economics Foundation says a shorter working week could actually increase productivity.

“In Germany, in Holland, in the Scandinavian countries they work less hours and their productivity is better than it is in the UK economy.”

Calling for an “ambitious and radical” plan on rights, he added: “This needs to be in legislation which is why we call for a shorter working week of 32 hours.”