Read to the end for for foul play around the four-day week, theshocking difference between Mickey and Minnie’s pay cheques, and the cat at the forefront of the battle over Britain’s train station ticket offices.
Morning team,
Has the bubble popped for Brits dreaming of a four-day week? Since glowing results were released after the UK hosted the world’s biggest ever trial of a shorter working week, the campaign has gone from strength to strength.
But, as with most challenges to the status quo, a backlash often follows. In recent weeks senior politicians have spoken out against a four-day week in the public sector, with Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove telling council leaders this week he believed “very strongly” that taxpayers “need to have people working a full five-day week”. Gove joins Local Government Minister Lee Rowley, who told South Cambridgeshire district council to “end your experiment immediately” and return to “established norms”.
While it would be easy to dismiss these concerns as a knee-jerk reaction, The Guardian reported this week that there might be something shadier going on. Lobbying group The Tax Payers’ Alliance has been running a campaign called “Stop the Clock Off” since early May, calling a four-day week in the public sector “simply unacceptable”.
So why the backlash? The TPA’s funding is notoriously secretive, as with many of the organisations based out of Westminster’s 55 Tufton Street. What we do know is that they all campaign for the kind of small state and free market policies which Liz Truss sought to enact, and welcomed her approach until it drove the economy off a cliff.
There’s a long history of progress in the working world being opposed by the rich and powerful. Both the minimum wage and weekend were once mere concepts, so why shouldn't the four-day week be the next stage of progress… if it works? And experiments, surely, are the only way to find out.
We’ll keep looking at the solutions to make work better and digging into the detail on those who seek to undermine them. And if you’ve got any tips on where to look next, let me know on evie.breese@bigissue.com or tweet me at @Evie_Breese
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What you need to know about work this week:
Swings and roundabouts.Wages rose at the fastest rate on record in the three months to May, bolstering fears that interest rates will increase again. The new ONS figures showed that unemployment has increased, driven by people out of work for up to 12 months, while the number of people actively looking for work has also grown, driven by men seeking to get back to work.
Ramping up the pressure.Teaching unions could coordinate strikes and even target Rishi Sunak’s make-or-break Tory conference speech, TheObserver reports. If no deal is reached by the autumn, thousands of teachers would also be mobilised to protest at the Manchester gathering.
Abuse of power. Former Tory MP Julian Knight, who now sits as an independent, has been accused of using "job interviews" to meet young women and then sexually harass them, revealed by Esther Webber and Agnes Chambre in Politico. Three women have made separate accusations, which Knight has denied.
A Minnie-r pay cheque. The Walt Disney Company is being sued for systematically underpaying women. Analysis conducted by the claimants’ attorneys alleges the company paid female employees 2% less than men doing equivalent jobs and owes female employees in California more than $150 million in unpaid wages since 2015.
Reassurance. EY, PwC, and Deloitte have confirmed that incoming graduates’ jobs are safe, even if they graduate without a degree classification due to the University and College Union marking boycott which leaves tens of thousands of students unsure of their job prospects. KPMG, however, offered no such certainty. Reported by Lydia Spencer-Elliott for The Tab.
Less than a warm welcome. Ukrainian doctors who fled Russia’s invasion for the UK are being forced to confront a difficult dilemma: languish in low-skilled posts, or return to a country at war. There’s a lot of important detail in this feature from Euan Ward in The New York Times.
Strike watch
RMT members working on the London Underground have announced plans to strike for five days in July. The union says hundreds of jobs are scheduled to be axed, increasing the likelihood of “more unstaffed stations and a lowering of safety standards”.
Hundreds of thousands of flights across Europe could be cancelled if air traffic controllers follow through with the threat of strike action. Dates are expected to be announced in the coming days.
Both the UK and Italy are facing severe labour shortages that leave employers in fishing, tourism, healthcare and construction struggling to find the staff. But while the UK is considering making life in Britain a notch more unattractive to migrant workers by increasing their healthcare fees, Italy has announced plans to attract tens of thousands more migrants by expanding its visa schemes.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the country will offer 425,000 work permits between this year and 2025 to non-EU nationals. But with the right wing coalition government continuing to crack down on migrants illegally crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe, even targeting NGOs that rescue people at sea, the PM has faced accusations of hypocrisy. This is from James Crisp in The Telegraph. (£)
Working culture
Image: Channel 4
Have you ever taken stock of exactly how much invisible labour you’ve worked? Imagine all the time spent on chores or undervalued caring work suddenly paid back. Well, that’s the jumping off point for Bridget Christie’s triumphant C4 comedy series The Change.
Christie plays Linda, who, on finding out she is going through the menopause, ditches her lazy husband and spends some of the thousands of hours she has been tallying in her chore ledger on a motorbike adventure to the Forest of Dean. It’s a wonderful, liberating, surreal journey – full of folklore and feminism, oh, and lots of eels – as Linda finds sisterhood among a community of eccentrics. Watch it now. It’ll be time well spent…
Thanks to our TV editor Adrian Lobb for this week’s recc. I’m convinced.
Enjoying this newsletter? Check out Survival Guide, our newsletter on the cost of living crisis from my colleague Isabella McRae. We also have a cost of living help Facebook group with money-saving tips and positive stories..
In the diary
Thursday 13 July. Junior doctors start a 120-hour strike from 7am, ending at 7am on Tuesday 18 July.
Thursday 20 July. Railway workers begin the first of three days of strike action with transport union the RMT.
Consultants (senior doctors) are set to strike for two consecutive days with the BMA.
Saturday 22 July. Railways workers strike for a second day.
Sunday 23 July. Workers on the London Underground will undertake five days of rolling strike action until Friday July 28, with no strike on Monday July 24. The RMT is yet to announce which lines will be affected.
Wednesday 27 September. Creating a Good Jobs economy, lecture by Professor Dani Rodrik, at The Resolution Foundation.
Animals with jobs
Meet George, the Stourbridge Junction Station cat and a bit of a local celebrity.
But with the government set to close almost all train station ticket offices, could one of Britain’s most experienced mouse catchers soon be out of a job? The Mirror has the exclusive.
Does your cat/dog/garden fox/animal you saw on holiday participate in the daily grind? Nominate them today by sending me a photo to: evie.breese@bigissue.com
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