Ruby Alden-Gibson sets out the spate of victories that PCS members have won in the campaign for a shorter working week.
Two years ago, in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, I wrote a piece for Scottish Left Review on the opportunities that this unprecedented time created for the changing world of work and, in the context of this, the progress that PCS union was making on the 4-day week. In March 2020, practically overnight, workers across the UK started working from their homes, in ways that we had been told for years were just not possible. This ability to work from home, which many workers had never experienced nor been allowed, resulted in a challenge to the status quo. In amongst the tragedy and turmoil of the pandemic, opportunities were being created for doing things differently. Whilst new ways of working were implemented to stop the spread of Covid-19, they gave workers more flexibility about things like caring responsibilities, and enhanced their productivity, due to factors like shorter travel times and more efficient working. The collective realisation that work can be different acted as a catalyst for conversations to come into the mainstream about issues like the 4-day week and the right to disconnect from work. People everywhere realised work can be better, but trade unions have always known this.
Since then, PCS members working across the Scottish devolved administration have made significant gains in reducing their working time and increasing their flexibility in work. Workers have reduced their weekly hours from 42 and 37 to 35, crucially without loss of pay, and a public sector pilot of the 4-day, 32-hour week now is underway, involving PCS members in South of Scotland Enterprise and Accountant in Bankruptcy. Yet in the context of 25 years of devolution and a supposedly progressive Scottish Government, it is a damning indictment of government and employers that it took a global pandemic and the most monumental societal change in generations to get movement on these issues. What’s worse, it wasn’t just the pandemic that resulted in workers winning meaningful reductions in their working time. It also took the cost-of-living crisis, with the highest inflation since the 1970s, and the subsequent industrial action. Looking back on 25 years of devolution and ahead to the next 25, we must remember this. When the political will is there, change can happen. But as has been the case throughout history, change only will happen when there is organised working class power to keep demanding it.
Trade unions have always been at the forefront of winning reductions in working time. Australian stone masons first won the 8-hour day in 1856, and unions and campaigners fought for the five-day week throughout the 19th century. Even before the pandemic, unions such as Forsa and the Communication Workers Union were campaigning for working time reductions. For PCS members in the Scottish devolved sector, a 4-day, 28-hour week with no loss of pay or terms and conditions has been a pay claim element since the mid-2010s. Prior to the pandemic, we struggled to make gains on this front due to the lack of will from employers even to discuss it, and the challenge for members to imagine how it could possibly work. Although PCS members have always been strong in the conviction that working time can and should be reduced, years of austerity-driven cuts to the public sector and labour-saving technologies being introduced to solely benefit employers made it hard to imagine having a 4-day week with no loss of pay.
Post-Pandemic Possibilities
In the new world of work shaped and structured by the pandemic, PCS Scotland decided it was time to further our 4-day week agenda. In April 2021, activists and staff worked with the thinktank Autonomy to conduct a research project into the feasibility, desirability and impact of a shorter working week in the Scottish Government. The project placed workers at the heart of a discussion involving over 2300 people, and the results found a high degree of collective support and buy-in for a shorter working week. 87% were in favour of the Scottish Government exploring its introduction. 84% were confident that they could adapt their current work processes to fit the demands of a 4-day week, and workers felt that the current flexi system and the successful implementation of home working had demonstrated the organisational ability to adapt to change. The project concluded that a shorter working week is not only desirable, it is possible.
The Autonomy report on the findings was widely covered in the press. This work gave PCS members and negotiators evidence and confidence that a shorter working week was realistic and achievable as it could benefit workers and employers alike. The report was used as a key tool for strategic negotiation with Scottish Government officials and in local negotiations with employers. It was also used to drive a campaign for a 4-day week. This resulted in future Scottish Government Pay policies introducing reductions in working time in the form of the ability to move to a 35-hour week and to trial a 4-day week, and the introduction of a public sector pilot of the 4-day, 32-hour week.
Although working from home during the pandemic improved flexibility and work-life balance for many workers, it also resulted in an extreme intensification of work. The introduction of Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and the need to work from a spare room or kitchen table without elsewhere to go, resulted in long, intense work periods without sufficient breaks and, too often, without proper equipment or the ability to ‘switch off’. Prospect union led the demand for a ‘Right to Disconnect’, and together the civil service unions successfully lobbied the Scottish Government to include this in their pay policy. Creating a ‘Right to Disconnect’ agreement became part of the PCS pay claim and, during negotiations, employers quickly acquiesced to create a policy with us. But of course they did: it’s a good ‘wellbeing’ policy and it doesn’t cost a penny. As we moved through 2020 and 2021, gains were made on healthier and safer hybrid working practices and agreements were made on implementing the Right to Disconnect, but very little changed on the shorter working week. Then towards the end of 2021, the first signs of the cost-of-living crisis appeared, with economic forecasts of sky-rocketing inflation and CPI tipping over 5%, and progress on a changing world of work came to a halt.
The Strength to Win
In late 2022, in the face of continually rising inflation and after the wave of strike action from unions like the RMT and protests up and down the UK, PCS members turned out in record numbers to vote for industrial action. Across the Scottish devolved civil service, justice, culture, environmental and skills and enterprise sectors, PCS members voted for industrial action to send a clear message to their employers and the government that they’d had enough. In response, the First Minister gave Scottish Government officials authority to negotiate with PCS to end the dispute. The format of this negotiation resulted in a sectoral pay offer that not only included pay and job security elements but offered working time reductions in the form of a wellbeing hour and, in the case of some employers, a move to a 35-hour week with no loss of pay. PCS members across the Scottish sector voted overwhelmingly to accept this offer, and successive pay offers have resulted in the vast majority of employers moving to a 35-hour week with no loss of pay this year, as well as the start of the long-awaited public sector pilot of the 4-day, 28-hour week.
One of the biggest gains in all of this came for our members in Security in the National Galleries of Scotland and the shift roster they have won. The implementation of the 35-hour week in the National Galleries has taken security shift staff from a 42-hour week to a 33.75-hour week with no loss of pay or terms and conditions. Anyone involved in trade unions knows that big wins like this come from hard fought battles, and it is testament to the workers who took industrial action in 2022 and to PCS representatives who negotiated this roster, that they achieved this progressive change to their working lives. This fight serves as a reminder that governments and employers don’t make progressive changes benevolently. Only the power of the organised working class can do this.
PCS members have won a 35-hour week, a Right to Disconnect and the ability to work from home in hybrid format. Work continues to ensure that these changes have a positive and meaningful impact on workers’ wellbeing. Our 4-day week campaign will continue, and the next steps will be informed by the results of the 4-day week pilot which we expect to be published at the start of 2025.
The Scottish Government states that there are huge fiscal challenges ahead. For the vast majority of working people, there have always been challenges, be it in their wallets or their workplaces. The next 12 months will be a crucial period. Our members, who have the experience, strength and skills to win, will be looking for more than just rhetoric from politicians. As we look to the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary election and the next stage of Scottish devolved power, let’s not forget that real power lies not with our elected representatives but with the working class who elect them.
Ruby Alden-Gibson, PCS National Officer in Scotland, has worked over the last four years with PCS branches across the Scottish devolved sector to campaign for and negotiate a shorter working week.