Towards 21 hours

Why is a five-day, 40 hour week considered the norm in Britain?  Most people don’t work that way.  Some people have too much work, others have none.  Some are rich in income and poor in time, some the reverse.  And some people are poor in both time and income. Many find themselves on a treadmill, working long hours to earn enough money to buy things to conform with social expectations.   

It is time for a radical change in our thinking about how work and time are distributed.  In this project we begin with the idea of a 21-hour week, to stimulate ideas and debate about what it would mean in policy and in practical terms for people in all walks of life.  

We aim to develop a policy framework for shifting to a much shorter working week, which will redistribute paid and unpaid work; release time for the core economy and challenge the ‘work to spend’ culture that fuels unsustainable economic growth and climate change.  This goes well beyond current arrangements for flexible working, extending opportunities for everyone to live differently and value their time in different ways.  

This new model of working time would transform our lives and act as a catalyst for wider social, economic and environmental change.