Murrumbidgee Council to trial four-day work week in Australian local government first

A NSW council is set to become the first in Australia to trial a four-day work week, backing a 15-month plan supporters state will help attract staff, lift productivity and give workers 52 long weekends next year.

Under the plan, Murrumbidgee Council employees would still work a 38-hour week, but their hours would be compressed into four days across council offices, the depot, library and work crews in Darlington Point, Coleambally and Jerilderie.

Most services would shut on Fridays when the trial starts in January, although the childcare centre and caravan park would stay open and essential on-call workers would continue to be rostered.

The decision places Murrumbidgee Council at the centre of a much larger debate about how Australians work, but the local authority’s proposal is more targeted than the wider push from unions for shorter standard hours with no loss of pay.

Council general manager John Scarce told the council’s July 28 ordinary meeting the community response suggested many residents were comfortable with the idea.

“The only thing that I can think of is that the majority of people have no issue with it. Truly don’t have any issue with it whatsoever because otherwise they had all the ability in the world to be able to speak forward,” Mr Scarce said.

He said the trial would be reviewed after 12 months, with the extra three months used to assess performance data and determine whether the model should continue or be abandoned.

Mr Scarce said that process would not just rely on management’s view.

“A vote of the staff to see if they want to continue, a vote from the elected representatives to see if they want to continue on that or have we not hit all those performance measures and everything else like that,” he said.

Over the next six months, Mr Scarce is expected to settle the formal agreement and the indicators that will be used to judge whether the trial has worked.

The move follows staff and community consultation that found 75 per cent of staff supported the compressed work week.

However, Coleambally disability services provider Trudi-Louise Chant, from Riverina Connect, told NewsWire the main concern was Friday closure of the local council office, which also houses the town library and related services.

Ms Chant said she had already changed the way she used council facilities because they had “been closed a lot in Coleambally anyway”.

She said she had not heard locals discuss what impact the change could have on services, with most of the reaction instead focused on council staff.

“Most people say, of course, government workers want more time off,” Ms Chant said.

Murrumbidgee’s approach also comes as the four-day week gains more attention well beyond local government.

Earlier this year, unions used a federal parliamentary inquiry into employment standards to argue for a much bigger national change, including cutting ordinary weekly hours from 38 to 35 while moving to a four-day week without reducing pay.

They argued that workers were missing out on the benefits of productivity gains and new technology and said shorter weeks could improve health, retention and output.

At the same time, the United Services Union has been pushing for more flexible arrangements for council workers in NSW, including four-day weeks in some circumstances, as households deal with high transport costs and councils face pressure to keep services running.