A four-day week with the right to disconnect? Yes, that works a treat

When I gave my mobile number to hundreds of first-year university students back in the early 2000s, my beloved was dismayed. I had a tendency to overcommit to work and this was, he said, a good example of me doing it again. And again.

I didn’t really get it then, but I had participated in my own exploitation – I’d made myself a victim of availability creep. Academics are meant to work about 38 hours a week, but I ensured students could contact me at all hours of the day and night. Beloved was, as usual, right. One night, a student rang me after midnight, not long after I’d gone to bed. She was distraught about a deadline. I whispered a few words. Presumably she went straight to sleep, but I couldn’t.

I’m reminded of this event for three reasons. Some of us – many of us – are compulsive overworkers. Second, the battle between Sally Rugg and the Commonwealth (nee Monique Ryan) is about overwork. And finally, in a tiny glimmer of hope for the future of working Australians, a select Senate committee last week handed down a report which was the most bipartisan thing you’ve ever seen (OK, except submarines, everyone’s down with submarines.)

The report of the Work and Care Select Committtee, chaired by Greens Senator Barbara Pocock, was tabled last week in parliament. Pocock, once a notorious overworker herself, led a peaceable committee which pretty much came to the conclusion we know to be true. We live in the 21st century under 20th century labour law and it isn’t fit for purpose. Even Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg was on board: “We need more flexibility than ever before to meet our varied obligations.”

It recommends the government overhaul workplace relations, early childhood education and care, paid leave, disability and aged care, as well as financial supports for carers. It recommends an enforceable “right to disconnect”. My favourite bit? That the Australian government request the Fair Work Commission undertake a review of standard working hours with a view to reducing the standard working week and trialling a four-day week (OK, two favourite bits).

Rugg would love this report. Ryan would say her office needs to have six times as many staff members to make it happen. And both of those things are true. The recommendations in the Work and Care Select Committee report are a utopian vision of what work should look like. It makes room for both work and for love, the cornerstones of our humanness (nah, not me, Sigmund Freud, but he’s right, right?)

No one could have predicted this report would be tabled at the same time as Rugg v Commonwealth, the biggest workplace nightmare in Parliament House since its last biggest workplace nightmare just two years ago. But it turns out Australian politicians recognise we are all working too hard and for too long. Our working hours are making us miserable.

They are designed to accommodate 1950s men, in 1950s workplaces. They are not designed to accommodate anyone who needs to care for anyone but themselves. Pocock, whose academic research in the area of work and care spans decades, tells me full-timers are donating an average a day a week of unpaid overtime.