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Gifts from The Morning Star
The working week doesn’t have to look the way it does today
JAMES MEADWAY reminds us that the standard eight-hour day, five days a week is only a relatively recent invention

THE four-day week trials, overseen by the think tank Autonomy, working with researchers from Oxford, Cambridge and Boston universities, came to an end last week.

Over 80 companies signed up to take part, promising to reduce their typical working hours by a day, but keep pay the same.

There’ll be a full report due out in February, but early results sound encouraging, with businesses reporting both happier staff and improvements in their productivity.

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