From teachers and bus drivers to workers on the manufacturing line, Covid-19 has changed how we work. As the pandemic has forced workers and employers to reimagine long-established routines, we’ve seen a quiet revolution in workplaces across the country. While we try to imagine a world of work beyond Covid-19 and the turbulence ahead, the possibilities opened up in recent months should reshape progressive visions for working time. Amid the disruption is an opportunity to pave the way towards a future with greater flexibility, and greater control, over how, when and where we work, and on what terms. 

So far, conversations about what the pandemic might mean for the future of work have tended to fixate on the fate of the office. But for the millions of workers across the UK who need to be in a physical workplace to do their job, the Covid crisis has already rewritten the rules on how we work. On the Left, the debate on working time has been long invested in the promise of the four-day week. But progressive visions have too often been confined to the office, reliant on a simplified analysis of what innovation in working time might look like across the economy, and across working people’s lives.

A compelling progressive vision for working time must extend beyond the hyper-flexible office worker, to blue-collar jobs. It needs to reach beyond the shine of high-pay, high-productivity sectors, to grow and test solutions that work for long-established industries. Our latest research at IPPR has looked at how high-contact industries in manufacturing and engineering sectors, such as aerospace and shipbuilding, have responded to this crisis – and what it means for long-term ambitions of reduced working time. Here, on factory floors and engineering firms, full-time working models and long hours are still the norm. While other sectors have seen a rise in part-time working in recent decades, these sectors are still dominated by fixed modes of working and limited flexibility. 

But there are clear signs of progress in these industries too: before the crisis, unions were winning a shorter working week in manufacturing workplaces where employers recognised that reducing working time can boost, rather than hamper, productivity. Our research finds that one in five workers in manufacturing industries were using some form of flexible working prior to the pandemic. A survey of Prospect members working in the defence sector during lockdown found one in three respondents working flexible hours. 

We find that navigating the disruption imposed by Covid-19 had strengthened employer-union relationships, as worker-led innovations have been key to keeping workplaces running. New ways of working – through new shift patterns, more flexible start and finish times, and greater autonomy handed over to workers to manage how and when they work – have proved it is possible to boost productivity while reducing working time. As workers have enjoyed greater control, greater flexibility has fostered trust, with bosses recognising that their workforce won’t stop still as soon as they’re not in the building and on the clock.

As one interviewee put it: “Could you believe that people could have two kids at home and the employer would be happy for them to work from home?… Everyone gets it. People are making sure that employees are OK. It’s managing upwards as well. Some of the junior people telling their managers that they need some time off… I think it has brought people closer together… It’s almost like everyone’s human now.”

Now progressives need to put the case forward for the permanent adoption of more flexible ways of working in the ‘new normal.’ There are profound economic challenges ahead. The Covid crisis has illuminated the creaking foundations of the UK labour market, in which record employment rates have masked the rise of work that offers little security and entrenched low pay. In those sectors already hardest hit, the impact of the pandemic has collided with accelerating automation, creeping insecurity and the urgency of responding to our climate and nature emergencies. Against a backdrop of widening inequality and growing labour market disruption, an unemployment crisis is set to take centre stage in the months ahead.

At IPPR we’re making the case to transform the UK government’s flexible furlough offer into a short time working scheme. By sharing good work across the workforce on a reduced-hours basis as sectors recover, we can keep more people connected to their workplaces and out of unemployment where jobs are viable. This would see firms share hours across their workforce while demand is still depressed, with the scheme topping up wages where hours are lost. This could, in turn, pave the way to reduced working time in the future. 

Now more than ever, the working time debate on the Left must be live to the reality of people’s lives. Too many working people across the UK still can’t get the hours they need to make ends meet at the end of the month. Long-term trends in how we spend our time show that there are new divides opening between lower and higher earners: lower-earning men work fewer hours on average today than in the 1970s, while higher-earning households’ working hours are growing longer.

This also means recognising the deeply gendered realities of working time. Women and men are now spending roughly equal amounts of time working overall – but women are doing the lion’s share of unpaid work, whereas men are doing the majority of work that is paid. Too many women are stuck in low-paid work with little opportunity for progression so that they can juggle paid work with caring responsibilities they still disproportionately shoulder. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that low-income women in same-sex households are doing 57 per cent of all the work. While unpaid work remains so unevenly shared within our homes and across our economy, greater flexibility is an urgent demand.

We must be clear about what reductions in working time are for, and who they are designed to serve. The promise of a future in which productivity gains push up pay and conditions across the economy and good work is available to all should enable reductions in working time from the office to the factory floor. But greater flexibility in when, where and how we work can pave the way to a future in which more of our time is our own. This demands greater imagination for what reductions in working time might look like, including routes such as increased entitlement to annual leave, rather than a reinforcement of the full-time working week.

Only by looking beyond rigid full-time working models and pushing for greater flexibility in how and when we work will we be able to grasp a future that offers working people greater control of their lives. A vision for a future with less work and more leisure time must include pushing for good quality, flexible jobs to be central to our economic recovery, alongside measures to strengthen our social safety net and invest in the social infrastructure we need to lower barriers to paid work for all. 

This crisis is a moment to reimagine work, but we need a more expansive vision of how we might live and work in the future. The jobs crisis that is looming is deep and structural. As progressives set their sights on reshaping the UK labour market, we need to focus not just on how to create good, new jobs, but how we can embed better working practices across the economy.

In this moment of profound transition, progressives need to be alive to both the opportunities and challenges ahead. We need a new vision for the future of work, and for working time. Greater flexibility – and with it, the promise of greater control – will be key to securing better work and better lives for working people beyond Covid-19.