The four-day week (B1/B2)

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Warmer

1. Design your ideal week: how many hours of work, honestly? What would you do with a free Friday — really?

2. Which would you choose: a. 4 days' work, same pay b. 4 days, 90% pay c. 5 days, 110% pay? Does anyone pick c? Interrogate them.

3. Is anyone in your country talking about a shorter week? Who is against it — and what reasons do they give?

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Work words

Match the work expressions with the meanings:

1. to knock off (early)

2. to pull a sickie

3. to burn out

4. to clock-watch

5. to pull your weight

6. a slacker

a. to take a fake sick day

b. to do your fair share

c. to finish work (before time)

d. someone who avoids work

e. to collapse from overwork

f. to count the minutes until home time

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Do you have any similar expressions in your language? Is it the case that most people would just rather not work?

Read the article. Find one result that surprises you and one that doesn't.

The trial nobody wanted to end — except one man

Two years after 60 companies began a four-day-week trial, the report is out. Productivity: flat or slightly up. Resignations: down by a third. Sick days: down 40%. Of the 60 firms, 54 have kept the shorter week permanently. Employees describe the change in religious terms; one said the old five-day week now seems "like something we'll tell our grandchildren about, like smoking on planes."

The dissenting voice belongs to the CEO of a logistics firm that dropped out after four months. "It was a lovely trial — for people with laptops," he says.

"My drivers can't compress five days of deliveries into four. So the office got Fridays off and the warehouse didn't, and I had a class war in my car park by week six. Nobody writes reports about that."

Economists note the same divide: the shorter week spreads fastest in exactly the jobs that were already the most comfortable. Nurses, teachers, waiters and carers — the people voted "essential" not long ago — are largely absent from the revolution. "The risk," one researcher writes, "is not that the four-day week fails. It is that it succeeds for half of us."

Comprehension

Discussion

1. Which three statistics improved in the trial?

2. Why did the logistics firm drop out — what exactly went wrong by week six?

3. What is the researcher's fear, in your own words?

1. "Like smoking on planes" — what does the comparison claim? Is it earned?

2. Who in your town could never have a four-day week? Should everyone else wait for them?

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Where do you stand?

Mark each: agree / disagree / not sure — then defend:

1. The five-day week is a habit, not a law of nature — it's barely a century old.

2. People don't want less work; they want less pointless work.

3. If machines do more of the work, humans should work less. The gains belong to everyone.

4. A four-day week for offices while nurses do five is not progress; it's privilege with better branding.

5. Most people would be lost without required work — freedom is harder than it sounds.

What would you say?

Answer each point in one or two sentences:

"My colleague finishes everything by Thursday using AI and disappears. She's paid for five days. I work all five, without AI, honestly. Who's the problem here — her, me, or the job?"

"I'm a nurse. Every article about the four-day week is illustrated with a man in a hammock with a laptop. Write one sentence to me that isn't an apology."

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Whose question was harder? What does that tell you?

The negotiation

Roleplay in pairs, then swap roles. A is the CEO of the logistics firm from the article; B represents the warehouse workers. Negotiate a deal that ends the car-park class war — without simply cancelling the office's Fridays.

Ideas to trade: pay, shifts, extra holidays, earlier finishes, hiring.

Report your deal to the class, then vote for the one both sides could actually sign.

Discussion

1. "If machines do the work, humans should work less." Where does that logic end — three days? One? Zero? At which number does it stop being paradise?

2. What would you be without your work — honestly? Is the question exciting or frightening?

3. Some countries trial a shorter week; others trial a longer retirement age. Same century, opposite directions. Who's reading the future right?

4. If work became optional tomorrow, what would you do in month one? Month twelve? Year ten?

Homework

Write your resignation letter from the five-day week — addressed to the year 1926, which invented it.

The five-day week was an invention. So was the weekend. Somebody argued for them against people who called them impossible. What impossible thing about work will our grandchildren thank us for?

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