Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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Ms McElwee has a point there. The question is what to do about that. For me, what to do about that is not to have a model whereby we try to extract 25% more productivity from workers on a per-hour basis, precisely because workers are already very heavily managed, their time is heavily managed in many cases and they already have stressful lives. We should accept that there is a four-day week and an employer will pay a certain cost for that.

It relates to another question I wanted to ask Ms McElwee. I just finished reading a book by Jason Hickel called Less is More. He makes the point that gains in labour productivity have been appropriated by capital. Instead of shortening the working week and raising wages, companies have pocketed the extra profits and required employees to keep working just as much as before. In other words, productivity gains have been used not to liberate humans from work, but rather to fuel constant growth. Those who have looked at the evolution of working hours over recent decades have found that productivity has increased, yet workers find they continue to work the same amount. Looking at the share of wealth created, as GDP or GNI, that is going to profit over that period of time, it has increased pretty much year on year. Going back to 1960, 32% of GDP was going to profit; now it is over 50% and, proportionately, the share going to labour has gone down. Given the massive increase in profit share that has happened in this country, would Ms McElwee share that assessment of what has taken place and accept the introduction of a four-day week is one way of rectifying that?