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Can UK workers afford ‘enforced leisure’?

It wasn’t sup­posed to be this way. In 1930, the econ­o­mist John May­nard Keynes pre­dict­ed we’d all be enjoy­ing lives of unpar­al­leled leisure by now, occa­sion­al­ly pop­ping into the office between rounds of golf and sun­ny morn­ings on the allot­ment.

The premise of Keynes’ pre­dic­tion was the speed of mech­a­ni­sa­tion. Few­er hands on the fac­to­ry floor would mean more free time for work­ers. Yet, the mod­ern era sim­ply sees us cram­ming more work into the same nine-to-five day as always.

But could that be about to change? Such is the promise of the lat­est gen­er­a­tion of auto­mat­ed tech­nolo­gies and self-learn­ing machines. Accord­ing to a report by inde­pen­dent UK research group, the Auton­o­my Insti­tute, close to a third of UK jobs could be auto­mat­ed by 2030s, lead­ing some to talk seri­ous­ly of a post-work soci­ety.

The prospect of a bet­ter work-life bal­ance cer­tain­ly fits with the spir­it of the times. Research by Time­wise, a con­sul­tan­cy and recruit­ment firm, shows near­ly nine in ten full-time employ­ees say they either work flex­i­bly already or that they would like to.

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More time for leisure or study is at the heart of this desire for flex­i­ble work­ing among almost a third of UK work­ers, says Daniela March­esi, the firm’s cam­paign direc­tor.

“The demand for flex­i­ble work­ing is huge,” she observes. “Our research busts the ‘mum myth’ too, show­ing that the desire [for a bet­ter work-life bal­ance] is equal­ly as strong in men, and that gen­er­a­tion Y – those between 18 and 25 – are lead­ing the charge.”

Extra leisure time isn’t just a poten­tial boon for the over­worked. It’s also a chance to make today’s work­place more equi­table, with the under­em­ployed and unem­ployed gain­ing a fair­er slice of work­ing hours on offer.

“By reduc­ing the work­ing week, we could see a fair­er dis­tri­b­u­tion of labour across soci­ety so that work is not thought of as being over­bear­ing or, at the oth­er end of the scale, a rare and pre­car­i­ous com­mod­i­ty,” argues Kyle Lewis, the Auton­o­my Institute’s spokesper­son.

British work­ers shouldn’t give up on the dreams of a short­er work­ing week just yet though. The impact of self-learn­ing machines, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and sim­i­lar­ly incip­i­ent tech­nolo­gies on work­ing pat­terns is only just begin­ning to be felt. Be patient, says Geraint Johnes, pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics at Lan­cast­er Uni­ver­si­ty and research direc­tor at The Work Foun­da­tion.

To date, the rise of the robots has been felt main­ly in man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries. The ser­vice econ­o­my, in con­trast, which employs four in every five British work­ers, is expect­ed to be far less impact­ed.

But come the robot-inspired leisure rev­o­lu­tion, it even­tu­al­ly will, Pro­fes­sor Johnes insists. The key ques­tion for him is how even­ly spread it will be. He cites jobs such as lor­ry dri­ving, which could be dec­i­mat­ed by autonomous trans­port, push­ing truck­ers into what he euphemisti­cal­ly refers to as “enforced leisure”.

“If we want to take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties that machines give us to have more leisure then the ide­al would be to have a fair­ly even dis­tri­b­u­tion of the ben­e­fits,” he argues.

For those on low incomes to be able to afford more leisure time, then either their wages need to go up or state wel­fare needs to increase

Such a fair dis­tri­b­u­tion will almost cer­tain­ly require gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion of some kind. If peo­ple are to work few­er hours per week, then their incomes will drop. For those on low incomes to be able to afford more leisure time, then either their wages need to go up or state wel­fare needs to increase.

But chal­lenges can be found at the high­er end of the income spec­trum as well. There needs to be a cul­tur­al shift in how we think about work and the sta­tus we afford it, says Anna Coote, head of social pol­i­cy at the New Eco­nom­ics Foun­da­tion. She sin­gles out for par­tic­u­lar atten­tion the cult of hard work and long hours, but­tressed by the per­va­sive notion that “we are what we do”.

As she says: “It’s not that hard work isn’t good. Lots of peo­ple enjoy work­ing hard. But work isn’t the only thing in life. We need to reclaim all the things we do when we’re not doing paid work, like friend­ships and car­ing for oth­ers.”

Note, she doesn’t say, “like jet­ting around the world”. In mod­ern times, leisure has increas­ing­ly mor­phed into an act of con­sump­tion. Once, all a ram­bler need­ed was an old pair of boots and a stretch of near­by coun­try­side; rebrand­ed hik­ers, now they are not equipped with­out a full Gor­tex wardrobe and reg­u­lar trips to far-away trails.

“Some hob­bies can turn into a real­ly very expen­sive and ener­gy-inten­sive way of liv­ing,” Ms Coote says. “This may be afford­able for those with the extra time, but it’s not sus­tain­able if we’re to have the kind of plan­et we want for our grand­chil­dren.”

Will Stronge echoes the need to rethink ideas of leisure as well as work. The term leisure is often mis­con­strued in mod­ern soci­ety, inter­pret­ed as a syn­onym for being idle, says Mr Stronge, also of the Auton­o­my Insti­tute.

The truth is far from it, how­ev­er. Many peo­ple have very pre­cise ideas about how they would pro­duc­tive­ly invest any extra time their jobs might allow, often show­ing a will­ing­ness to invest the kind of effort and deter­mi­na­tion they demon­strate at work, if not more.

A life of more leisure depends on a host of cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal and employ­ment fac­tors

“In a soci­ety where peo­ple could sus­tain­ably reduce their work­ing hours, we would start to see indi­vid­u­als devel­op­ing in fas­ci­nat­ing, unfore­seen ways, mak­ing use of their new free time as they see fit,” Mr Stronge says.

Auto­mat­ed tech­nolo­gies have huge time-sav­ing poten­tial, but a life of more leisure also depends on a host of cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal and employ­ment fac­tors. The ide­al sit­u­a­tion would be for peo­ple to elect for them­selves how hard they wish to work. The abil­i­ty to choose, after all, remains one of the defin­ing lines between man and machine, how­ev­er smart the lat­ter may become.