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This essay discusses the history of working time in the UK and why working hours, having consistently fallen since the mid-nineteenth century, have ceased to fall in recent decades. Full-time employees in the UK now work the longest hours of all EU countries and yet are less productive than some of their European neighbours. Kay suggests that it is primarily the institutional makeup of the UK that has kept the working week so long. She explores the different arguments for reducing working hours, touching on the broader philosophical debate about the value of work. By taking the Netherlands, France and Germany as case studies, she makes policy recommendations on how the UK could change its norms around working time.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-21134-9_17

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