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Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

The UK tried an experiment in 1974 with a 3 day work week, rigidly enforced, for everyone.

At the start of 1974 there was a national miner's strike. In order to preserve coal and power all commercial users were limited to 3 specified days electricity consumption in every 7. That lasted 2 or 3 months, and came right after the oil crisis.

At home there were regular power cuts and houses were freezing places illuminated by candle. This is when the UK became very interested in central heating.

From the government's own figures, a 40% reduction in working hours caused just a 4% drop in productivity.

I am surprised there haven't been studies to try and validate that experience outside of of strikes and crises. The government's own study and the result seems to have been silently forgotten.

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> From the government's own figures, a 40% reduction in working hours caused just a 4% drop in productivity.

and

> That lasted 2 or 3 months,

It's quite possible that people 'pulled together' to get through the crisis, similar to how people managed in the war with the 'Dunkirk Spirit'. Just because we seemingly did well through a three month crisis does not mean that is a long term sustainable plan.

Would you not agree that ‘pulling together’ should be the norm for a successful society? I agree that the high levels of stress are unhealthy however.

Yes, I totally agree that everyone should work with the wider long term best interests at heart. This covers all sorts of areas, one I'm particularly passionate about is the disgusting states of the streets being strewn with litter. That is due to short term narrow minded laziness in most cases, we should all be proud of the environment and make a little effort to keep it tidy, everyone benefits.

This was an extreme situation though, as one of the other posters mentioned revising for A levels by candlelight, I'm sure that's not something we'd want to become the norm.

> Just because we seemingly did well through a three month crisis does not mean that is a long term sustainable plan.

It would be interesting to know more about the effects of that crisis. Presumably many companies kept afloat by methods such as using accumulated stock or putting things on back order and such like. If I was ordered to go down to 3 days rather than 5, I’d be running long days if possible, or doing all the things that took a lot of energy on those days. These things are obviously unsustainable but how much did they come into it?

Longer days were prohibited. Continuous users of electric had a 65% of usual consumption limit imposed. :)

Broadcast TV shutdown at 1030pm, a 50mph speed limit was introduced as was a low max temperature for offices (63F).

Hospitals, food shops and newspapers were exempt. Power cuts were often - but because of the regulations you knew when they were due. My parents collected a selection of camping lamps, a good supply of candles, and a single gas ring to connect to the mains gas point by hose as we had an electric cooker.

I remember much sitting in candle light wearing coats and blankets in the house.

This from a Conservative govt. The dispute and three day week ended when they lost the election to Labour.

A little more here: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.natio...

> This from a Conservative govt. The dispute and three day week ended when they lost the election to Labour.

I don't want to get too embroiled in historical politics here but reading http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/6/... gives :-

> 1972: Pay and price freeze aims to curb inflation. The Conservative Government has frozen pay and prices in an attempt to halt spiralling inflation.

and

> Wages and prices had started to spiral out of control after the collapse of agreements between the previous Labour Government and the unions.

> The Conservative Government's moratorium on price and wage increases passed into law as the Counter-Inflation bill.

As tends to be the case one change of Government tries to fix an inherited problem and that generates it's own set of problems.

It only rated mention as being surprising rather than anything party political. The details were so far removed from what we might expect from the Conservatives. Well, any modern party really.

> moratorium on price and wage increases

Economically the seventies were rather a mess. A wage freeze would be challenging with double digit inflation. I remember power cuts at other times throughout the decade, I think up until the Thatcher govt came in to push back the unions.

That was my first thought when I first heard of this.

Despite living through it, and revising for A Levels by candle light, I knew nothing of the surprisingly minor effect on productivity until I saw a BBC documentary looking back.

You didn't mention (and I don't personally know anything about the situation you're talking about), but did they maintain the same pay? That is an absolutely critical part of the equation. Cutting peoples work week and cutting their pay is quite a bit different from just cutting the work week, so I think it'd be good to mention.

This is a fascinating point.

Although one would need to tally this with worker stress.

Did companies have three continuous days of power?

Also this could mean there was only one day of overlap if two companies were working together.

Quite often there are trivial blocking details that just take a second to resolve, the benefit of experience to provide needed information upfront to ease things through.

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