Working nine to five, what a way to make a livin.

Nobody said it better than Dolly Parton when it comes to lamenting long hours.

But after what seems like an eternity of the eight-hour day, five-day week norm,

working time reduction now appears to be making a comeback to the centre of debate,

at least in some quarters, and particularly in the form of the four-day

week idea. But working time is of course fundamentally a workplace issue, and that makes it

core trade union territory. So what is the role of the Labour movement in this debate today?

Agneshke Piazner is a senior researcher here at the ETIWI, who has recently co-authored the paper

Negotiating Working Time Reduction, a study of two large manufacturing firms in Italy where cuts in working time were achieved through collective bargaining.

She's here to talk to us today about what it means practically to implement these changes

at the workplace level, but also how we can rethink our societal norms around working

time more broadly.

Or as Dolly Parton would put it, how we can pour ourselves a cup of ambition.

I'm your host, Bethany Staunton,

and you're listening to ETIP Podcast, Voices on the World of Work.

Agneshka, thanks for coming on the podcast today.

If we look back to the hardships of the Industrial Revolution era, some might argue, though,

we have it pretty good, at least most of us here in Europe.

We have it pretty good in comparison to the hours people had to work back then.

And we know that's in huge part due to the historic achievements of

organized workers in the labor movement in reducing working time. But zooming forward to today,

is it fair to say that we've settled into some working time norms that haven't actually

...