{"id":579936,"date":"2026-04-02T03:54:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T03:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579936\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T03:54:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T03:54:19","slug":"murrumbidgee-council-seeks-community-support-for-four-day-working-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579936\/","title":{"rendered":"Murrumbidgee Council seeks community support for four-day working week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Millions of Australians are about to enjoy consecutive four-day working weeks thanks to the Easter long weekend, but a council in regional NSW wants to make that a permanent arrangement.<\/p>\n

The Murrumbidgee Council in the state’s south-west is consulting ratepayers about implementing a Monday-to-Thursday work week for its depot, office and library staff, many of whom already work a nine-day fortnight.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

The council says the average daily travel time for its road crews was 160 kilometres, so its compressed working model would yield substantial productivity gains. (Supplied: Murrumbidgee Council\u00a0)<\/p>\n

General manager John Scarce said staff would still work their standard 38 or 35-hour week, but those hours would be compressed into four days.<\/p>\n

He said productivity and fuel savings, specifically for the work crews which maintain the council’s vast local road network, would be in the magnitude of around $1 million.<\/p>\n

“The average distance they travel a day is about 160 kilometres,” Mr Scarce said.<\/p>\n

“So when you look at a saving of two hours in travel time and put that into the extra longer days, it just increases productivity and hasn’t cost a cent to the ratepayers.”<\/p>\n

Mr Scarce said the proposal would be implemented at council offices in Darlington Point, Coleambally and Jerilderie as well as local libraries and depots.<\/p>\n

He said it would not apply to him, the council-run childcare centre and caravan park, and essential service workers would be on call.<\/p>\n

“We have water, sewerage and animal control, and we have emergencies we have to respond to Saturday and Sunday,” Mr Scarce said.<\/p>\n

“Friday isn’t going to be any different, we’ll still be responding to those and have staff rostered on.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

John Scarce says implementing a four-day work week could help his organisation attract and retain much needed staff. (Supplied: Murrumbidgee Council\u00a0)<\/p>\n

The modern workplace<\/p>\n

Wesa Chau, executive director of independent think-tank Per Capita, said the 38-hour work week was introduced in Australia more than 40 years ago.<\/p>\n

“Work has changed,” she said.<\/p>\n

“The labour market has changed, participation rates of women have also increased since that time.<\/p>\n

“There’s a lot more mental health issues and also with automation and technology advances, [it] means a lot of tasks take a shorter time as well.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Wesa Chau says while data shows there are many benefits of a four-day week, there were challenges to the model.\u00a0 (Supplied: Wesa Chau\u00a0)<\/p>\n

In 2023 Per Capita \u2014 which is focused on addressing inequality \u2014 released research on a trial of a four-day work week at an Australian organisation.<\/p>\n

“Ninety-two per cent of men and 60.7 per cent of women reported positive impacts on their overall health,” Ms Chau said.<\/p>\n

The trial was part of a global pilot program involving 70 organisations.<\/p>\n

Ms Chau said more than 90 per cent of those involved stuck with the four-day week after the trial concluded, and 96 per cent of employers reported a positive impact and satisfaction around staff performance and output.<\/p>\n

She said there were challenges organisations needed to consider though, particularly for those with customer-facing functions.<\/p>\n

“One of the key things is ensuring that employers don’t see this as a flexible model to erode pay,” Ms Chau said.<\/p>\n

“It does potentially reduce opportunity for team work.<\/p>\n

“There’s less time for people to collaborate or knowledge transfer between more senior staff and junior staff.”<\/p>\n

Potential recruitment tool<\/p>\n

In February, Launceston City Council<\/a> abandoned plans to become the nation’s first government organisation to implement a four-day week, citing a backlash from ratepayers and stakeholders.<\/p>\n

Mr Scarce is hopeful Murrumbidgee Council will pioneer the movement.<\/p>\n

“The council is backing us, the staff are backing us,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We need to be judged not on the fact that we’re only going to be working Monday to Thursday, we need to be judged on our outcome.”\"A<\/p>\n

The Murrumbidgee Council has offices in the Riverina towns of Darlington Point, Coleambally and Jerilderie.\u00a0 (Supplied: Murrumbidgee Council\u00a0)<\/p>\n

Mr Scarce said the move could provide a competitive edge for smaller, rural councils in terms of service delivery and staff recruitment.<\/p>\n

“We currently collect our general waste once a fortnight,” Mr Scarce said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had calls from the community wanting to have [that] collected once a week, so by extending hours I believe we would be able to accommodate that.<\/p>\n

“‘We also find it very, very difficult to employ staff, so it could be a way of helping our recruiting as well.”<\/p>\n

The council is expected to make a decision about the proposal in the coming months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Millions of Australians are about to enjoy consecutive four-day working weeks thanks to the Easter long weekend, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,284310,284309,271430,3324,102349,284311,284312],"class_list":{"0":"post-579936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-four-day-week","12":"tag-murrumbidgee-council","13":"tag-per-capita","14":"tag-productivity","15":"tag-riverina","16":"tag-short-week","17":"tag-working-monday-to-thursday"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}