Stimulus: The four-day week, three linked texts

Amser i Fyw (“Time to Live”) is an invented campaign group that wants employers to move to a four-day working week with no cut in pay. It ran a six-month trial with 20 employers in south Wales. When the trial ended it published Text A, an infographic, on social media and as a poster. Text B is a transcript of a speech by one of the employers in the trial. Text C is the full set of results from the trial, which the campaign published on its website.

Text A: the campaign infographic (a non-continuous text)

Text B: transcript of a spoken text

Carys Morgan owns Popty Carys, a small bakery. She took part in the trial. She gave this speech at a public meeting about the four-day week in a community hall in the south Wales valleys. About 80 people were there, including other business owners.

Transcription key: (.) short pause · (2) pause of about 2 seconds · [ ] what the audience does · CAPITALS: a word Carys stresses.

Right (.) thank you. Erm (.) I’m Carys, I run Popty Carys, the bakery on the high street (.) some of you know me [laughter] some of you owe me for a Welsh cake [laughter]. So. We signed up for the trial. I believed in it. I STILL believe in the idea. But I want to tell you what actually happened in a bakery (.) because nobody’s asked me.

My bakers start at four in the morning. FOUR. The bread doesn’t know it’s a four-day week (.) the ovens still need someone on a Friday. So what did we do? We squeezed five days into four, and then I worked the Fridays myself. (2) By month three I was exhausted. Two of my staff told me the long days were harder than the old ones. We lost Friday trade, we lost the Saturday wedding orders, and we took less money than the same months last year.

And at the end (.) they sent a survey. I didn’t fill it in. I was (.) honestly, I was too tired to fill it in. [laughter] And now there’s a poster going round saying ninety-two per cent of employers are keeping it. Well (.) nobody rang me to ask why I didn’t reply. Nobody rang the café. Nobody rang the pub.

I’m not saying it’s wrong. For an office, maybe it’s brilliant, and I’m pleased for them, I am. But don’t put up a poster that says it works for EVERYONE (.) when you only counted the people who said yes. [applause]

Text C: the full trial results

Published by Amser i Fyw on its website, under the heading “Full results”. The same figures are in four-day-week-trial-data.csv.

Employer	Sector	Staff	Wellbeing before	Wellbeing after	Change	Sick days before	Sick days during	Output change	Keeping it?
Ffenest Design	Office	12	6.9	8.4	+1.5	20	7	+4%	Yes
Llwybr Legal	Office	18	6.6	7.8	+1.2	31	22	+1%	Yes
Cwmwl Software	Office	25	7.1	8.3	+1.2	38	26	+6%	Yes
Taith Travel Agents	Office	9	6.8	7.9	+1.1	14	10	0%	Yes
Seren Accounts	Office	15	6.5	7.7	+1.2	26	19	+2%	Yes
Glan Marketing	Office	7	7.0	8.2	+1.2	9	6	+3%	Yes
Afon Housing Association	Office	40	6.6	7.6	+1.0	66	48	−1%	Yes
Pont Recruitment	Office	11	6.9	7.7	+0.8	17	13	+5%	Yes
Popty Carys	Hospitality and retail	14	7.0	6.6	−0.4	21	24	−6%	No reply
Y Llew Coch	Hospitality and retail	19	6.7	6.8	+0.1	30	29	−3%	No reply
Siop Dillad Nia	Hospitality and retail	6	7.2	7.7	+0.5	8	6	+2%	Yes
Caffi’r Parc	Hospitality and retail	10	6.8	6.4	−0.4	15	17	−8%	No reply
Gwesty’r Bae	Hospitality and retail	32	6.5	6.6	+0.1	52	50	0%	No reply
Gofal Cartref Tawe	Care and health	45	6.4	6.5	+0.1	80	74	−2%	No
Deintyddfa Wen	Care and health	8	7.1	7.8	+0.7	11	8	+1%	Yes
Meithrinfa Enfys	Care and health	16	6.9	7.1	+0.2	25	23	0%	No reply
Fferyllfa’r Cwm	Care and health	9	6.8	7.0	+0.2	13	12	0%	No reply
Dur Bach Engineering	Manufacturing	38	6.6	7.3	+0.7	61	45	+3%	Yes
Coed Crefft Joinery	Manufacturing	13	6.9	7.6	+0.7	19	13	+1%	Yes
Printio Pixel	Manufacturing	21	6.7	7.0	+0.3	33	30	0%	No reply
All 20		368	6.8 average	7.4 average	+0.6	589 total	482 total

The four-day week: three linked texts

About the texts

Text A: the campaign infographic (a non-continuous text)

Text B: transcript of a spoken text

Text C: the full trial results