I still don't buy that. In an office job you can find cost neutral ways to cut hours: a lot of people in this thread have said they would work harder in less ti

I still don't buy that. In an office job you can find cost neutral ways to cut hours: a lot of people in this thread have said they would work harder in less time to achieve the same outcome, as a really simple example. That's patently not an option in the service industry. You help people cut hours but now a restraunt, say, needs a percentage more staff (each of whom comes with a salary overhead) at a higher hourly wage. This is before you consider the scale of it. About 85% of UK jobs are in the service sector. There is a massive labour shortage in key service areas anyway. At the same time, highly leveraged office workers cut their hours and have more leisure time, so service industry demands go up. It's just not an easy pitch to make in my book. If I wanted to cut my hours I absolutely could come up with some automation and investment to help me do that, and my employer might agree to invest in that because I have high value and strong individual leverage. That is just untrue for the vast majority of the service industry.