【经济学人】英国绿党提议一周放三天假丨2017.04.06丨总第871期

WITH the prospect of Easter and two bank holidays on the horizon, Britons have an embarrassment of long weekends to savour. For Caroline Lucas, the joint leader of the Green Party, that is not enough: she wants three-day weekends every week. On March 31st she announced at her party’s conference that the Greens were exploring such a policy, which could go in their manifesto in 2020.

随着复活节和周末的接踵而至，英国人可以尽情享受一个长长的假期，但是这种长假期往往使得政府感到为难。对于绿党的主要领导人Caroline Lucas来说，这远远不够：她想每周有三天假期。3月31日她在绿党的会议上宣布，绿党一直在探讨，研究这样的政策，大概在2020年能够成为绿党的竞选纲领。

• manifesto：竞选纲领；告示；宣言书

The Greens reckon that lopping a day off the working week would begin to redress the inequalities between men and women, since both paid and unpaid work might then be shared more evenly. People could do more of what they love (assuming that excludes their jobs) and would be less stressed. It would reduce Britain’s carbon footprint. And it could even boost the country’s productivity.

绿党认为，调减工作日将会开始调整男性与女性之间的不平等。因为女性上班和做家务的时间将会变得更加平衡。同时人们可以做更多他们喜欢的事情（假设其中不包括他们的工作），并且压力也会减少很多。调减工作日也将会降低英国的碳排放量。而且甚至会推动国家的生产率。

• carbon footprint.：碳排放量；碳足迹

Some evidence supports this. A paper published in 2014 by John Pencavel of Stanford University, looking at first-world-war munitions workers, shows that reducing working hours can be good for productivity.（读者试译句） Between 2007 and 2011 the American state of Utah adjusted the working week for state employees, with longer days from Monday to Thursday, and Friday off. In ten months the shift saved the state $1.8m in energy costs.

一些证据印证了这一想法。（期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~）在2007年到2011年美国犹他州将政府雇员的工作日调整为周一到周四，但是每日的工作时长会增加。这样的改变持续了10个月后，犹他州因此节省了一百八十万美元的能源费用。

• munitions ：军需品;军火；必需的设备的供应

But the Greens would go further than simply redistributing working hours over four days: they suggest that people could work fewer hours overall. Since not everyone can afford to take a 20% pay cut, “wages must go up correspondingly”—courtesy of employers and the state—“to ensure no one loses out”. The 26m employed Britons earn on average £90 ($112) a day. Covering the shortfall would cost around £120bn a year, equivalent to the budget of the National Health Service.

但是绿党想做的并不是像犹他州一样仅仅将5天的工作时间重新分配在4天里。而是建议人们可以真正的缩减自己一周的工作时间。因为不是所有人都能接受由于多放一天假而导致工薪缩减20%的事情。“如果雇主和政府愿意的话，工资应该相应的增加，确保每个人都不会亏损”两千六百万名在职的英国人每天平均能挣90镑（112美元）。一年里每周都少上一天班所节省的费用有一千两百亿英镑，相当于英国国民医疗保健制度一年的预算。

The Greens’ proposals encounter two problems. First, the theory. They argue that the reduced hours worked by some could be redistributed to others in order to lower underemployment. They thus fall prey to the “lump of labour fallacy”, the notion that there is a fixed amount of work to be done which can be shared out in different ways to create fewer or more jobs. In fact, if people worked fewer hours, demand would drop, and so fewer working hours would be on offer.

但是绿党的提议碰到两个问题。第一个是理论方面，有的人提出一些人减少的工作时长将会被重新分配给其他人，以此来降低不充分就业。这些人是深受“劳动力臃肿谬论”这一观点困扰；其含义是，需要完成的工作总量是固定的，不过这可以通过不同的方式增加或减少就业机会。但事实上，如果人们的工作时间变短，那么对劳动力的需求也会减少，所以劳动力提供的总工作时长也会减少。

Second, the cost. Increased productivity could cover some of the costs of paying a five-day wage for a four-day week, suggests Sarah Lyall of the New Economics Foundation, a think-tank. She points to a Glasgow marketing company that did just that, and experienced a 30% leap in productivity. But that is an astonishing increase to expect across the board.

第二是费用，智囊团机构新经济基金会的Sarah Lyall表示，提高的生产率可能会由于在四天工作日里支付相当于五天工作日的工资而增加了成本，她也指出Glasgow营销公司也实行这个政策，他们的生产率也上升了30%，但是各个方面的成本都有了惊人的增长。

The Greens say they are in the early stages of exploring the idea and have not yet produced firm costings. It might be useful to do so before next month’s local elections. That leaves little time—but presumably the party’s policymakers will raise their productivity accordingly.

绿党说他们对这个想法的探索还处于初级阶段，也并没有具体分析这个政策是否会影响生产型企业的成本核算。在下个月的大选前，他们可能会在党内实行这个政策，虽然工作时间会减少，但是党内的决策者大概将会相应的提高效率。

翻译 ▍栏目六第一组

审核 ▍Arias

编辑 ▍且听风吟