Launceston City Council's withdrawal of its four-day, 30.4-hour work week proposal is more than an industrial relations backflip. It is a case study in how public debate can miss the point entirely.

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After weeks of heated commentary, the council's chief executive Sam Johnson scrapped the plan citing public backlash and "unacceptable vitriol" directed at staff. Mr Johnson reminded employees they are not "abstract figures in a debate" but residents and ratepayers who "serve this city every day" and deserve respect.

That reminder should not have been necessary.

Critics of the proposal framed it as a threat to service delivery. If staff worked fewer hours, the argument went, residents would get less for their rates. From letters to the editor, the most significant fear appeared to be the closure of customer service counters. On social media, the loudest complaints were that the four-day work week would result in slower response times, diminished access to council services, and the unfairness of council workers getting five days' pay for four days' work. All of these were jumped on by the business lobby and were easy lines to run - and ultimately politically potent ones.

But these complaints misunderstood the proposal's purpose. Perhaps deliberately in the business lobby's case.

The four-day work week was not conceived as a perk in isolation. It was a recruitment and retention strategy aimed at filling long-standing vacancies without dramatically inflating wages. Like many regional employers, the City of Launceston is competing for skilled workers in a tight labour market. Councils are not immune to the same workforce pressures affecting health, education and private industry.

Mr Johnson has tried three times to recruit a strategic planner and failed, conceding that the council does not offer salaries or conditions competitive with those in mainland states.

A shorter working week can be a recruitment and retention tool. It can make hard-to-fill roles more attractive. It can stem the loss of experienced staff.

In other words, it can help fill the very gaps that undermine service delivery in the first place.

Here is the irony: had the strategy succeeded, more roles may have been filled. More people working at the council would likely have led to improved responsiveness, not a decline. The debate fixated on hours per individual, rather than total capacity across the organisation.

Now the proposal is gone. The chief executive has not ruled out rate rises to fund the revised agreement that replaces it. That, too, will spark debate. The revised agreement replaces the shorter week with optional compressed hours - 38 hours across four days - a 5 per cent pay rise in 2026, and in 2027 either 4 per cent or CPI, whichever is higher. Superannuation provisions will remain intact. Mr Johnson told the media that staffing costs already sit at $60 million in a $160 million operation. "You don't have to be a mathematician," he said, to understand what compounding increases mean for the bottom line.

It is worth asking whether a more measured discussion of workforce strategy might have served the city better than a social media pile-on and a predictable "how will we compete" refrain from the business lobby, which could have been answered simply by the point I made in my last article. Not every job can become a four-day-a-week proposition; some are not 9 to 5, and employee flexibility is provided in other ways, like working from home. A temperature check of council staff shows they are hopping mad with the business lobby. They see it has interfered in their EBA negotiations, where they had no business doing so.

Better service delivery depends not just on how long people work, but on whether they can be hired and kept at all.

Public and media scrutiny of council decisions is healthy. Personal attacks on staff are not. If Launceston wants better services, it must first accept that those services depend on attracting and keeping capable people. On that point, many critics appear to have missed the mark.

Craig Thomson is editor of The Examiner.

Tributes & Funerals Notices

Anstie, Julian David1927 - 2026

Anstie, Julian David2026

Anstie, Julian David1927 - 2026

Black , Alexander2026

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