We should all be working a four-day week. Here’s why | Owen Jones

Ending life-sapping excessive hours was a pioneering demand for the labour movement. For the sake of our health and the economy we need to revisit it

Imagine there was a single policy that would slash unemployment and underemployment, tackle health conditions ranging from mental distress to high blood pressure, increase productivity, help the environment, improve family lives, encourage men to do more household tasks, and make people happier. It sounds fantastical, but it exists, and it's overdue: the introduction of a four-day week.

The liberation of workers from excessive work was one of the pioneering demands of the labour movement. From the ashes of the civil war, American trade unionism rallied behind an eight-hour day, "a movement which ran with express speed from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California", as Karl Marx put it. In 1890 hundreds of thousands thronged into Hyde Park in a historic protest for the same demand. It is a cause that urgently needs reclaiming.

Related: The machine age is upon us. We must not let it grind society to pieces | Chuka Umunna

Related: CitySprint accused of 'making a mockery' of employment rights