Comment by aragilar

Absent either strong unions (or similar bargaining capability) or laws, businesses (and employers more generally) do get to dictate the terms of employment. The gig economy is an excellent example of it, no 40-hour work weeks there (which to be clear, I think is a bad thing, we need stronger employment laws). Furthermore, when bargaining you need to work out your aims, what conditions you are willing to trade off. By far the simplest way to reduce your hours is to take a pay cut (and similarly, to reduce the number of days with the same pay is to work more hours per day), so again, unless you want a pay cut, I don't see where the less hours in winter come from (I'm not located somewhere it snows, but maybe you could do a hybrid WFH where you left early to ensure your commute was in daylight and argue that it's a WHS improvement)?