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Advent of the Four-Day Work Week
May 27, 2008An article in the Wall Street Journal tonight (Oil Prices Prompt Four-Day Week) talks about a group of smaller towns and community colleges switching to four ten-hour work days, and how larger local governments are showing interest as well:
I was thinking about this very topic only yesterday, when Alert Reader and BBQ Genius Jim mentioned a four-day work week. The price of oil and gas are the main drivers (no pun intended) (no, really) of this, and the savings could be considerable:
Mr. Patterson is seeking approval from the county's Board of Commissioners to install a four-day, 40-hour workweek that would remain in place for "the foreseeable" future. As many as 1,500 of the county's 4,000 employees could end up working four 10-hour days a week instead of five eight-hour days.
Assuming gas stays at $4 a gallon and workers use two gallons for each round trip to work, Mr. Patterson estimated the savings from having 800 workers commuting only four days a week could save them a total of about $300,000 over the course of a year."
And work commutes are not the only thing on the American chopping block: this CNN article cites Department of Transportation figures that show Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles in March 2008 than March 2007. 11 Billion. With a B. I checked online and it's only 746 million miles to Saturn. So Americans drove less than more than the distance to Saturn in one month. (Sorry, it's getting late.) That seems pretty amazing.
I suspect four-day work weeks, telecommuting and video conferencing are all going to be looked at as possible solutions to mitigate the cost of gasoline, which is soon going to be somewhere between $4 and $18 a gallon, depending on the news story you're reading.
What do you think? Would you jump at a four-day work week? Or telecommute one day a week?
More at the WSJ (behind a subscription wall)
Comments
I vote for three 12 hour days : )
Posted by: Gary | May 29, 2008 2:41 PM
I'm voting for three 6 hour days.
Posted by: Jim | May 30, 2008 8:07 PM
I used to telecommute, but I ended up working more like 60-80 hour weeks. Until I couldn't keep typing for long stretches, anyway.
Posted by: Susan B. | May 30, 2008 11:01 PM
What happens if you need to get your driver's license renewed and all the employees are on their 5th day off?
(You don't drive for three full days, that's what!)
Posted by: Sue T | June 3, 2008 5:14 PM
I already work 10 hr days, but normally it's something like 8 in a row, or 6 in a row and one off and then 2 more in a row, and then I have a big break of days off. Unfortunately, I use that nice long stretch of time off to go out of town, so it really doesn't save me any gas at all.
Posted by: Laura W-A | June 26, 2008 11:43 PM