Four-day workweek? Don't be hasty, Bill
7/15/2008
This summer, our politicians are falling all over themselves trying to look as if they're doing something about Big Oil's latest gambit — no, not contrived shortages and long lines at the pump, at least not yet, but amid outrageous profits, soaring motor-fuel costs crippling business, consumers and governments.
New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson, hot on the heels of Utah counterpart Jon Huntsman, is thinking of putting huge numbers of state employees on a four-day workweek. Still others may be allowed to telecommute from home via computer.
The idea, he says, is to "help alleviate the strain of high gas prices on state employees and taxpayers while ensuring that the public's access to state government remains our top priority." The italics are ours — on words New Mexicans should hold him to.
Here and in many parts of the country, the public is being treated to a re-run of the hippie era, when the notion of a week's work for a week's pay was roundly ridiculed.
Bolstering the proposals of 10-hour days and four-day weeks was a certain amount of specious reasoning: Since the first and last hour of the day tend to be goof-off time, according to studies, there'd be only eight, not 10, hours a week frittered away. This as opposed to more conscientious employees?
Fuel-cost savings were advanced then, as now, along with fewer emissions and less exposure to them, less road maintenance, fewer accidents, greater sanity, lower child-care costs and more time with family.
Not to mention what both the public and private sector would like: higher productivity.
Really? Some workers will find 10-hour days a drag — which might be reflected in their daily output. Others might thrive on a schedule giving them long weekends. The jury will be out, at any rate — while taxpayers wonder who'll be around to serve them.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory, there's a two-part system at work, allowing every other Friday off — yet boosts productivity, while covering bases.
The state's Economic Development Department will start a pilot project next month. Will it mean 7 a.m.-6 p.m. shifts — or will some managerial types tell workers to get their old 40-hour work done in 32? Incentive might lie in such a proposal — but so do questions about too many employees, and tax-supported salaries, in the first place. We trust that department employees will be examples of diligence during the trial period.
As for telecommuting, it must be approached with great caution, by management and workers alike: What kind of Big Brother surveillance will it take to make sure someone's actually at work 40 or more hours a week?
It's been 70 years since our nation went to the 40-hour week. Other countries have long made do with fewer work hours — just as they've promoted mass transit and other fuel-cost efficiencies. In many ways, we're the big and backward sibling of the industrial world; thus the revolutionary nature of gas-price prompted shifts in conservative Utah, and the ones our less-conservative governor is introducing.
Taxpayers should take comfort in his cautious approach — and help him keep an eye on its results.