10/22 State of Utah saved $4.1M in one year by switching to 4day-10hr work
weeks: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ut_four_day_workweek (Not to mention
the commute time saved.)
Maybe the State of CA (a much bigger body) and our private employers
can do the same.
\_ We did this at work and maybe they saved money, but they also
receive less for the money they spend. Lots of people were
working 9 or 10 hours every day anyway. They still do, but now they
just don't come in on Friday. Productivity seems way down. In
fact, in order to meet a big deadline on a particular project
that project's management made everyone on that task switch to
a regular work week. What does that say? YMMV.
\_ Do you work in a government office? I am guesing that most
govt employees are not working 9-10 hours/day.
\_ Actually, I do work for the government. However, I will
agree this is probably atypical for the government.
\_ The article says that the biggest savings for Utah came not from
energy saving or janitoral service reduction, but from overtime
pay saving. So it won't work for positions that don't pay
overtime.
\_ It assumes people were working paid overtime to begin with
and now they will not because the work day is so long.
However, I wouldn't argue that the productivity is the
same. The article says: "They're getting what they need
to get done in 10 hours and going home" with the
implication being that they used to be there more than
40 hours but got no more work done in that time. I doubt it.
I think money is being saved, but less work is being done
as a result. People are not suddenly using their time
more productively unless the whole overtime thing was a
fiasco to begin with where people stayed to get
time-and-a-half in which case they could have just as easily
said: "No more overtime" and stayed on 5/40. This is not
a benefit of the short work week per se. |
http://csua.com/feed/