On 4 day work week - Oh, please.
Sharon Astyk at Causabon’s Book (”Sabbaths: Public and Personal“) admires the article that Aaron on The Oil Drum wrote, “The Four Day Work Week: Sixteen Reasons Why This Might Be an Idea Whose Time Has Come“.
10 years ago I worked at a Lockheed Martin R&D plant in Goodyear, AZ. They worked a 9 day/two weeks schedule. The work week began at noon on Friday. Monday through Thursday were nine (9) hour days. On Friday, we alternated. One Friday everyone worked Friday morning to finish the week’s 40 hours, and that Friday afternoon worked the first 4 hours of the following week. The next Friday no one worked - the 40 hours were completed on the previous day. Setting the beginning of the work week at noon Friday made the calculations and mechanics of working two weeks with one day less to commute work easily.
Sharon and Aaron enthuse about saving fuel, about saving the energy needed to run the plant, and about extra family time.
Sharon, for her part, wants to make not just one less commute day, but a legally mandated ‘no commerce day’, a day of freedom from supervision, work - a sabbath.
My first inclination, when I started reading Sharon’s post (good reading, very thoughtful, as always), was that she overstated the resistance and inability of industry to adapt to a four day work week, short of a law imposing the issue. My observation is that the resistance is in labor unions, labor union contracts, and labor union leaders. Labor unions are perhaps the epitome of conservative social agendas, dragging industries into bankruptcy to protect their status quo and their positions of power. And yet labor unions, by and large, support Democratic candidates and campaigns (maybe easier to influence, more naive? Hello! President Jimmy Carter - does that ring a bell?!)
No, corporations can choose to manage their affairs quite easily - many companies find Friday a weak day for productivity anyway. Whether the pre-weekend slacking would just drift to erode Thursday, assuming a Monday-Thursday work week, will be interesting to watch. Working out what a ten (10) hour day means for start times vs. other familiy commitments such as school times, day care, doctor appointments, etc. will be interesting, but doable. Breaks, meal times, etc. will work themselves out.
But Sharon seems enamored of the idea that the commuteless day means more family time. Ha! Unless schools go to 4 day weeks, that won’t happen. What families need is not ‘quality’ time as portrayed on TV - they need more time of kids working, parents working and all working together. It is in sharing work that kids learn values, learn discipline, and learn about society, culture, and beliefs in the family. And most families don’t / won’t share work with kids. They don’t have any work to share.
Sure, that extra home-day could be put to use doing major garden work, but various seasons in the garden need daily attention to prosper. Once-a-week, even a three-day span, will have to be awfully well planned and fit weather and garden growth status.
The results I saw of the extra weekend day every other week? More shopping, more time in the car than the usual commute. Yes, the plant did operate 10% fewer days. Except for those people that worked overtime for late projects, or critical projects, or because they needed the extra hours for utility bills.
Most companies use a number of computers. Most business computers assume that humidity and temperature will remain reasonably constant. Most businesses leave the A/C running when the plant is ’shut down’. Major industry will probably show a major change as heavy machinery is idled and powered down, but office type enterprises will show surprisingly little change in energy usage.
Sharon raised the issue of service industries, such as hospitals that are expected to operate 24/7. What about Telephone worker’s unions that hold out for contracts with mandatory overtime for employees - that the company cannot reduce?
What to do?
The cable company here in North Central Oklahoma has cables strung from utility poles. On any given day, I have no problem finding a service truck changing a customer’s services, or making repairs. This is a massive, ongoing operation - with a sizable utility truck. Recently the city installed satellite monitors on all water meters, so water meter trucks don’t have to check each meter each month for accurate billing - that saves fuel and resources. Ohio has been testing broadband over power lines for a couple of years. If that technology comes online, power companies can do many things - charge day rates and night rates, save the cost of human meter readings each month, remotely monitor for unexpected outages or voltage problems.
And I expect the cable truck will still be mending lines, tracking leaks and shorts, and looking for thieves that tap into the line illegally.
Does Wal-Mart have a setup for me to fill out a shopping list, that I can have a neighbor or a delivery service pick up? Not yet. I still have to make my own way to the store to get what is on my list. Does my community have a general delivery service, similar to UPS but serving local merchants and their customers? Not yet.
Does the IRS still limit moving costs, to be closer to work, to moving 35 miles closer, at least? As far as I know. I am also unaware if they mandate that that ‘closer to work’ be within 4 miles, or 10 miles. And moving closer to work has to be the single most effective way to reduce highway congestion for rush hour, reduce fuel usage for commutes, and increase time available for home.
Or time for the three-day-a-week second career that Sharon and Aaron’s four day week will create. Hide and watch.