It’s About Making Babies!

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.

Frank W. James farms. He blogs about his love of farming and delight in gun ownership on Corn, beans, spent brass, an empty page and a deadline. During a recent trip to California he encountered those disillusioned with developing ethanol as a fuel. They found rising food prices too much to pay.

A year or two ago ethanol was the new darling save-the-planet battle cry of the global warming crowd. Congress bought in, and funded ethanol plants and related programs. Tree huggers wept for joy.

Only now there are some uncomfortable findings. Instead of saving the atmosphere from releasing the ‘cached’ carbon of oil, gas, and coal, ethanol only reduces the amount of fossil carbon required. By the time all the transport, processing, and farming are counted, there is a slight energy deficit in using ethanol.

Then NASA released their minor little study that tree huggers ignore religiously. It seems every planet in the solar system is warming up. Burning coal and oil isn’t causing global warming at all. Nor is Al Gore, thank goodness.

Brazil enjoys a worldwide admiration for turning to ethanol. What they gained, though, wasn’t reduction of carbon emissions – not when they burned 1,000 square miles of rain forest last year, according to them – they gain national security. They don’t need mideast oil.

We cannot do what Brazil did. We cannot pull 1,000 square miles of new farmland out of the air, each year. We are also unlikely to be shipping farmers in to help the effort (Mom tells me several Northwest Iowa farmers are wintering over in Brazil, to farm their season before coming home to farm ours.)

The cost of ethanol will likely never drop below that of oil/gasoline. There is no market mechanism to separate the two commodities, and those invested are unlikely to change that.

Like many recycling programs, it appears that only government subsidies will make ethanol appear to pay for itself.

Here in Oklahoma, there are farmers around me that planted corn to sell for ethanol this year, rather than other crops that looked (at the time) to bring in less cash.

Fuel costs are changing the way some of my neighbors work, what crops they are willing to plant. Costs of custom work are skyrocketing as are food and livestock feed bills. Everyone seems to be reducing amount of equipment as much as possible, turning to low-tillage techniques, hiring some work done. Several farmers always got together to bale, rather than everyone own their own. Now so few own a baler that most baling is done for hire – and the prices are skyrocketing. A couple years ago I had hay cut for $6 and acre, and large round bales baled for $6 a bale. Last fall it was $10 and $10, and prices this spring are even higher. This has a direct effect on food prices – farmers here are cutting back on the number of cows they run. Beef prices historically never change that much, so the assumption is you keep the costs low, or stop raising cows and calves. And beef and other protein source food prices go up as the supply is reduced.

Agribusiness has always been about making money. Plant the crops expected to sell the best at harvest. Pick the seed sources that seem best suited for the expected weather that year. Pick a few strains or crops that would take advantage of likely changes in the weather or market forecast, or provide a useful rotation crop to keep the ground in good condition. So the allure of ethanol markets have a big impact on farmers, many of which changed a field or three to ethanol corn.

And then we have the insanity of patented seeds. Well, the patents I don’t mind that much, it keeps lawyers busy. But the seed companies got Congress and the courts to outlaw planting anything but patented seed, essentially. Grain elevator companies cannot sell wheat or other grain for seed, if it arrived from a field. Only if it arrived in patented bags. We had a screwy spring here in Northern Oklahoma, and neighbors wanting to plant oats – cannot. There isn’t any in the area. The seed companies didn’t plan to make any extra available, and no one else is allowed to provide oats for planting. This kind of pre-season shenanigans is having a nasty impact on food and feed prices, too.

So some of ethanol still shows advantage. Congress has already spent the money for processing plants and programs, so we just as well continue down that road awhile. Replacing foreign oil with ethanol, especially if we can use ethanol and bio-diesel to run the Department of Defense machinery, would help the balance of trade, reduce the influence of OPEC on our economy, and improve our security.

But the mixed environmental story means the protesters and tree huggers aren’t as supportive of the concept.

Frank points out that urban sprawl displaces crop land – reducing the amount of ground available for raising crops. (High-tension power lines and highways also cut up and displace farm ground.) Urban sprawl also destroys old-growth forest. Which changes weather patterns, above and below ground water flows, and atmosphere quality in surrounding regions.

I imagine the best way to satisfy tree huggers and environmentalists is to advocate orchards – hazelnuts are said to produce more food per acre than other crops. Grazing cattle, goats, and pigs under pecan trees makes use of windfalls. I can see it now, cottage industries in charcoal and pecan butter. Maybe keep cows and horses for transport and manure for fertilizer. Won’t that excite the people worried about how urban sprawl raises food prices!