Aileen MacMillan

The long weekend may become more commonplace. For those of you who just celebrated Independence Day, I hope it was safe and happy. Along with holiday weekends like July 4th/Independence Day, another type of long weekend is getting attention: one that is company imposed to cut costs.

A quick search of Yahoo! News reveals many stories from across the United States describing how organizations are considering a 4 day-40 hour work week. For example, the State of Utah is requiring employees, whose job duties lend themselves to this type of arrangement, to work Monday to Thursday and take Friday off. Mike Stark of the Associated Press writes about this move and the resulting cost savings that are approximated to be in the millions. In addition – according to the article – not only will the state save money, employees will also save a great deal on their personal gas bills with one less day to commute.

The idea of a four day work week is certainly not new. Try typing the term “four day work week” into the search engine for the New York Times. Articles were written on the topic in 1960, 1969, 1971, and 1972 and as recently as 2008. Some of the early articles even proposed that the change was inevitable. We now know that the idea was not universally accepted, but perhaps today’s conditions are different.

With oil prices climbing at an accelerating pace, maybe the incentives for a four day work week are higher today than they were a decade or two ago. Other suggested spin off benefits include an increased ability to attract and retain talented workers and improved employee productivity. Of course, there are opponents of the idea who argue that 10 hour days are too long or put undue stress on parents seeking childcare.

The emergence of state-wide initiatives such as the one in Utah, however, may push other organizations to follow suit. At the very least, these initiatives will provide visible experiments to help clarify the benefits or pitfalls that go hand-in-hand with a four day work week.

Time will tell whether or not four day work week initiatives become the norm or simply provide fodder for the stories found in the archives of the nation’s newspapers.

References:

Maag, Christopher. “At $100 for a Tank of Gas, Some Choke on ‘Fill it’.” The New York Times, July 6, 2008.

Stark, Mike. “Utah is going to a 4-day workweek to save energy.” Associated Press, 2008.