The Four day Week--it's an option now that everybody's Broke

For years, advocates of work-life balance have suggestedshorter weeks. Women themselves hardly dare ask—for fear of losing their jobsor being placed on mommy-list.   

Maybe you’ve read about it in  the  “lite” lifesection of the paper.   HRpeople called it flex time—just a special way of saying, can we employ motherswithout totally grinding them into the ground with two LONG double shifts. 

Having a four day work week allows for more family time.  It can bring “balance” to a workingfamily.   Balance is a code word meaning the absence of insanity andbone-crushing fatigue for working women.

The Dutch, Belgians and French have played with shorter workweeks.  But the idea never got veryfar….until gas hit four bucks a gallon.  

Now, it’s suddenly a goodidea—written about on the cover of the business section.  Hundreds of US cities, the State of Utahand a few manufacturers have switched to a four-day week.

But this Revolution of Human Resourcs is not just aboutreducing employees’ gas spending. It’s employers who are going to save  big money  in energycosts.  Closing down entire officesfor a three day weekend is cited as a big savings in electricity and heat.

Now that the economy is sinking—like single-hulled oiltanker on an iceberg, even some manufacturers are considering it.  Chrysler has put out an appeal to UAWworkers and there’s a plant in Southern Ontario who has made the switch.

The benefits to humans comes as an afterthought.

In the newspaper articles about this shift in work culture,as you get toward the end of the inverted pyramid, where the least importantstuff goes, someone finally mentions how a four day week can be good for families.

So that’s the order of importance:  Gas bills, heating costs, and then parents and children.