Posted on 06/28/2008 7:57:45 AM PDT by Libloather
4-Day, 10 Hour Work Week
Reported by: Robin Thibault, KARK 4 NEWS
Friday, Jun 27, 2008 @04:43pm CST
The state of Utah's doing something that Arkansas state leaders are considering.
Beginning in August, state employees in Utah will work four, ten hour days per week.
That means dozens of buildings will be closed on Friday, saving energy and money.
Back at home, a legislative panel agreed to look at a similar proposal by state senator Tracy Steele.
Steele says a four day work week would save gas, cut down on emissions and improve productivity and morale.
The legislature would have the final say on this, when they meet in January.
How about improving the morale of the taxpayers? I suggest a one day work week for all state employees. Lower emissions and energy bills? You betcha.
Why close on Friday? Hospitals don’t. Just staff people on different days. It’s a good option to offer to people. Many like 2/16s or 3/12s.
If they don't work two shifts per day now though they will not be saving on electricity because they will still be working an 40 hour week. They will save their workers gas by having one less day to drive to work, however I will bet these workers will spend that extra day driving more in other pursuits. What happens to people who need to visit one of these offices and Friday is the only day open to them, guess that doesn't matter to the gubmint.
My company turns the AC wasy up (or heat way down) on weekends, but not during the night. I suspect that's where the energy savings comes from.
I’ll see that bet and raise it with this: I want the fed legislature to only work one day every 3 years. The rest of the time they can leave the people of this country alone. We were never meant to have a full time legislature that sat around making laws all day, every day. What trouble these jerks have caused the people of this country.
The last I checked, 40 hrs is 40 hrs, no matter how you count them. 4x10=5x8? How does that save energy? It will save the employees gas, and cut down on road congestion on friday drivetimes.
Ahh, but the Unions won’t let them get away with lowering the heat or turning off the AC those extra two hours a day so they will really not save money on energy. Actually even without a Union people would not stand for freezing or baking(depending on the time of year)for two hours every day.
By way of example, right now my company controls to 72ish from 6AM Monday through 8PM Friday. If we went to a 4-day work week, they could control to those temps from 6AM Monday through 8PM Thursday and still cover the 10-hour shifts.
Start local Park and Dive lots....Free Parking with a shuttle bus to major work areas.
It will save the employees gas, and cut down on road congestion on friday drivetimes.
Only if everyone stays home on friday but will they?.
Welcome to the future. The biggest growth industry in this country is gubmint. This is like the Chinese dynasties that had 10 levels of bureaucracy entrenched, often going back several generations.
If they are already covering those hours, yes, they would save energy.
We can also cut post office delivery to 5 days a week or not at all.
I think schools need to look at this.
Consider the savings with heating the buildings - most schools are not designed with energy efficiency in mind.
Also - buses. It’s bad enough that several of the buses at my school pull out of the lot with a handful of kids in them.
I don’t remember the exact numbers, but a read an interesting story recently that discussed how even a one cent increase at the pump has a hell of an impact on the post office.
Nam Vet
The gov.con workers will produce less on 10 hour days. We have to go to them to get permission for almost everything and now they will get three day weekends with their cushy jobs paid for by stealing from the worker bees.
Time to water the liberty tree.
Stevie Wonder could see ways to trim the USPS budget, but it can't be done because all of the decisions are political ones instead of business decisions.
My mail is mostly, magazines, bills, and junk. I can replace postal service and still get my bills. All mags can be delivered on the same day each wek by other carriers or I can actually read them online.
Time for the government to enter the new millennium.
On an even funnier note the HR person in our building isn't fond of this idea or telecommuting as she thinks she won't be able to keep track of who is honestly working or cheating the system! I work in I.T. and we've had a helluva time convincing the senior employees that you don't have to be at your office to do computer work.
We’d save more money if legislators could only work one day a week. Less biomass production.
The school bus gas budget is about to bring no child left behind waiting by the side of the road. Look for the Nations oil reserves to be used up in a year.
And where I work we’ll just let the inmates run free six out of seven days a week on the streets.
However, the building we work in is all state offices. Everyone else in our building will be on 4/10's, but us. Not much of a savings due to the fact that they will still have to cool/heat the majority of the building because of our office location and the location of the front door. Doesn't make much sense to us.
We also wonder...if they are using the logic that we fall under Dept of Ed, therefore they can't put schools on 4/10's, so we can't be 4/10's, we feel we should at least get summers off...just like schools. It's a feel good program. 40 hrs is 40 hrs & our building will be mostly empty 1 day a wk, while cooled/heated 5 days anyway. *sigh*
Hodar's Wife
"Junk mail?" -- the USPS refers to it as -- "REVENUE!"
Advertisers can go 100 netising. I was a manager for 16 years with the state of CA. Everytime I had an idea to save money (taxpayer money) or be entreprenuerial (is that a word?) others would moan and gnash their teeth and think of excuses why we shouldn’t do it.
My biggest gripe about the USPS is counter staff don’t know what self service options people have available to them on their own website.
When I go to the counter I’m ready to go and have postage paid.
And then staff at the counter have to ask other staff if what I am doing is lawful.
I then say I’m doing what your website says to do. Don’t you know what’s on your own website? Counter staff always reply “no”.
I’ve worked 40 hrs/4 days in some jobs, it’s a good idea, the real problem with it is getting any work out of the personnel the last two hours- but it can be done.
Also, I worked for Conrail years ago, and the work weeks were all split across the calendar- Tuesday and Wednesday off, any shift, for example.
Why not a zero day work week for government employees (they don’t do anything useful anyway). And we could save even more money by not having to pay them.
Yeah lets not lock up murderers and robbers what the heck. And along with that lets just have fires with no one to put them out. Or let people who endanger children hurt them.
When you turn off the HVAC system of a building for a few days you have to run it at maximum for a good period of time to get the building back to normal. That uses more energy than if you had left it at normal all along. It’s like stop and go driving as compared to highway driving. The idea sounds good but it just doesn’t work out that way.
This is just another excuse to not do something really usefull like reduce the size of government!
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