Just about any job where there are a large number of effectively interchangeable workers it makes sense to let them trade shifts amongst themselves almost without limit. It doesn’t matter *why *two workers want to swap two particular work shifts. As long as everything is covered and the company knows who to expect on duty and who to pay, life’s good.
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I was in reservations, so there were around 100 of us. They didn’t even need to be told who was going to be working, as long as the shift was covered. Whoever signed in was the one who was paid. The only limit was we couldn’t work more than 14 days in a row.
This was my old schedule, and it was great. I never had to take any time off for appointments or errands, and as I have a tendency to run myself into the ground, I still generally had enough time to catch up on things. I, unfortunately, don’t have that schedule anymore, and it makes the work week a whole lot longer.
And to the OP, compressed schedules are fairly common in the federal government at least. Tons of people do RDO (regular day off) which is eight 9-hour days and one 8 hour day with one scheduled day off every two weeks, often with a telework day on the same day on the opposite week, so it’s close to a 4-day work week.
All the science and math is pointing toward it making a lot of sense, which is why I think it’s started to get adopted. Even if there were no improvement in productivity, just not having to commute one day a week would save me a good chunk of time and money. Hell, I remember hearing about one state government out west (Utah, maybe) that went to full 4x10, and then they could save on power and climate control and all that by shutting the buildings down for one more day a week. IIRC, they claimed they were saving 10-15% of their operating costs.
But there are laws that come into play in some situations.
For example, if your work day is 10 hours long and you normally are scheduled to work 4 days per week, but instead you trade days off with another worker so you’re working all seven days, then you just worked 70 hours in a single week. If you make minimum wage, your employer is required to pay you time-and-a-half for the extra 30 hours, so even though you only worked 70 hours you get paid as if you worked 85 hours.
Look at it from the employer’s point of view. If you have two employees who are supposed to work 40 hours each, this week and next week, but they switch shifts so that one of them works 70 hours this week and 10 hours next week while the other works 10 hours this week and 70 hours next week, then you (the employer) have to pay each of them as if they worked 95 hours over the two week period, instead of 80. You’re on the hook for an extra 30 hours and you get absolutely nothing to show for it. In fact, your workers’ productivity might suffer from fatigue and lack of sleep. So you’re paying more money and getting less stuff done. I’d hardly call that “life’s good”.
It’s even more complicated if they earn slightly more than minimum wage. Then you have to calculate how much they would have gotten paid if they’d been paid time-and-a-half-overtime at minimum wage, see if that hypothetical number is larger than what they actually earned at their real wage, and if it’s larger then you have to make up the difference by paying them more that week.
The rules for when time-and-a-half applies and when it doesn’t are a little tricky and can vary from state to state. Basically, employees who earn minimum wage and aren’t supervisors definitely get time-and-a-half. Employees who are not supervisors and earn more than minimum wage get time-and-a-half if their total annual salary is below a certain threshold ($23,660), which up until recently hadn’t been adjusted for inflation. Obama just issued an executive order adjusting the threshold for inflation (bumping it up to $50,440), taking effect in 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/business/obama-plan-would-make-more-americans-eligible-for-overtime.html?_r=0 So lots of people will soon qualify for time-and-a-half who might not even know that they qualify. Supervisors are basically screwed.
As an employer, you never know when overtime is going to suddenly bite you. You might schedule an employee to work 40 hours and then on Friday afternoon something big comes up and you need them to stay late to get the job done. So now they worked 42 hours. Which means you have to pay them for 43 hours. A simple way to reduce the chance of that happening is to schedule the employee to only work 35 hours. Then if they go over by 1 hour, it’s only 36 and you don’t have to pay them time-and-a-half. The down side is that you might make your employees mad if they wanted a full 40 hours and you only scheduled them for 35.
BTW, you might think “Hey, if you worked 42 hours this week, I’ll just schedule you to work 38 hours next week and then I don’t have to pay you overtime” but that’s called comp time and it’s illegal in this state (Oregon) unless you’re a government employee.
I used to work 7 10 hour days, followed by 7 days off. Averaged out to 35 hours a week, and they bumped it up to 80 for the two-week pay period. In exchange, we got zero paid time off and had to work holidays (though we got time and a half holiday pay). I liked it at the time, but I don’t think I’d go back to it.
It annoys me that the culture these days seems to value and esteem people who are willing to let their employer squeeze huge amounts of essentially unpaid work out of them - salaried people who work 70 or 80 hour weeks or more. Why is THAT considered the “good” way to be instead of taking the attitude that “I am valuable. I do valuable things. I will work but I expect to be compensated for the value that I provide”?
The shifts overlapped and Deps did not get transferred to a different shift for at least 3 months. Every 8 hours there were fresh Deputies coming on. The overlap occurred at peak times which allowed more on duty at those times without the need for overtime.
An example of ones schedule would be:
On: Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs **Off:**Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon
**On: **Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri Off: Sat, Sun, Mon, Tues On: Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat Off: Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed
**On:**Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun Off: Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs
Etc. Ect…
So would stores and restaurants all be closed on weekends? This is pretty much how it was when I was a kid in the 60’s in a small city and it sucked.
Plus certain jobs like police and fire fighters have to be a 24/7 365 days a year industry. Or did I misunderstand your post?
That’s my schedule, minus the telecommuting which is impossible for my position. Around here it’s called a ‘9/80’ and it definitely an improvement over a standard work week. Those alternate three day weekends are a godsend and the extra hour of work most days is virtually unnoticeable. Though admittedly I have a shortish commute and I get paid for my lunch hour since I’m technically always on call. So for me it really is 9 hours total, not 9 + an unpaid lunch hour.
Since the OP asked about governments - and presumably, therefore - government mandates, I’ll just point out that future increases in employee rights/protections are pretty speculative. The FLSA and the resulting 40-hour work week mandate passed in the depths of the Great Depression, when labor organization was (somewhat surprisingly, since so many people were unemployed) at something of a peak. That’s a pretty far cry from today, so if you’re going to get a four day week it’s probably going to come from business (and it’s worth noting that Henry Ford was the first major industrialist to adopt the 40 hour work week that had been proposed by others).
I’ve done two variants of 9/80 schedules in my career, and I’m still undecided about which one I prefer.
The first one was working 9 hour days Monday through Thursday every week, and then only a half-day every Friday. So basically everyone got off between 11 and 1 every Friday.
The second was the same M-Th schedule, but we alternated working an 8 hour Friday and having a Friday off. So 3 day weekend every other Friday, and getting off an hour early on the Fridays we worked.
On one hand, the frequent 3-day weekends were nice, but on the other hand, having EVERY Friday afternoon off was really, really nice as well.
The caveats were that it was pretty easy to end up in situations where you had to work part or all of a Friday afternoon, but it was harder for them to require you to come in on a “day off”, especially if you’d made plans. Management types generally feel infinitesimally guiltier making you come in on a day off, rather than merely having you stay late.
And yeah, that extra hour isn’t a big deal most days; I split the difference by showing up half an hour earlier and leaving half an hour later than I did when we had/have a regular 8 hr a day schedule.
Yes, and one of the pressures that might persuade a business to move to a 4x8=32 hour work week is the desire to avoid paying employees time-and-a-half when they stay late on a Friday afternoon and go over 40 hours.
Speaking as a business owner, the majority of my employees currently work 32 hours per week: 8 hours a day, 4 days a week. The primary reason was that cutbacks were needed and I decided reducing everyone’s hours was a better option than laying someone off. But avoiding time-and-a-half also played a part in the decision.
A few years ago I was able to work a 9/80 - which is working 80 hours over 9 days instead of 10 (add an hour each day). It was great - every other Friday off. Not vacation time, not telecommute, OFF. Some people had other days like Monday, but mainly the early adopters were able to tack that off-day onto a weekend, with newbies getting T, W, or Th, if they chose this schedule.
I think for any national movement to happen on this, there will need to be some data supporting the all important jobs numbers. Will reducing the number of days/worker increase hiring, or increase costs, which may risk jobs?
Will we all end-up being part-timers without full-timer benefits? At least in the uncivilized US, we have rules about the number of hours worked and obtaining health benefits from your employer - if you drop below 30 hours (I think), then your employer is not required to provide health insurance, and you are on your own.
Not always. Depends on what you mean by “weekend”. The schedule slid down a day every week. So there were times where one worked on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or a combination of at least one of those days. At times you worked a solid month where at least one of those 3 days was in the schedule.
What the schedule did do was fairly distribute off days regardless of seniority. So you didn’t get stuck on a shitty schedule with no weekends off while others always had their weekends off. Also, you were only working 2 extra hours a day ( 10 instead of 8). The work week flew by at only 4 days and then you got 4 days off. It was great.
