Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 25, 1993 TAG: 9304230073
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JENNIFER FRENCH PARKER KNIGHT/RIDDER-TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Just imagine, an extra day to rest, relax, play or do housework.
That's what workers polled in January by Accountants on Call, a Saddle Brook, N.J., employment agency, must have been thinking.
They voted 66 percent to 31 percent for working four 10-hour days over the traditional five-day workweek.
The poll, conducted by the Gallup organization, found no difference between men and women. Both wanted the extra free day. The desire for a four-day workweek also spanned all occupational groups and education levels.
"I guess all of us feel overworked," said Ed Blust, a spokesman for Accountants on Call, which has offices across the country.
That talk of overwork is no joke.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in March that American factory workers are logging the most overtime since the government started keeping track in the 1950s.
According to the BLS, more than a tenth of all work done in factories nationwide is performed on overtime, and workers are averaging 4.2 hours of overtime a week.
All that activity increased the factory workweek an extra 24 minutes in the last five months. In February alone, it increased by 12 minutes.
The same trend is under way in many offices, but alas, the BLS doesn't track the number of hours worked in offices.
Anecdotally though, we see lots of workers and managers putting in long hours to stay competitive. Many are also picking up the slack for workers laid off during the recent recession and because of corporate downsizing.
Can employers be sold on the four-day workweek?
"That's the hitch," said Blust. "I don't know how many would buy it, especially when many of us already work 10-hour days five days a week."
Still the four-day day workweek is catching on among some It has worked really well for us. People need to be with family, and with three days off they have more time. Frank Dombrosky Plant manager in Kings Mountain, N.C. employers. Hewitt Associates, a Lincolnshire, Ill.-based benefits consulting firm, found the number of employers nationally with compressed work schedules -including four 10-hour days - holding steady at 21 percent since 1991.
Motor Panels Inc., a Kings Mountain, N.C.-based independent truck cab assembler, has had a four-day workweek since it opened in 1988.
"It has worked really well for us," said Frank Dombrosky, the plant's manager. "People need to be with family, and with three days off they have more time."
Mondays through Thursday, the plant's 75 workers work 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Dombrosky said the workers especially like the arrangement on weekends followed by a holidays such as Easter Monday, Fourth of July and Labor Day. Coupled with the weekend, they get off four consecutive days.
Dombrosky said Motor Panels started the four-day work schedule to synchronize its operations with Mack Trucks' Winnsboro, S.C., plant, for which it builds cabs.
Two years ago, Mack reverted to a five-day workweek, but Motor Panels is still hanging on to its four-day schedule.
by CNB