Thursday, February 25, 2010
Utah's 4-day work week gets global attention
Posted By Jesse Fruhwirth on February 25, 2010, 2:02 PM
One of these days reminders that Jon Huntsman Jr. was one of Utah's greatest politicians will wane, but that day is not today. New (to me) today is a study that cites Utah's four-day work week for state employees, praising the state for skipping ahead a few steps in work-life trends that are already happening anyway.---
The study authors like the four-day work week Huntsman installed, but go even further to say the future is about 21-hour work weeks. With fewer hours, productivity (per hour) goes up, absenteeism goes down, etc. etc.
Obviously overall productivity (the sheer amount of work you, the worker, actually do) would go down in a transition from a 40-hour to 21-hour work week, but I guess the idea is that "job sharing" (i.e. more employees) should fill the gap. Hey, that'd be great for job creation! I always say, these silly CEOs who need multi-million dollar compensation should be replaced with teams of 20 to 30 people who split the responsibilities and compensation. More jobs, more time, more happiness for everyone except for the fool who used to be CEO.
Britian's The Guardian makes a bigger deal of the Utah angle than the study, "21 Hours," does.
Journalism tee-hee: the Guardian uses its editorial voice to call the group that authored the report "an influential think tank," but apparently the group isn't influential enough for the Guardian to get their name right. NEF stands for the New Economics Foundation, not Economic. More tee-hees: I almost spelled Jon, as in Huntsman, with an H. Gotta love that editor-free blogosphere.
Hat tip to High Country News who alerted me to the Guardian story via their Twitter feed.
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