On the Way to a Four-Day Week

IN this century, American workers have collected two-thirds of the gains from increased productivity in higher pay and one-third in more leisure time. It has seemed almost heretical to consider that both output and leisure could be increased together with no loss in pay and profits. Yet that is the promise of the beginning trend toward the four-day week. The most widely used four-day plan does not involve the four-day, 32-hr, week that remains a goal of organized labor; instead, in its simplest form, it calls for dividing the normal 40-hr, week into four 10-hr, days, leaving three days of rest. Although the trend is still in its infancy, most of the companies and employees who have tried it are enthusiastic about the results. So great is the attention being paid to it in executive suites that the four-day week bears many earmarks of an idea whose time is about to come.

At the latest count, some 90 firms around the U.S. had switched to the four-day week in one form or another. Their activities range from manufacturing to retailing to advertising and other services; most are relatively small, averaging about 185 employees each. So far no large companies have wholly adopted a four-day schedule, but Armour & Co. did so this month at its food-freezing plant in Fairmont, Minn., and hopes to make similar changes at other plants. Chrysler Corp. and the United Auto Workers have agreed to study the possibility, and even giant IBM is taking a new look at the work week, including the possibility of putting some or all of its 157,000 U.S. employees on a four-day routine. Two insurance companies, Mutual of New York and Metropolitan Life, have gone further: their computer staffs work three 12-hr. days a week.

Forget the Office. With more time for recreation, hobbies, their families and self-improvement, many employees find that the four-day week has altered their lifestyles. Says Harold Maclnnes, an advertising manager for Kyanize Paints of Everett, Mass., a suburb of Boston: "In two days, you can't forget the office. In three days you can, and come back refreshed." In Murfreesboro, Tenn., where the Samsonite Corp. plant went on a four-day week just after Thanksgiving, General Foreman Dick Baines says that the change "has given me time to be a real part of the family, to be with my wife and children an extra day."

Companies that have adopted the four-day week have been rewarded by easier recruiting, lower turnover of scarce skilled workmen and less absenteeism. At the George H. Bullard Co. of Westboro, Mass., average absenteeism dropped from 6% of the work force to less than 1%. Says Jerry Goucher, a wheel finisher: "I don't have to lose money by leaving work to fish on opening day like the other guys have to do. Lately, I've been cramming in everything on Friday--dentists, doctors, shopping. Then we have Saturday and Sunday to go somewhere." As Jack Peterson, a die and mold designer for C.A. Norgren Co. of Littleton, Colo., puts it, "I like my time in a hunk; you can concentrate on a project more."

Management reaps the benefits of a more diligent work force and sharply lower training costs--all of which shows up in productivity. Interstate of Braintree, Mass., a manufacturer of paint rollers, found that its labor costs dropped 2% after the company adopted a four-day week. Sometimes whole communities are helped. The 151-man Huntington Beach, Calif., police force went on a four-day schedule a year ago; since then the rate of increase in crime has been cut in half--partly because the policemen's ten-hour shifts overlap during the high-crime hours of 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Patrolmen Bob Dawson and Ivan Neal put their additional day off to good use: both are studying for college degrees. Even a temporary four-day week seems to lift morale. Knox Reeves Advertising of Minneapolis closed Fridays throughout last July because President Kenneth Oelschlager wanted to test whether more leisure would generate more ideas in a business that depends on brainpower. The staff whizzed through a heavier-than-usual work load, and "do it the July way" has now become a byword in the agency for more intensive and productive work. Metropolitan Life's assistant vice president for electronic installations, Edward M. Honan, reports no less satisfying results from the three-day schedule adopted for computer crews. "It is working out perfectly, and for the first time in years we have all the data processing help we can handle."

Beyond the Gates. There are pitfalls, of course. Most of them are detailed in 4 days, 40 hours (175 pages, $5, Bursk and Poor Publishing), a paperback survey edited by Mrs. Riva Poor, a Cambridge management consultant. A few companies gave up the four-day week because their customers refused to adapt to the new schedule. Some workers complained of fatigue because of the longer days. Other firms rushed into a four-day week without sufficiently preparing their work force, then found that they had to raise wages to make the change in hours acceptable. Among companies that switched successfully, many offered overtime for the last hour of the day and gave their workers an incentive bonus for full attendance--along with a slightly lower basic pay scale. The net effect was that workers took home somewhat fatter pay envelopes for the same number of hours.

Like other big social advances, the four-day week portends changes far beyond the plant gates. Widespread adoption would add to the fast expansion of leisure-time activities and bring prosperity--as well as crowds and noise--to vacation spots unreachable during a two-day weekend. Highways might be less crowded, and workers would save a fifth of their commuting costs. That would amount to a nontaxable wage increase, though the beneficiaries might spend more on weekends. Mrs. Poor polled 168 men and women who worked a four-day week and found that 17% were moonlighting, v. only 4% before the switch. But she found big increases in camping and boating, attendance at spectator sports, and plain loafing. Visits to relatives rose by 121%. Economist Paul Samuelson, who has endorsed the idea of the four-day week, suggests another possible result: a change in "the division of labor between husband and wife in the home to redress the ancient curse of female drudgery."

Mrs. Poor may be a bit optimistic when she predicts that within five years, 80% of U.S. industry will convert to a four-day week, or something similar. Yet the pressures for such a change are large and increasing, and the benefits too obvious to be ignored. The longer day and shorter work week could easily become the next great transformation in the nation's business pattern.

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