Days of Rest

Some 500 U.S. business and industrial firms have been experimenting with a four-day work week--an inventive concept that reconciles the work ethic with the leisure culture. For ten weeks during the summer, the Chicago-based Zenith Life Insurance Co. tried a four-day, 35-hour routine, with half of its 33 employees working Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., the other half Tuesday through Friday. Now Zenith has pronounced the plan a startling success and made the arrangement permanent. Recruiting is easier, absenteeism reduced, overtime pay decreased and employee morale vastly improved.

The four-day plan has yielded unusual payoffs in other areas. For the past two months, the Pontiac, Mich., 150-man police department has been on a four-day week of ten-hour days. Response time on emergency calls is down, arrests have increased by 9%, and absenteeism has been cut by 16%. The ten-hour days allow for overlapping shifts, thus concentrating police coverage during high-crime hours.

If four-day schedules become a national routine, presumably various three-day "weekends" will have to be staggered throughout the week to ease pressure on already overburdened recreational facilities. In an increasingly secularized society, what began as the Sabbath will be turning into Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday "weekends."

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