TGI…Thursday?

A piece in New York magazine by Jennifer Senior asks, “Can Albany help solve the state-budget crisis by taking Fridays off?

“Two Augusts ago, the state of Utah mandated a four-day workweek for most employees of the executive branch, on the theory that closing government offices on Fridays would save about $3 million in gas and electric bills. Unfortunately, the government saved only about $500,000 that way—the price of oil dropped, and many of the large government buildings had to remain open anyway. But last week, Governor Gary Herbert still reported that the change had saved his state $4 million. Why? Utah was spending that much less on overtime pay—a 30 percent decrease from the year before.”

Even better, “This summer, a team of management professors at Brigham Young released the results of a survey of 150 human-resource directors nationwide, all of whom worked for city governments with the so-called 4/10 workweek. Sixty-four percent reported an increase in morale. And 41 percent reported an increase in productivity.”

In New York state, Senior writes,

“nearly $413 million in fiscal 2009. Most is spent by institutions that couldn’t, realistically, reduce their workweek to four days: courts, hospitals, jails. But if you spend enough time eyeballing the overtime tallies produced by New York’s state comptroller, you realize there are lots of desk-job agencies that could go four days a week. Including the Office of the State Comptroller itself ($3.5 million in overtime pay). Or those at the Department of Labor ($2.6 million), for that matter, or the Department of Tax and Finance ($2.2 million). And it’s almost impossible to imagine why on earth the Suffolk County Payroll District is spending $1.66 million on overtime.”

But perhaps shifting to a new schedule would have customer service benefits as well, for example, commenter Christopher says, “Couldn’t you have overlapping 4 day work weeks? Like it’s crazy that the DMV isn’t open on Saturday I think.”