THE EIGHT-DAY WEEK
FOR BETTER LIVING
by L. Michael Hager
SUMMARY: The eight-day week
comprising a traditional five-day workweek plus a three-day weekend would dramatically
improve the quality of life: it would give working parents more time with their children
and allow more time for travel, for instance. It would also allow more widespread use of
flextime, easing traffic congestion and reducing urban pollution, among other benefits.
Conventional wisdom holds that time
is a given. Days, weeks, months and years unfold as immutably as the seasons and are as
immune to man’s interfering hand as the weather.
Not so. Despite the relative
neglect by economists, time can be harnessed and reordered as an economic resource. In an
earlier article ("The Non-stop City and Other Heretical Notions About
Time, The Futurist, May-June, 1997), I argued that the establishment of
"non-stop cities" that apportion daylight among three all-purpose time zones
could alleviate stressful overcrowding and create jobs in mega-cities around the world.
Here I focus instead on how a recasting of the week can improve the quality of life for
everyone.
While the day, month and year are
subject to celestial limitations, the week is purely arbitrary. Indeed, the seven-day
week, adopted by most, but not all, contemporary societies, goes back only to the fourth
century. It was established by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who also made the Christian
Sunday a legal holiday. But neither holy books nor the stars dictate a week of specific
duration. While the biblical account of the creation makes reference to God’s resting
on the seventh day, insertion of an additional 24 hours would not interfere with the
weekly religious observance of a day of rest. Indeed, it could easily accommodate the holy
days of all great religious faiths.
Before suggesting how the
week should be changed, however, one may reasonably ask: why change it?
The reasons are several. For an
increasing number of inhabitants of this planet, home is a large city, not the countryside
or a small town. Urbanization, especially in major metropolitan areas, has brought
increasing pollution as more cars fill already congested streets. Anything to get those
cars out of the cities on a regular basic would boost air quality.
With most families now dependent
on two incomes, women and men are both working "second shifts"—tending
house and children after hours. Yet there is less time for children and recreation, more
conflict between job and family and, not surprisingly, more stress.
In our fast-paced,
technology-driven world, the standard two-day weekend hardly allows enough time for the
shopping for necessaries, social gatherings, family life and rest. As a result, workers
often return to their offices and factories on Monday mornings still fatigued from the
previous week.
Meanwhile, the recent wave of
school violence across America has pointed up the inadequacy of family time. Political
candidates have taken note. In an era of affluence, "time poverty" has become a
campaign issue.
What can be done to give working
parents more time with their children, promote a more rested workforce and encourage
motorists to take their cars out of the cities every week—all without significant
cost or loss of productivity? My answer: adopt the eight-day week.
The eight-day week could
dramatically improve the quality of our lives. The eighth day would offer time for rest
and recuperation, for travel outside the metropolitan areas and, most importantly these
days, quality time for parents to spend with their children.
Recent studies have shown that
industrial societies are working themselves to death-- with too much stress, declining
leisure and not enough hours for children (who are often left unsupervised to view violent
films on TV). Think of how the three-day Memorial and Labor Day weekends are eagerly
anticipated and enjoyed—typically as times for family travel, community celebrations
or backyard relaxation. Now consider the possibility of having a three-day weekend every
week!
Okay, but could we afford such a
change?
By itself, a reconfiguration of
the week from seven to eight days, retaining the typical five working days, would cause a
much lesser drop in productivity than shifting to a four-work day schedule in a seven-day
week. For societies that adhere to a five-day workweek, insertion of an eighth day would
reduce the number of potential workdays from 260 to 228 (on average) since the number of
weeks in a year would fall from 52 to 45.6. On the face of it, this implies an annual loss
of productively of about 12 percent.
Yet these raw numbers ignore
non-weekend holidays and annual vacation leave, which could be distributed to the
weekends, thus compensating for the work day loss in whole or in part. They also fail to
take into account the productivity increases likely to result from a more rested
workforce.
With three days instead of two
between workweeks, both women and men would find it easier to juggle jobs and family, and
everyone would have more opportunity to enjoy the arts, hobbies, sports and entertainment.
Although the creation of
additional family time would by itself warrant adoption of an eight-day week, the
potential environmental benefits are also considerable.
Perhaps the greatest and most
immediate impact would be the reduction of automobile usage in metropolitan areas. With
car owners able to celebrate long weekends every week, their likely exodus to the
countryside would allow time for polluted city air to dissipate. And as more people came
to enjoy nature, more would have a personal stake in saving it.
Interestingly, the days of the
week were originally named after planets visible to the naked eye, but the namers
didn’t look at their feet. They forgot Earth. Adoption of an eight-day week would
give us an opportunity to correct that error by instituting an "Earthday."
Celebrating that occasion every week as opposed to once each year, would build global
sensitivity to environmental issues and could even lead to protective measures, such as
restricted car use on Earthdays.
Other possible effects of the
eight-day week include increased tourism on a year-round basis (with a resulting
distribution of wealth), greater support of the arts and reduced unemployment (as a result
of the increased shift work slots).
What can be done to make the
eight-day week, with its regular three-day weekends, a reality? In the interest of
alleviating "time poverty," the politicians could advocate an international
convention to change the week globally from seven-days to eight-days. An international
conference on the subject would be good way to start.
In the meantime, individual
employers could adopt eight-day schedules within the context of the traditional seven-day
week. The resultant rotation of staff members would immediately bring them two important
benefits: seven-day business accessibility and an almost 30 percent increase in space
availability. Stretching existing staff presence over seven days would allow firms to
respond promptly to global business opportunities and to hire new staff without the need
of acquiring additional space and equipment. As companies experienced the benefits of an
eight-day regime, their support for an international convention would likely grow.
An eight-day week offers
significant time and other rewards, but long-standing conventions as basic as the days of
the week are highly resistant to change. What is needed now is vision and political
courage, more than money. Someone needs to get the ball rolling.
If we start now to adopt the
eight-day week, we can look forward to enjoying three-day weekends every week!
About the Author
L. Michael Hager is the President, Resolve-Consult International, LLC and Former
Director, International Development Law Institute, Rome, Italy.
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