12 hour work days to reduce energy usage

heroineworshipper

Well, in the face of another surge in outsourcing & ever more demand for "face time", a lot more people R going to need a lot more gas. The 12 hour workday and not telecommuting seems the more likely route to sustainable energy. Workers would commute 4 days & get 3 days off.
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mekrob · Expert Joined: Dec 09, 2005 Posts: 2663

Twilight · Expert Joined: Mar 02, 2007 Posts: 2971 Location: UK

Four-day weeks and three-day weeks are not unusual in times of economic distress or political turmoil. They don't work. It is a stop-gap state of emergency measure which lasts maybe a few weeks before the system can be pronounced broken down permanently.
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aflurry · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 28, 2005 Posts: 830

how about four and then three day a week 8 hour days?

That way we address energy consumption getting to and from work as well as the energy consumption of the work itself. We need to produce less, which means work less. We'd all be wise to pick up a time consuming, but not energy consuming hobby. Say, wittling or card tricks.

NeoPeasant

Take the company bus to work, work 3 12 hour days with the 2 nights in between spent in the factory quonset huts erected in the former parking lots. Then take the company bus back home. Half work Mon, Tues, Wed and others get Thurs, Fri, Sat.
Assuming your job is still considered necessary in the subsistance economy of the future.
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peripato · Heavy Crude Joined: May 03, 2005 Posts: 397

PeakOiler

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1532

12 hour days drop productivity by themselves. After 8 hours, workers get progressively more tired, and efficiency drops big time. After 2-3 days of 12 hours , people pace themselves and get no more done in 12 hours than they would in 8-9. This is from industrial engineering studies, and proven in my experience during a stint of 2 years during a UAW strike. We proved it with production numbers. 9 hours was our optimum.

4x 10 is fairly efficient, but workers soon want to go back to 8 x 5 because they are too tired at night, and have no free evenings. This has been borne out in employee turnover records.

What we face with PO, however, may make all this irrelevant.

Ludi

Kingcoal

In the US, a 10-12 hour work day is not uncommon for a lot of salary professionals.
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SchroedingersCat · Intermediate Crude Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 527

There is probably more energy to be saved by staggering start times for major employers. Billions of gallons of gasoline are wasted each year in traffic jams. When the Olympics were in Los Angeles they got the major employers to do this. Drive times were cut in half. The smog lifted. It was amazing.

Imagine if your average commute speed was 15 MPH instead of 8. Pretty significant. The low-hanging fruit should be picked first.
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zoidberg

my 2 cents:
the 4X10 work week is a great way to do a job, that extra day off a week lets you have long weekends, or if you need extra money, grab some sweet OT action. A 10 hour day feels entirely normal to me, working 8 hours now feels truncated, you really get used to it.
If it saves gas thats great, but it sells itself on its own merits

vision-master

Why must we all work 40+ hours a week in the 1st place?

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1532

I'm on the fringes of the herd, having deserted engineering in the failing auto industry here several years ago to work in machine shops. Those, too, were auto-dependent, so I started a farm repair/machine and welding shop in 2003.

My shop hours are posted on a sign, but nobody pays a helluva lot of attention to it. The crux of my business is providing services when needed. With hay down in the field and rain threatening, the farmer doesn't want to hear that it will be tomorrow at 8:00 AM before you start on his baler. So, I see alot of long days in crop season. They are waiting when I get to the shop, or, knocking on the door during breakfast, and I quit when it is too dark/cold/wet/ late for me to work. In winter, I work 8 or 9 hrs a day, in summer, it's 10 to 14 hrs., 6 days, and some on Sunday to catch up.

My guess is that as times get tougher due to Peak OIl and economics, people will work when there is work to do, or be weeded out with the rest of the broken Big-Corp business model.