//What's wrong with having a discussion about a 4 day work week?//

There's nothing wrong with discussing it - it's just a bad idea.

Forget about the poor little office workers with their air-con and their comfy chairs for a second, and think about how this will affect other sectors of employment:

Some people now have a three-day weekend. What are they going to do with it? Are they going to spend it with their kids, or take up watercolour painting or something? Some will: some will look upon it as another night to go out and get shitfaced. More fights, more accidents, more visits to the emergency room. More police? Maybe. More paramedics, nurses and doctors? Seems unlikely.

But before they get to the hospital they'll be at the pub, where I work. It's always busiest on weekends, but you do get paid more to compensate for the fact that you're working three times as hard (for 1.5 times the money, if you're lucky). Penalty rates on the extra day of the weekend to match the higher workload? Seems very unlikely.

And before they're old enough to go to the pub, they'll be at school. Are we going to cut the amount of education they receive by 20%, or will the teachers still have to work just as hard as ever while everybody else (who isn't in healthcare or hospitality) gets to live the life of Riley? That seems a bit unfair - teachers have it hard enough already.

Oh, and who's going to staff the local library on a Friday morning? Volunteers? I would if I could, but I don't know how the local council feel about letting amateurs have run of their nice library.

Foxy A while back the 9 day fortnight was all the go.

I had a couple of large tourist boats built for my company by NQEA a Cairns engineering company. Unfortunately during this time they won a contract to build patrol boats for the navy. It almost sent them broke.

You see they had to add an influx of southern militant unionists to expand the workforce, who held the company to ransom for a number of things including a 9 day fortnight. With our new boats, particularly the 29 meter 330 passenger catamaran this was a disaster for us. New boats usually have a few teething problems.

Boats have a lot of interdependent systems. If the steering doesn't work it could be the low pressure hydraulics, or the high pressure, it may be the 24 volt electrics, or the 240 volt system, or it could be mechanical. With the 9 day fortnight we could only access all the experts involved on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, if some weren't tied up with something else.

I had to run one boat with no rudder steering for a month because of this, & it took 3 months to get the air conditioning working properly. The company had to do away with the 9 day fortnight to avoid losing all their customers, & going broke, but had a 2 month strike because of it.

This was actually fortuitous, as most of the southerners returned home, & industrial peace returned.

An 8 day fortnight would be even more disastrous.

Now that is absolutely narrow minded, has been.

Hasbeen,

I am reminded of a little dockyard incident when a fitter and his mate had to wait a day to fix a porthole (metal work) because a carpenter didn't have time to come and remove the ornamental surround (woodwork).

Would be funny if it wasn't so stupid.

Dear Hasbeen,

I understand that there will be some jobs and situations
where an eight day fortnight will not work. However,
I still think it is worth while discussing the matter
and seeing where it might work - or at least giving people
options and choices and more opportunities for others.

How typically Green, the most mathematically challenged group ever to go to Canberra. Ask Tasmania how good they are with math, when they gain a bit of power. http://tiendichshop.vn/