4-Day Workweek Not Working, Candidates Say

They may differ on other issues, but most candidates competing for three Ventura County supervisor seats can agree on one thing:

County government’s four-day workweek has to go.

Getting rid of the compressed office schedule, implemented 2 1/2 years ago to help clean the air by getting cars off the road, is fast becoming a rallying cry among candidates running in the March 26 supervisorial elections.

“Government was formed to serve the public. It was not formed to serve the employees,” said Ventura City Councilman Jim Monahan, who is challenging Supervisor Susan Lacey in the spring primary.

Lacey could not be reached for comment. But she has expressed concern in the past about hardships that would be created for county employees asked to change their work schedules, such as having to rearrange child-care services.

But Monahan pointed out that employees were asked to adjust their personal lives in 1993, when the four-day workweek was first implemented.

“A lot of people weren’t too hot on the idea when it was forced on them,” he said. “But they adapted then, and I’m sure they will adapt again.”

Should employees want to keep their four-day workweek, Monahan said, it’s possible to stagger shifts so that government offices can still remain open on Fridays.

“It works in other industries, and it works with police and fire,” he said.

Monahan said he conducted an informal telephone survey of 967 voters that found two-thirds of respondents favoring a return to a five-day workweek.

Instead of reducing smog, Monahan said, closing government offices one day a week simply created an unwanted headache for the public.

“If you want to pull a permit to pour concrete, you cannot get it on Friday,” he said. “If people want to get a marriage license, they cannot do it. It’s anti-people.”

Supervisor John Flynn, who opposed the four-day week when it was adopted in 1993, said he thinks the public deserves better.

As part of his reelection campaign, Flynn said, he has knocked on about 4,000 doors in his Oxnard-based district and found that a chief complaint among constituents is county government’s four-day workweek.

“They think it stinks,” he said. “They think it is an extra day off.”

Flynn and his two challengers, Arlene Fraser and Enrique Petris, agree that all government offices should be open on Fridays. “We’re not serving the people,” Petris said.

The county implemented the compressed workweek for 2,000 employees in June 1993 to help meet federal rules meant to get cars off the road during peak traffic hours.

By compressing the employees’ schedules to four 10-hour days, the county eliminated one-fifth of the daily commutes for employees who participate in the program.

But under a law signed by President Clinton two days before Christmas, the federal Clean Air Act no longer requires county government or any employer with more than 100 workers to try to reduce the number of commuters driving to work. Instead, they have been given the flexibility to come up with new ways to reduce smog.

County Chief Administrator Lin Koester said he is preparing a report that he plans to deliver to supervisors March 19 outlining some alternatives, including staggering employee work schedules.

All four candidates competing for retiring Supervisor Maggie Kildee’s job said that they would probably support such a move. They are Fillmore Mayor Roger Campbell, Camarillo Councilman Mike Morgan and Kildee aides Kathy Long and Al Escoto.

“They could do split shifts so that employees would still have four-day workweeks,” Campbell said. “But that government center absolutely has to be open five days.”

Campbell said he was never convinced that the four-day workweek was an effective means of reducing smog because it assumes that employees who have Fridays off stay at home.

“It didn’t accomplish anything as far as reducing air pollution,” he said. “County employees have three days off every weekend. Do you suppose they stay at home? Do you on a three-day weekend?”

Long said she thinks that the four-day workweek has helped cut down on pollution because it reduces the number of cars on the road during morning and afternoon commutes, which was the intent of the program in the first place.

She said there have been other benefits as well.

“I think it’s made more people conscious of the need to ride share,” she said. “And we’ve got to raise people’s social consciousness. We do have dirty, nasty air.”

Still, Long said she knows that having county offices closed on Fridays has created some inconveniences for the public and that other options should be considered.

She suggested requiring newly hired workers to carpool as a condition of their jobs to help reduce vehicle emissions. But, she acknowledged, “it could be hard to enforce.”

Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss contributed to this story.