Savings Galore

This topless woman looks very skeptical to me, and rightly so. From a news story on the internet: “A year ago, Utah Governor Jon Hunstman announced the Working 4 Utah initiative, essentially putting 17,000 of the state’s 24,000 executive branch employees on a 10 hour a day, four day a week schedule. The goal for the cash-strapped state was energy savings. Now that a full year has passed, a clearer picture of the benefits is coming into focus. Learning from the lessons of Utah, here are five reasons the “TGIT” (Thank Goodness It’s Thursday) four-day, 40-hour workweek just might make sense.” This is nonsense, of course. My question is this: what do all those employees do on Friday? Sit home all day? Please. Someone calculated that the State of Utah saved almost 2 million dollars under this program. The State’s budget is about 10 billion. The amount saved was not one percent - not even one tenth of one percent. The savings was a ridiculous two one-hundredths of one percent of the budget. I say they should try something else.