Four day week

There's talk that the Government is suggesting that workers in businesses that are thinking of laying off staff should should work a four day week and take a 20 percent pay cut while doing Government-compensated community work or " skill training" on the fifth day. M'kay, I would have though that if anyone should undertake skills training it should be the unemployed. Although a few public sector employees could probably do with some basic literacy and numeracy training.

When I was working for a particular Government department and we had unlimited sick leave, a decent number of the staff in our office worked a four day week. That's because they had Fridays or Mondays off on sick leave and then came back in on Saturday to do overtime. After people started noticing this, the unlimited sick leave was scrapped and staff could only work 10 four day weeks a year.

Given the talk of the Government compensating earners for the non work day, we could *all* be public servants for a day a week. Whats the bet that everyone will want to have Friday/Monday off every two weeks, flag the "community work" every tow weeks and have a four day weekend every month as well as a four day week. And have every fourth Wednesday off as sick leave. Then once things settle down they could get a part time weekend job and still have days off. The Government would hardly make people do community work on their day off if they were working weekends as well - it`ll be unjust to make people work seven days a week - when will they spend quality time with their families?

I see TVNZ has to cut costs due to falling advertising revenue. How about making Sunday a blackout day for TVNZ? Could call it "online day".