Monday, February 11, 2008

As I was driving to work Friday morning, I was impressed with how little traffic there was on the road. It occurred to me that the federal government's Compressed Work Schedule (CWS) policy, under which tens of thousands of employees typically take one Monday or Friday off every two weeks and work an extra hour on other days, was an incredibly effective way to deal with the myriad problems associated with rush-hour traffic congestion and limited parking.

This policy might be even more effective with incentives for federal employees to choose Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday as their CWS day off so as to reduce traffic on the three work days that remain terribly congested. One way might be to give those who chose midweek days off an additional hour off every two weeks; i.e, their biweekly tours of duty would be seven nine-hour days and two eight-hour days, for a total of 79 hours. The economic savings, even with lost productivity, might be significant. My impression is that grateful folks working 79 hours per pay period will do as much or more work as those working a normal 80 hours.

DENNIS ASKWITH

Gaithersburg