Monday, Aug. 18, 2003 | 10:55 a.m.
Twenty years ago Henderson city officials were faced with a dilemma: The city's union employees were owed a 5 percent pay raise but there wasn't enough money in the budget.
The solution was a dramatic change in work shifts that cut Fridays out of employees' weekly work schedules and reduced the number of their hours from 40 to 38.
The changes mirrored those done in the North Las Vegas and Boulder City governments years earlier.
North Las Vegas switched to a four-day workweek in 1977, when the city cut employees' hours from 40 to 36 instead of giving a pay raise.
Boulder City's switch came in 1980 without a cut in hours, to save money on utilities and keep City Hall open longer the remaining four days.
Today city workers in the three rapidly growing suburbs of Las Vegas are still going to work four days a week, and it doesn't appear a change is coming any time soon.
Proponents say the schedules save the cities money, make them more attractive places to work and keep morale, and therefore productivity, high.
But critics say the four-day workweeks leave city halls short on Fridays, even though some of the suburban governments have organized shifts to make some services available five days a week.
Nationwide roughly a third of companies and organizations offer at least some of their employees a compressed workweek schedule, according to an annual survey done by the Society for Human Resource Management, a Virginia-based trade organization.
Compressed workweeks could be four-day workweeks, as they are in Henderson, North Las Vegas and Boulder City, schedules that give employees a day off every other week in return for working longer hours the other nine days, or any other schedule in which the employee works fewer than five days.
According to the society's 2003 survey, which tabulated responses from 584 human resource managers in the public and private sector, compressed workweeks were most popular in government and the insurance industry, where 52 percent of the organizations offered them. The health-care industry ran third, at 45 percent.
Leading experts in the field say the actual number of people working shorter weeks is far below those percentages.
"The problem with those surveys is that it doesn't mean that all the employees get it. It means some or at least one in the company gets it," said Eileen Appelbaum, a labor economist and professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who is also director of the Rutgers Center for Women and Work.
Compressed schedules
Both Las Vegas and Clark County would be considered employers who offer compressed work schedules, even though most of their employees work five-day workweeks.
In the city of Las Vegas 46 percent of employees, including firefighters, work some sort of compressed work schedule, according to a city spokeswoman.
Twenty-five percent of county employees worked some sort of alternative workweek in 2000, the most recent year for which numbers are available, a county spokesman said.
Steven Kreisberg, associate director of collective bargaining for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Washington, D.C., said maybe 10 percent of union's 1.4 million members work four-day weeks.
"Employees love it, they save money on day care, commuting and plus they have an extra day off," Kreisberg said.
Lonnie Golden, an economics professor at Penn State University, Abington, said the compressed workweek seems to work just as well as a typical five-day workweek for employees and employers.
"It's good for productivity. In an extended workday employees can get just as much done," Golden said. "And employees are happier."
The only downside he's heard of is that sometimes the managers who work five days a week want their employees at the office when they are.
Gary Mauger, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 14, whose members include workers from Henderson, North Las Vegas and Boulder City, said the four-day workweek is popular with employees.
The schedule also can reduce utility costs for a city because not all offices are staffed on Fridays, Mauger said.
No downside
"As far as I'm concerned there is no downside," Mauger said.
But others say the drawback of the four-day workweek is that there just isn't the level of service available on Fridays as the other days of the week.
"Most people want to get stuff done before the weekend. You'd think they'd be open," said Danny Lucero, a county social worker and Henderson resident who was at Henderson Municipal Court a recent Friday.
North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Sharon Powers said the city's schedule has caused problems for some.
"On Fridays we get a fair amount of traffic looking to do business with the city," Powers said. "But you can't do business licensing. You can't do planning. It would be better if you could do business on Fridays."
Powers said she's not against the four-day workweek, just concerned that its implementation in some cases hurts access to city services.
"We all wish we had it. ... It has merit, working four 10s. A lot of us in business work five 10s," Powers said. "But what it boils down to is, are they providing enough services for residents and businesses?"
Over the years officials have tinkered with work schedules in the three suburbs to address the Friday staffing problem. Henderson, North Las Vegas and Boulder City all have some staff working Fridays in addition to police and firefighters, who work different shifts because of the nature of their around-the-clock responsibilities.
Part-time help Fridays
In Boulder City a part-time worker sits in City Hall on Fridays taking messages and utility bills, although no offices in City Hall are open.
In North Las Vegas and Henderson, some staff work Tuesday through Friday instead of Monday through Thursday, so there will be some employees on the clock on Fridays.
North Las Vegas tried having all departments open five days a week in 1997, but in 1999 returned most of the departments to a four-day schedule.
"It just didn't work," North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon said. "It seemed like we had a three-day work week because we had half shifts on Mondays and Fridays."
Now, in addition to public safety, library and some parks staff, North Las Vegas building inspectors and some utility division staff work Fridays. But North Las Vegas City Hall is closed on Fridays.
Interim City Manager Gregory Rose predicted additional services would be offered five days a week in the future.
In Henderson the permits and inspections offices are among the handful of divisions with Friday hours. Other departments staffed on Fridays include the City Clerk's Office and Public Works.
Henderson Municipal Court was the latest to tinker with the workweek. After almost a year of staggering shifts so the court could be open to the public five days a week, the court returned to a four-day schedule earlier this month.
Court officials said there wasn't enough business to warrant staying open Fridays, and the staff who were working Fridays could be better used to deal with the heavier workload on Mondays.
City officials say the longer Monday-through-Thursday shifts help increase the availability of services because city halls are able to open earlier and close later.
Boulder City Hall hours are 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Henderson, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; and North Las Vegas, 8 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
"Overall it's a benefit to the community," said Boulder City Parks and Recreation Director Roger Hall, who was a city sports coordinator when the workweek change was made more than 20 years ago.
Steve Johnson, a real estate agent who lives in Henderson, said the shorter workweek is a fair trade-off if the government offices are open longer four days of the week.
"If they're open later then most people can get their work done," Johnson said.
Clark County and Las Vegas government offices, where most staff work five days a week, are generally open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Las Vegas City Manager Doug Selby said some employees have suggested the city switch to a four-day work week.
"But we think our customers are best served by being open five days a week," Selby said. "Generally we believe we are more efficient."
Officials from the three suburbs make the same claim of efficiency for the four-day week.
"The employees like it and when you're happy you work better," Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson said.
Selby acknowledged that the four-day schedule is attractive to employees.
"I certainly have lost some to North Las Vegas and Henderson," he said.
Money for peers
In addition to the shorter hours, suburban employees in some positions can make as much, sometimes more, than their peers in Las Vegas and the county.
For example, management analysts and planners in North Las Vegas are paid between $46,710 and $67,729 a year. The same positions in the county government pay $42,719 to $66,212 annually.
Las Vegas low-level planners are paid $42,964 to $46,455 a year, compared with $45,697 to $71,984 in Henderson.
North Las Vegas office assistants are paid $30,522 to $43,189 a year; while county office assistants are paid $23,077 to $35,769 annually.
Officials with the three suburbs have said the four-day workweek saves their cities money.
But the savings comes mostly because employees don't get paid for a full 40 hours.
Henderson saves about $2.35 million a year with the 38-hour week, according to city documents. North Las Vegas estimates it saves $3.1 million a year by having its workers lodge 36 hours a week.
Gibson and Montandon said the four-day work weeks seem to be working in their cities.
"I don't think I've fielded one question on whether the four-day workweek works because most of our departments are open five days a week," Gibson said. "We get coverage for all the days."
But Montandon said he thinks that eventually city growth will push demand for city services to the point where a full staff is needed five days a week. It's hard to say when that could happen, he said, and with the four-day workweek embedded in all the city's union contracts, changing back to a five-day week would be difficult.
"It won't go away. It (would) be a major, major process," Montandon said.
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