MARYLAND - Working a 4-day week could be in some Marylanders future.
Legislators have proposed a bill for businesses to participate in a 4-day work week.
If passed, the bill would encourage qualifying businesses with at least 30 employees to implement a 4-day work week as a 5-year pilot program. Employees would then be able to work a 32-hour week while being payed the same as a 40-hour work week.
Qualifying companies would receive a tax credit in exchange for reducing their employees weekly hours so that they could be payed the same. House Bill 181 limits the credit to businesses with at least 30 employees and the maximum amount of tax credits given each year would come to $750,000.
And for some employees, the idea of a 4-day work week sounds like a great idea. "Honestly, to have an extra day to yourself, I think would be really nice mainly because I don't think two days is enough recuperation time. I think it's nice to have that extra day of socialization and also have time to regenerate," says Chelsea Webster of Vernon Powell.
President of Vernon Powell, Joe Wright says the idea of this scares him. He says, ""As a business owner, I'm scared to death because we can't find employees right now as it is so if the employees are only working four days out of the week and we have to cover seven days of the week that's going to be pretty difficult." Wright also added that switching his employees time would be a scheduling nightmare and they would either have to hire more people or close for a day.
Dorchester Chamber of Commerce, Bill Christopher says it should be a shift and not 3 days taken off in a row. "I think the model really has to be that it just becomes a shift. So you may not get three days off in a row because you could make it Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday or Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday off just so that the company does have enough people to operate."
But some are in the middle. "I think it's a positive as far as gas and day care go for people. But I don't think it would be fair for the business owner because he's going to pay them 40 hours and they're not working it," says David Sutt.
If this bill were to pass, Maryland would be the first U.S. state to encourage 4-day work weeks.