A Four-Day Week?

As a negotiating goal, the four-day work week has been an occasional element in the United Auto Workers' industrial theology at least since the 1960s. After signing a new three-year contract that should end the three-week strike of 170,000 auto workers at the Ford Motor Co. in a matter of days, U.A.W. President Leonard Woodcock proudly announced a sighting of the promised land. The Ford pact, he announced at a Detroit press conference, "goes far beyond" previous contracts. In fact, he said, "we are on the road to a four-day week. The principle is there now."

Perhaps, if one wanted to see it. The new pact adds twelve more days over three years to the 33 paid days off that Ford workers already enjoy--five in the contract's second year and seven in its third. The additional days off fell far short of the twelve per year that the union had initially demanded, and the new holidays will have to be sandwiched between two working days, rather than added to weekends or existing holidays. But when Detroit and the union next wrangle in 1979, the U.A.W. could use its 1976 Ford contract as a springboard for leaping closer to a real four-day week.*

$8.34 Per Hour. The union's aim in cutting working days is not to increase leisure time for existing workers but to force the companies to create new jobs (119,000 fewer workers are employed now by the Big Three than in 1973). Otherwise, the U.A.W.'s demands seemed relatively mild. Under the Ford agreement, pay goes up 3% per annum and continues to rise (as it did under the previous contract) with the cost of living; by 1979 an assembler could be making about $8.34 per hour, compared with $6.52 today. Ford will add to the union's recession-depleted unemployment benefits fund a $32 million grant for the benefit of high-seniority employees who are victims of future layoffs.

Figuring in the days-off provision, the new contract could boost Ford's labor costs by 10% per year at most --and that much only in the unlikely instance that there is no productivity gain. A 10% jump would not be excessively steep, compared with other 1976 contract settlements. In a year that began with experts' predictions of relative calm on the labor front, several major strikes have ended with bonanzas for workers: the Teamsters won a flat 34% wage-and-benefits increase over three years, while the rubber workers got nearly 40%. The Ford strike--which had negligible impact on the economy--could have turned out a lot worse than it did.

* Detroit would still have a long way to go to match Italy's Fiat, which last summer put 100,000 workers on a three-day week. Then again. Fiat took its action to avoid massive layoffs

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