A four-day, 10-hour-per-day, workweek should be offered to as many federal employees as possible, says House majority leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD). In a letter to Michael Hager, acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Hoyer argued that such a move would significantly cut traffic congestion in the Washington Metro area, lead to significant fuel savings for employees, and reduce air pollution.

Hoyer's most recent letter is the third in a series between the two men on the topic, as OPM rejected his request to provide federal workers with a four-day workweek. In his retort, Hager expressed strong opposition for the concept, arguing that the government already offers numerous opportunities for flexible work schedules and that the current system is effective.

Frustrated with the response, Hoyer then asked OPM to provide agency-by-agency, department-by-department statistics that detail the number of federal employees eligible for compressed work schedules and how many are actually working on flexible schedules by October 1. He also requested an analysis of the schedules' impact on productivity and agencies' efforts to promote the schedules - a report difficult if not impossible to produce as many agencies do not track or have the ability to track productivity.

Several states have already implemented variations of a compressed workweek for their employees, including Utah, which closes all of its offices on Fridays. But Hoyer doesn't want the federal government abbreviating its week to such extremes. Instead, he thinks that "federal agencies should, to the maximum extent possible, adopt compressed work schedules so that, on any given workday, 20 percent of eligible employees are not consuming gasoline, contributing to traffic congestion, and taxing public transportation's capacity to commute to and from their offices." In this model, offices would still remain open five days each week and some employees whose work requires daily, face-to-face presence, would remain ineligible for a compressed week.

Hoyer, along with Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), has long been a champion of teleworking options for federal employees. However, these efforts to allow employees to work from home and other remote locations have been met with significant resistance from managers who "cling tightly to the historic ideas of workplace supervision and organization," said Hoyer.

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