EXPERIENCE WITH FIVE-DAY WEEK 49

Saturday. This provides throughout the year from five to ten long
week-ends, 1. e., a period of no work for three or four days. Everyone
Gnds this highly desirable and beneficial.”

To illustrate this plan by an example: Christmas Day in
1928 fell on Tuesday. Instead of keeping the plant open on
Monday, the twenty-fourth, and closing as usual on Saturday,
 the twenty-ninth, the plant was closed on Monday,
giving everyone a work vacation from the preceding Friday
night until Wednesday morning. The time lost on Monday
was made up by operating on Saturday of that week. Or,
in the case of Thanksgiving, the plant was operated on the
preceding Saturday and remained closed on the Friday and
Saturday following Thanksgiving Day.

DisaDVANTAGES AND OBJECTIONS

Although nothing but advantages of five-day week operation
 have so far been presented, objections have also been
pointed out by those who have had experience with it; but
it appears that these objections are fewer and, as a rule, less
fundamental in character’ than the advantages cited.
The attitude of employers operating a five-day schedule
but considering it disadvantageous seems to be strongly
influenced by whether or not the five-day week was introduced
 with their full approval or was forced upon them by
organized labor. It is natural that they should resent a
program they have been compelled to accept, and that they
should magnify its shortcomings, just as on the other side
there may be a tendency to minimize the disadvantages of a
plan which has been voluntarily introduced. Some unionshop
 employers declared themselves satisfied that the fiveday
 schedule is desirable, but others made no attempt to conceal
 their disapproval of a program of fewer hours of work
at unreduced pay, which they view as little short of confiscation,
 and have been outspoken and caustic in their
criticisms. One small-shop proprietor remarked:

“The only advantage is a benefit to the union. Employees do not
produce the work they are capable of for the reason that they want to
set in additional overtime for which we must pay time and one-half.”