4 day week or unpaid leave????

Wayne352_2

My partner has been asked to choose one of the following, and given while tomorrow to decide
company need to reduce costs to keep people in jobs

1. do nothing carry on working 5 days a week, Chance of one of them been finished
2. work four days a week, loosing a days wages, regular patern to adapt to
3. take unpaid time off, unsure of time expected to take off

Anyone else been asked to do this by the company they work for , any advice to be given would be welcomed

omelette451

Ooh, a tricky one. If they offered a guarantee that no one would lose their job I think I'd probably choose option (2). No, I definitely would: I quite like the idea of working only 4 days a week anyway. I personally think we could all adapt our lifestyle to make it work, and the extra time with family it would give would be wonderful.

fay66

Ive heard Toyota are doing it , dont know whether I can put that, but its in the papers.

ceridwen

Not a lotta time to decide then!!!!!!! Crikey.:eek:

I guess one obvious question is whether there would be any way for your O.H. to make up the difference moneywise or no...

Another one is that if your O.H. had an extra day a week then they could spend that time "using time to save money" - doing things like shopping round/home cooking/etc and might be able to save back a lot of the money lost (visit the Old Style Board for ideas on this). Would your O.H. be prepared to use that extra day of leisure time for things like this - in which case it could be manageable. On the other hand - would your O.H. just sit themselves in front of the telly or down the pub or whatever and "blow" the time - in which case its a different story.

I presume pension doesnt have to be taken into account? - as I imagine there isnt a job pension to mention....

Defo - wouldnt go for option 3 - its a no-brainer to reject that one. You'd never know from one week to the next (maybe even one day to the next) what would be worktime and what would be leisuretime and how on earth can one plan a life round never knowing whether one is going to be at work or no? So - that option wouldnt even be on the table for consideration in my book.

So - the choice boils down to take the risk of redundancy on the one hand or have a fixed regular 4 day workweek.

tattoed_bum

hi we had the same dillema ,my oh had the choice of a 3 day week or some of the men had to be paid off ,
they all chose the 3 day week ,we had to do some reshuffle of our finances but we have and have managed (i would say brilliantly ) on a 3 day week ,

after doing this things have now picked up and the company are all back to a 5 day week ( all extra wages are now going into the savings account for a rainy day ).

basically i would choose the 4 day and have a reshuffle of your finances,

you will be surprised how all the small things add up and make up the wage you will be losing ,eg,
there was the cost of travel for 2 days which was £10 per week ,we cut our mobile contracts to the min that was suitable for us and saved another £35 a month,
and because we were upto date with our council tax we had feb and march free so there was another £200.
so just with that we saved £275 which then made up half the lost wages ,

we then cut back our spending every day which the odd tenner here and there doesnt sound much but it's amazing how much we actually just frittered away .

good luck with your choice ,
and i hope things work out for you

oh and there is also the fact that will the kids are at school (if you have any that is ) there is the oppertunity to spend some quality time with your oh on your own which can be nice

knitter

Hi my hubby started a four day week last week
Given no choices went in on the thursday night at the end of shift told not to come in for friday...as from now on a 4 day week with a fifth of the wages cut:mad: Been there 25 years at the same Manufacturing factory
Going to find it extremely difficult up until this time last year he always had overtime which made up a good part of his wage and I went jobseekers allowance this january First time I claimed benefits since the early 70s when i was a teenager...

ncsmummy

Hubby went to work for a meeting last fri morning and was told that as of this week they would be on a 4 day week, initially this is just for a month so keeping fingers crossed that things pick up cos losing that money will be a nightmare for us.

reheat

Does the company have any problem with people having a second, part-time, job - possibly in the same line of business? May influence how good option 2 seems.

Phyzelda

WE've got til monday to all agree to having our hours cut 20% or the company will be forced to make redundancies!! It sucks. Where can you get a job for one day a week?!?!

Wayne352_2

Thanks for all your replies, there is still alot of things my OH needs clearing up
and did put some questions to her company at this moment they have the choice

which some people have took and reduced hours my OH is waiting for questions to be answered

Keep the replies coming

omelette451

Phyzelda wrote: »

Where can you get a job for one day a week?!?!

You don't, you adapt your lifestyle to make the most of the extra day. Less profligate spending, less extravagance, more time with family and friends.