Many employers making up for gas
A new survey finds that many companies are trying to help employees deal with the cost of gasoline, from having four-day work weeks to offering telecommuting. Nancy Marshall Genzer explores whether this is productive.
Driver behind the wheel. (iStockPhoto)
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Scott Jagow: Here's something that might restore your faith in corporate America: a new survey finds that many companies are trying to help employees deal with the cost of gasoline. This comes from the consulting firm, Mercer. Nancy Marshall Genzer has more.
Nancy Marshall Genzer: Mercer polled more than 300 companies in July. Nearly a quarter are introducing four-day work weeks for the first time. Another 24 percent are offering telecommuting. That's not practical for say, hospitals.
But Steve Gross with Mercer says they're offering prepaid gas cards instead.
Steve Gross: They didn't want to raise salaries, they didn't want to make it a permanent expense. But they also could do this as a one-off kind of activity.
Gary Chaison teaches labor relations at Clark University. He says he's never seen so many employers helping workers save on gas. But he wonders if paring the work week down to four 10-hour days is productive.
Gary Chaison: And you have to really ask what will be done in those extra two hours that the person is at the plant. Does that really make a full day's work?
But some employers are so desperate not to drive workers away from far-flung jobs they'll do anything.
I'm Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.
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