But the surge in gasoline prices is pushing more private employers as well as local governments to offer a four-day week as a perk that eliminates two commutes a week.

Staff at Neighborhood Development Services in rural northeastern Ohio were talking about quitting to find work closer to their homes when executive director Dave Vaughan stepped in with offers to compress their work week.

"I didn't want to lose people," Vaughan said of the program, which more than half of his 19 employees began last week. "In rural areas like we are, gas price increases are more challenging because we don't have the mass transit alternative -- we can't jump on a bus or take a train."

Eventually, Vaughan hopes to close the office one day a week, further reducing energy costs.

In America's struggling automaking heartland, the shorter workweek offers employers a way of rewarding employees when the budget does not allow a salary increase, said Oakland County, Michigan, executive L. Brooks Patterson.

"By allowing employees to work four 10-hour days it will save them 20 percent on their commute costs and ease the financial pinch of filling up their cars," said Patterson, who last week proposed the compressed week for county workers.

Gasoline prices have begun altering US commutes in many ways, a survey released on Thursday showed.

Changing habits

Some 44 percent of respondents said they have changed the way they commute -- doing things such as sharing a ride or driving a more fuel-efficient car -- or are working from home or looking for a closer job in order to reduce gasoline costs, according to staffing services company Robert Half International. That's up from 34 percent two years ago.

On New York's Long Island, Suffolk County legislator Wayne Horsley also has proposed employees have the option of working four 10-hour shifts, rather than five eight-hour shifts, saying it would save 461 barrels of oil in a 120-day pilot project.

"This is a gasoline-driven proposition and we're looking to change people's long term philosophies of life," Horsley said.

The program, termed Operation Sunshine, will cut gasoline costs for workers who drive an average round trip of 32 miles to work. It also aims to cut the county's energy bill by having fewer employees in the office at a time, Horsley said.

In Oklahoma, a resolution is pending before the state legislature encouraging state agencies to implement flexible work schedules that would allow the four-day workweek.

"State employees are on fixed budgets and they are not usually the most highly paid in our society," said State Sen. Earl Garrison, a Democrat, who sponsored the measure.

Some schools, including community colleges in rural areas where commutes are long and public transportation is scarce, already have plans to drop a day of classes, usually Fridays.

The school district in Marietta, Georgia, a city north of Atlanta, institutes a four-day week during June and July when schools are out and it is mostly administrative staff who are working, saving on air conditioning and water in addition to commuting costs for employees, said Thomas Algarin, director of communications at Marietta City Schools.

But a four-day workweek brings problems too. The state government in Ohio is bucking the national trend and canceling an 8-year-old policy that allowed a compressed workweek.

"There were just too many vacant seats on Friday," said Ron Sylvester, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services.

(China Daily/Agencies May 31, 2008)