Supervisors Vote Flexible Hours for Many County Jobs

Hoping to reduce rush-hour traffic while simultaneously improving employee morale, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a flex-time work plan that will permit thousands of county workers to alter their traditional 8 a.m.-5 p.m. shifts.

By a unanimous vote, the board approved a proposal from county administrators that will create staggered work hours--and perhaps four-day work weeks--for as many as one-fourth of the county’s 13,500 employees by late this year.

Designed to ease morning and evening peak-hour traffic congestion, the flexible work plan was described by Supervisor John MacDonald as “an attempt to keep our streets and freeways from becoming parking lots.”

“This obviously isn’t going to solve the problem totally, but it’s a step in the right direction,” MacDonald said. “If you take cars off the freeways during peak hours, they’ll be there at some other time, which spreads the problem out over a longer period. But, if we’re going to solve the problem, we’re going to have to change habits and the way we’re used to doing things. And it may be that altering the old 8-to-5 workday is one of them.”

Under the plan approved Tuesday, county employees would be encouraged to adopt staggered starting and quitting times to allow them to travel to and from work during non-peak periods.

Problems for Some

At the discretion of department heads, employees now working 8-to-5 shifts--roughly half of the county’s work force--could start their eight-hour workdays between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. and quit between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. County officials hope to have the flex schedule in place by December.

Alternative work schedules would pose problems for certain departments, such as the 2,000 workers employed in the criminal justice system, county officials concede. Nevertheless, David Janssen, the county’s assistant chief administrative officer, said efforts will be made to ensure that every county department participates in the program.

A county survey conducted last year showed that 450 workers have inflexible commitments such as child care or already participate in car pools, while about 600 county employees already work flexible schedules. Of the remaining employees, county officials believe that about 3,700 workers are likely candidates for flexible work hours, according to Ethel Chastain, the county’s director of human resources.

Wyleen Luoma, general manager of 11,000-member San Diego County Employees Assn., praised the flex-time proposal, which she predicted will give county workers “a less harried and sometimes less hazardous way to work.”

However, Larry Sibelman, a senior field representative of Local 535 of the Social Service Employees International Assn., told the supervisors that they could better attain their traffic-reduction goals by instituting 10-hour-a-day, four-day work weeks for some county employees than by staggering five-day shifts.

Calling the flex-time plan “a limited response to the problem,” Sibelman argued that “eliminating one round trip a week for workers is going to do a lot more to reduce traffic than just having workers start an hour earlier or later.”

Until the mid-1980s, Sibelman said, about 1,500 county social workers worked a so-called 4-10 shift. Then, during acrimonious contract talks, county leaders removed the four-day work week option.

The elimination of social workers’ four-day work week, Sibelman charged, stemmed from county leaders’ “pique and dissatisfaction that they didn’t have the same option available to them.” Janssen, however, said that the 4-10 shifts created scheduling problems and that economic considerations also figured in administrators’ desire to return those workers to traditional five-day weeks.

Citing an oft-heard criticism, MacDonald added that managers question whether they really get a full 40 hours a week out of workers on 4-10 schedules.

But Sibelman dismissed that concern, saying: “Even if workers are there five days a week for eight hours, you still have to track them.”

Despite his concerns, MacDonald stressed that “4-10 is a viable part of the plan,” and asked county administrators to study ways to include that alternative in the flex-time program.

Preliminary inquiries to county employees have indicated that workers interested in a non-traditional schedule are about evenly split between those who prefer to start earlier than 8 a.m. and those who would like to begin later, according to Dan Kelley, a county labor relations official.

Personal reasons such as spouses’ schedules, child-care commitments and mass transit schedules are among the factors affecting workers’ preferred work hours, Kelley added.

Based on workers’ initial positive reaction to the added flexibility in their own schedules, county officials expect to attract more than enough volunteers to meet their goal of reducing by 50% the existing 8-to-5 work force in most departments.

County administrators expect the shift to flexible schedules to be easiest in departments that have relatively little contact with the public, such as the General Services Department and the auditor’s office.

On the other hand, departments that have considerable daily contact with the public, such as Planning and Land Use and the assessor’s office, would pose some scheduling difficulties, county officials say. In such departments, managers would have to balance workers’ wishes for flexible shifts against the need to maintain certain levels of public service.