Schedule Leaves Some Employees Wary, Others Eager

Linda Landis doesn’t want three days off a week.

Landis, a fiscal assistant in the Ventura County tax collector’s office, worries about what a longer workday will mean for her 10-year-old son.

“As a parent, I feel he’s too young to be by himself,” she said Tuesday, hours after county supervisors approved a four-day workweek for most county employees. “I would never put him in a position where something could happen to him while I’m not there.”

Landis is one of thousands of county employees who in May will be asked to work four 10-hour days each week instead of the usual five-day, eight-hour schedule.

“I’m hoping they offer us some options,” said Landis, a single parent who lives in Ventura. “It’s not a good option, but possibly I could work four eight-hour days. It would affect my pay, but at least my child would be OK.”

Reaction was mixed at the County Government Center on Tuesday to the decision to convert most departments to a four-day schedule beginning May 23.

Many employees said they would welcome a three-day weekend each week.

“I already work a 9/80 schedule, so what it means is one extra hour a day for me,” said Rosalie Mason, a program analyst who was lunching in the cafeteria. “I really enjoy my one (extra) day off every other weekend, but fortunately my baby-sitter is very accommodating.”

Employees on a 9/80 schedule work 80 hours over nine days in each two-week period.

Michael Weston, the Data Center manager who supervises Mason, said he would have to shuffle some schedules to keep business humming, “but I think some of them will enjoy having an extra day off.”

But Weston did cite “the fatigue factor” as a potential drawback.

“Four 10-hour shifts in a row make for long days,” he said. “It’s unknown at this point what that’s going to do to (productivity).”

Taxpayers and others having business at county offices Tuesday hoped the shorter workweek will not translate into longer lines.

“If you have to stand in lines and wait, it’s going to be backed up and that’s going to affect me,” said LaRue Sanders, a retired Oxnard resident, at the planning office. “If they can accommodate the public in four days, that’s fine with me.”

Oxnard-area Realtor Paul Garner, filling out paperwork at the survey and mapping office, said the longer days could be a blessing.

“It might make it easier for me because the days they will be open, they’ll be open longer,” he said. “It would give me that much more time in the day. I’ll just have to cut out one day a week.”

Food service supplier Frank Rompal Jr. said he may have to cut his employee schedules to make up for lost business.

“There’s 17 people working here and they’ll probably get their hours cut, so it will affect their pay,” said Rompal, who operates a snack bar and the Hall of Justice cafeteria in the Government Center. “We’ll probably have to open earlier and stay open later, which means a scheduling problem for our employees with families.”

Jerry Perry, supervisor of the county’s 11-member building and safety office that moved from Thousand Oaks to the East County Courthouse earlier this month, said his staff supports the schedule change.

“In the last couple of days I took a survey of our people and they were in favor of it,” he said. “Basically because they get that extra day off.”

Senior building inspector Archie Sorenson said the new schedule would allow him one fewer 70-mile commute from his home in Ventura to East County.

“It’s a long drive,” he said. “That extra day off is just going to be fantastic.”

But for Santa Paula contractor Brent Lamo, who was reviewing some paperwork Tuesday with a Simi Valley building inspector, the shift will cause problems.

“It’s hard enough getting through the red tape when you’ve got the whole week to work with,” he said. “It’ll be a major inconvenience and a major cost. What it’s going to do is make jobs last longer and inspections that much harder to get.”

Times correspondent James Maiella Jr. contributed to this story.