40 Hour Workweek

ADELPHI -- Deciding it is better to risk the wrath of employees than that of Gov. William Donald Schaefer, the governing board of the state university system ordered yesterday that more than 5,000 employees work up to 4 1/2 more hours a week for no extra pay.In the largest demonstration before the University of Marylan Board of Regents in years, more than 300 employees, most of them women, took annual leave from jobs on at least five campuses to stage a...

County lawmakers gave themselves and their colleagues passing marks as they prepared to adjourn the bitterest General Assembly session inrecent memory."

The governor's plan to lengthen the state employee workweek to 40 hours unfairly discriminates against female workers, two women employees complained to the federal equal rights agency yesterday.The discrimination complaint was filed with the Baltimore office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by Connie Powell and Gloria Chawla, assisted by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.The governor's cost-saving measure to expand the workweek from 35 1/2 hours to 40 hours would create disproportionate burdens for female employees of the state, primarily because of added child-care expenses, they argued.

Nothing better symbolizes the agony of the state's growing budget crisis than the conflict over the 40-hour workweek.For nearly 50 years, most of the state's workers have put in a 35.5 hour week instead of the traditional 40. It was considered a perk of state employment. Now, faced with dwindling tax revenue and a mandate from the voters to cut costs rather than raise taxes, the question is no longer how to avoid the pain of the economic crunch, but what course will wreak the least havoc.

For Donna Costa-Fletcher, being forced to go to a 40-hour workweek without a corresponding increase in salary means balancing a second job against visiting her 85-year-old grandmother, counseling battered women and, in the last two months, writing five letters a night to U.S. soldiers deployed in Saudi Arabia.For Kathleen Maroney, it means having fewer hours each day to study for the three evening classes she committed herself to earlier this year.For Sherri Allan, it means $3,000 more in child-care costs and transferring two of her three children to a new school that's closer to their baby sitter.