St. Vincent and the Grenadines\u2019 Minister of National Security, St. Clair Leacock, has raised the possibility of reducing the country\u2019s standard five-day work week as the government prepares for the severe economic fallout of international conflict.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the OMG morning radio show, Leacock discussed the local implications of the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran, specifically highlighting the threat of a global oil crisis and skyrocketing fuel costs.<\/p>\n
He revealed that the government has proactively established a technical committee of experts, spanning security, economics, foreign affairs, and civil society to advise the Cabinet and formulate a contingency plan.<\/p>\n
When outlining the drastic measures the country might need to adopt if fuel prices were to double, Leacock openly questioned the sustainability of the current labor schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we continue to have a 5-day work week, do we have to limit ourselves to a lesser numbers?\u201d Leacock asked.<\/p>\n
While Leacock did not explicitly explicitly use the exact phrase \u201cfour-day work week,\u201d his suggestion to limit the five-day work week to \u201clesser numbers\u201d points directly to a shortened work schedule as a potential conservation strategy already adopted by nations like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.<\/p>\n
This potential reduction in the work week was floated alongside a list of other severe, hypothetical energy-saving measures, which include:<\/p>\n
Implementing mandatory carpooling and limiting public transportation.<\/p>\n
Rationing fuel for security forces, power companies, and essential transportation.<\/p>\n
Restricting the hours that citizens are allowed to run electricity in their homes.<\/p>\n
Reducing government taxes on fuel imports.<\/p>\n
Leacock warned that the international crisis represents a \u201cvery serious headwind\u201d that could turn the local economy upside down and drastically alter the government\u2019s budgetary plans.<\/p>\n
However, he assured the public that the government is not waiting until the crisis is on their doorstep to act, and that the multi-disciplinary committee is already hard at work to help the nation navigate the upcoming challenges<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Vincent and the Grenadines\u2019 Minister of National Security, St. Clair Leacock, has raised the possibility of reducing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-394106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}