It's not often you come across a state government program that makes some sort of sense.  At least sense to the real people who actually do the work.  In case you just woke up from a coma in a cave, the economy is tanking and vast scores of worker bees are being laid off.  Even the big cheeses like Boeing and Microsoft are feeling the squeeze. 

Here in the State of Washington there is a program called Share-Work.  In a nutshell, it allows employers to keep their skilled and trained workers in a time of economic downturn.  Instead of laying off the work force completely and making them live off unemployment, and even looking for other work, under the Shared-Work program the employers can cut full time workers back to part time and have unemployment pick up the difference.  You get to keep your job and benefits, earn more than you would on unemployment and the company keeps payroll taxes down and maintains a skilled and trained work pool.  Considering it comes from the bureaucracy of The Man, it still makes some kind of sense.

There are eligibility requirements but any private or public company with up to date payroll taxes and legally registered in the state of Washington can apply.  A full time employee of 40 hours gets cuts back to 25 hours of part time work a week and the unemployment department makes up the difference.  The estimated time for company approval to enroll in the program is 15 days.  In real people who work for a living time that probably closer to 45 days.  You can't be gentle with the with these things either.  You have to push the eligibility process a bit.  Not a once week how's it going sort of push but a harassing stalker call the governor sort of push.

You might be saying to yourself "why my goodness, this sounds like just what our company needs to weather this economic downtown that is not a recession.  This must be a fairly new program since I haven't heard if it before".  But to the contrary, it's been around about as long as the Bee Gees, since 1983 to be exact.  A program that helps workers and companies alike wallowing in obscurity, I shall call forth the worker bees of Washington and spread the word to storm the Bastille of Olympia!  Rise up and be heard my Friends (I feel bit like Norma Rae now).