I am fully in favor of this. I enjoy having more sunlight after work when I can actually go out and enjoy it.
Its a whole lot easier (especially now that clocks can largely set themselves, but even before that) to change the clocks by an hour twice a year rather than every schedule (at least, all business hours and all schedules for everything else that is driven by common business hours, like transit schedules) with similar frequency.
I'm not a big DST fan, but DST is a better solution than your proposed alternative.
The time can change fairly simply because there's only one group of people who need to agree and, once they've agreed, it's binding also on those who disagree. For instance, here in Melbourne it's solely up to the Victorian parliament what timezone we're in and when we're in it. If a change is a contentious matter and after a year of debate it passes through parliament, everyone is subject to that.
Business schedules are harder because there's many many business each of whom would have to go through their local processes. Moreover, it requires the consent not simply of the majority, but of a significant enough supermajority. If 40 per cent don't bother, then the whole system is likely to be thrown into confusion and we can't predict what will happen next year.
Businesses could of course adopt a summer schedule of ten to six to complement their winter schedule of nine to five, but that requires activity on the part of a bunch of businesses who generally don't care enough and are generally happy with daylight savings.
Also, businesses are not subject to the will of their employees. Business leaders might be perfectly happy to knock off work an hour early and play golf while their employees are still toiling away in dingy factories. Consequently, daylight savings would be the preserve of the powerful. Governments are subject to the will of the electorate. If we want daylight savings, we vote in a government who will give it to us. (In principle, this is supposed to work because we vote in a government who is populated by people who are like us and well enough connected to us that they work in our interests. In most countries, ideology (usually neoliberal) has come to dominate parties which nominally care about worker's interests so there isn't as much of a connection. We then lie and say "technology made it all bad" because it's easier to say "those nasty programmers stuffed the world" instead of saying "if we serve the interests of the few the world starts to get really unpleasant".)
Boss, clients, etc won't allow me to.
> If it is a matter of coordination, have an official government statement that summer business hours adjust during x - z months.
That's exactly^H^H^H^H effectively what DST is.
That makes _them_ the problem; anyway the local government should publish a one minute notice: "Remember I'ts # PM., it's time to leave work!" (on TV+radio+twitter) and that's it.
No, it’s not.
Time zones and DST change clock time, this suggestion is to instead change the agreed times for work in a given place.
I should rephrase my comment: "That's effectively what DST is"
Also, now that everyone has a powerful computer in their pockets its extremely useful to register the times without changes based on regional laws.
I'm no fan of DST, I think we should pick a timezone and stick with it. My argument is that DST is better than having a massively coordinated change in work schedules, because that's even more complicated than just moving the hour hand twice a year.
Suppliers aren't going to shift their hours if their clients don't. Investment banks won't shift if the stock exchanges don't. There'd be no change since nobody could go first.
It's much simpler to decree the change on the clock than try to convince everyone to change their schedules in lockstep.
Again, I don't like DST. I wish my area would stay on "summer time" all year. Basically shift to the next time zone. But DST is better than the ad hoc solution that you're suggesting.
Because:
(1) Businesses want to keep consistent hours, (2) lots of work is more efficient with natural light (and people are better at getting up for work when it isn't significantly pre-dawn that they have to do that), (3) people seem more prone to do non-work activity out of the home after work and when there is sunlight; so, to preserve natural light for work when it is scarce and maximize what is available after work when it is plentiful, we turn the clocks back when the days are longer.
How would that work? You'd be getting up at like 3:30AM in the Summer for no reason. That far North there's no way to avoid it being mostly light in the Summer and mostly dark in the Winter, there aren't enough hours of each to shift it around for consistency.
You might think you prefer sunlight after work. But it seems the scientific consensus is shifting towards believing the contrary. And having lived most of my life in permanent DST, I can honestly say I agree with this shifting scientific consensus.
Hoping other states follow.