SHIFT OPERATIONS IN SELECTED DEFENSE Summary THE great majority of plants in key defense industries were operating more than one shift per day during March 1941, according to a survey of 587 plants employing 618,232 wage earners. The bulk of the operations in these plants, however, was being carried out on one main shift, where nearly three-fourths of the total wage earners were employed. Nearly two-thirds of the reported wage earners worked overtime during the week surveyed, with an average of nearly 10 hours per overtime worker. The survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the request of the Office of Production Management, covered shift operations and extent of overtime during the midweek of March 1941. The industries included in the survey were aluminum manufactures; ammunition; brass, bronze, and copper products; chemicals; electrical machinery, apparatus, and supplies; engines (other than aircraft); explosives; firearms; machine tools; machine-tool accessories; shipbuilding; and smelting and refining. The plants included in the survey account for well over half the employment in the industries they represent. Mail questionnaires were sent to approximately 700 plants, from which 587 replies were received in time for inclusion in this summary. Shift Operations More than half of the reporting establishments were operating with some workers on each of three shifts per day and an additional 177 plants were on a 2-shift schedule. The 72 plants running a single shift employed less than 5 percent of the total number of wage earners in all the surveyed plants. Comparatively few of the multishift plants have built up their second or third shifts to the point where maximum utilization of their facilities is being achieved. In many plants the added shifts were being used to balance production and to make necessary repairs to equipment. The distribution of workers in all the plants showed 72 1 Prepared by Morris Levine of the Bureau's Employment Statistics Division, under the direction of Lewis E. Talbert, Chief. percent employed on the first shift, 20 percent on the second shift, and 8 percent on the third shift. In the industries where continuous processes are employed, practically all of the plants were operating 3 shifts per day. In smelting and refining, for instance, all 39 of the reporting plants were on a 3-shift schedule. In chemicals, 87 of the 89 plants reported 3-shift operations, and in brass, bronze, and copper, 41 of the 48 plants were operating 3 shifts per day. In the machine-tool and machine-tool-accessories industries, the difficulties in obtaining sufficient numbers of skilled workers have resulted in the widespread use of 2-shift schedules with overtime, rather than the adoption of a third shift. In these two industries, many of the 2-shift plants reported their wage earners working as much as 20 to 25 hours of overtime per week. The highest ratio of workers employed on other than the main shift was reported by plants in the ammunition, explosives, and brass, bronze, and copper products industries. In each of these industries, over 35 percent of the wage earners were employed on the added shifts. In private shipyards and in firearms plants, less than 25 percent of the total force was employed outside the main shift. The following table shows the distribution of workers, by industry, according to shift. TABLE 1.-Distribution of Employment According to Shifts, by Industry, March 1941 1 Employment figures in these industries are not published. Data are available under pledge of confidence to Federal Government agencies and to presidents of the reporting companies. 1,856 100.0 30, 452 79.3 7,961 20.7 61.1 8.548 26.7 3,928 12.2 TABLE 1.-Distribution of Employment According to Shifts, by Industry, March 1941– A wide variance in the distribution of wage earners between shifts was evident among the 338 plants operating 3 shifts per day. In 28 of these plants, employing 31,376 workers, over half of the workers were employed on other than the first shift and in 62 additional plants, with 79,295 workers, between 40 and 50 percent of the plant force were occupied on the added shifts. In contrast, 64 plants employing 88,860 workers on 3-shift schedules had 80 percent or more of their workers on the main shift. In the group of plants reporting the heaviest second- and thirdshift schedules, which is made up of producers of chemicals, explosives, brass, bronze, and copper products, and machine tools, shift employment was distributed in about a 5:3:2 ratio. Approximately half the workers were employed outside the main shift. The distribution of all 3-shift plants according to the percentage of workers on the added shifts is shown in the following table. TABLE 2.-Distribution of 3-Shift Plants According to Percentage of Workers on Added Among the 177 plants operating on a 2-shift basis, only 29 were employing as many as 30 percent of their total plant force on the second shift. The majority of the 2-shift plants were running a second shift with less than 20 percent of their total workers. The maximum shift ratio being practiced to any extent by 2-shift plants was 65:35; that is, 35 workers on the second shift to every 65 on the main shift. Most of the plants operating on this ratio were found in the machine-tool, shipbuilding, and electrical-machinery industries. In general, 2-shift machine-tool plants were operating their second shifts at the highest level of any of the surveyed industries. These 2-shift machine-tool plants were also running the heaviest overtime schedules. The distribution of 2-shift plants according to the percentage of workers employed on the second shift is shown in the following table. TABLE 3.-Distribution of 2-Shift Plants According to Percentage of Workers on Second Operations in the 587 reporting plants dropped to about three-fifths of the weekday level on the Saturday of the week surveyed and to about one-tenth on Sunday as measured by the number of persons at work on those days. (See table 4.) Although only 89 of the 587 plants shut down completely over the week end, many other plants operated with skeleton forces, using the week end to make necessary repairs and to operate "bottleneck" departments. The highest ratio of operations over the week end occurred in smelting and refining plants, where approximately three-fourths of the wage earners were at work on Saturday and slightly more than half on Sunday. In chemical-manufacturing plants, almost half the workers were employed on Saturday and one-third on Sunday. In these two industries, staggered shifts are widely used, in order to attain continuous operation without lengthening the workweek of the individual worker. Machine-tool and machine-tool-accessories plants came closest to achieving full 6-day operation. In machine tools, 88 402358-41-6 |