Shiftwork Mobility

Akers being permanently on night work, or alternate; two weeks on nights and two weeks on days, etc. Double-day shifts (fixed or alternate). Two shifts in each 24 hours. Working periods are usually 6 to 2 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 10 Three-shift working (noncontinuous). Rotating shifts operating five or six days a week.

Three-shift working (continuous). Three or four groups of operatives rotating to cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Wide variations occur. For example, two 12-hour shifts a day, with four hours as overtime are sometimes worked, also split rosters, where workers are expected to work two separate work periods a day (during morning and evening rush hour for bus staffs), and 'hang about' during the inbetween period.

Advantages of shift an employer are:

Increased output An employer who goes, over to running his factory on double or treble shifts has taken a step equivalent to opening one or two new factories, but without any outlay on premises, land or machines.

His only costs are for materials to be worked on, extra lighting, gas, end on extra maintenance labour. This gives a phenomenal increase in profits with very little new outlay.

Enables installation of modern machinery.

New plant and equipment— particularly computerized or automated machinery and the modern dock system - is of such enormous cost that it is only economical to install and use when working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Enables the using up of old machinery more quickly.

If an employer is to keep up with the race for markets, he cannot wait years for his old machines to wear out. At the same time, he cannot keep buying new machinery betore the value of the old has been returned through the sale of his products.

IN hours on day-work.

Also, long stretches of intesnive working occur under shift-work. Under one system workers do seven days at 94 hours a day before getting two days off.

In general, the employers' aim is to move towards the three-shift continuous system. This may be done gradually, depending on the opposition from the workers concerned.

Beginning with two-shift working on the introduction of a productivity deal, they attempt to negotiate a threeshift system at a later date. For some firms, of course, three-shift continuous working is not the best method anyway.

This may apply where extensive rest or maintenance of machinery or plant is required, where associated processes cannot keep up with the central production line, and where services are being provided only at certain times of the day (catering, retailing, transport, etc.).

In a Report on shift systems by the Ministry of Labour 'Introduction of Shift Working, a Survey', HMSO 3s 3d) published 1967, Ray Gunter, then Minister of Labour, made it quite clear in his foreword that the introduction of this system was in line with government policy. After explaining that the Report was a summary of a series of investigations by Ministry of Labour officers, he added : Report I hope that the report will encourage those résponsible in industry to pay greater attention to the planning and introduction of shift work.' This survey covered 19 firms and made some relevant points for employers.

For example, it noted that the Factories Act restricts the hours during which women and young persons may be employed, but went on to add that exemptions are always available from the Ministry of Labour. I Thirteen firms of those studied had made applications for such exemption, which were granted in all cases. The last part of the Report is a survey of two firms. One of these changed from a 12-hour system operating five days a week, to a 'continuous shiftwarking system' operating around the clock, seven days a JUST OUT The report stated that 'no additional recruitment was needed':

"The introduction of mechanical handling aids and improved plant layout enabled the existing labour force to be used more effectively?

It was estimated that under the new system, productivity per worker increased by at HIGHLIGHT of last week's television was Thursday's '24 Hours' programme on Czechoslovakia — broadcast on the eve of the first anniversary of the Soviet invasion.

William Shawcross of 'The Sunday Times', author of the book 'Dubcek' published the same day, used a wide collection of newsreel film— much of it extremely rareto highlight the post-war history of Czechoslovakia and show the political roots of the 1968 'reform movement'.

We saw the Slovak national rising and the Soviet liberation of Prague in 1944, the overthrow of the bourgeois government in 1948 and the growing Stalinist terror: political prisoners exercising in the courtyards of the jails, and Rudolph Slansky and his comrades on trial for their lives.

The potted history, interspersed with Shawcross's lunging comments, led through the Twentieth Congress speech by Khruschev in 1956, the blowing-up Stalin's statue in Prague in 1961 and the death of Gottwald to the resignation of Novotny and the beginning of Dubcek's 'reformist' rule.

The enormous scope of the movement unleashed among the working class and the youth in 1968 became abundantly clear from film shown in the programme.

Here was an enormous popular movement which thrust PART SIXTEEN least 7 per cent, that ... 'a potential increase in capacity of one-third had been obtained without additional plant, buildings or managerial staff, and that in market conditions which demanded full capacity the management was confident achieving a 30 per cent saving in unit production costs'.

DIBCAN The Soviet invasion: Wenceslas Square, Prague towards the invasion of August 1968.

What they feared more than anything else was the emergence of the Czech working class as an independant force.

The tanks moved in to crush this development and reimpose bureaucratic hegemony over the Czechoslovak workers.

As one of the Czech oppositionists interviewed put it:

'The Russians were carrying out their side of the StalinChurchill-Roosevelt agreement drawn up at Yalta'-the agreement to police Europe against the revolutionary working class.

While the opposition to the Soviet invasion focussed around Dubcek, newsreel film Details of wages paid were not given, except to say that the hourly rates of pay were increased, that adjustments had been made 'to compensate employees for increased responsibilities on machine operation', , and that an to compensate for shorter canteen breaks. 'But it was made made it clear that the Soviet Stalinists' real enemy was the working class.

Workers on strike in the factories backed the youth demonstrating in the streets against the tanks.

The Kremlin was forced to reach a compromise with Dubcek, whose own politics became clear when he accepted the Moscow diktat and set to work to impose it on his return from Moscow.

But the Kremlin was not interested in a compromise. They wanted to break the working class politically and rob it of all political independence.

Dubcek, continually facing both ways, was inexorably eased out of all his posts, toshifts will find it necessary to revise their shift system to satisfy modern social and technical conditions.' To combine shift working with various time-andmotion methods to generally intensify the rate of working as laid down by government policy expressed through the Prices and Incomes Boards.

Combination

In the engineering industry it is exactly this combination of continuous shift work and the Measured-Day Work system that the employers are striving to extend.

On the docks, too, shift work is now being introduced.

This aim is particularly inevitable where large-scale modernization has gone on and where millions of pounds have been spent on new docks, warehouses, handling equipment and container ships.

The employers want nothing less than flat-out working 24 hours a day, every day of the That minority of the workers that receives large sums under the new schemes will find that modernization does not cease at the level where workers feel 'satisfied' with the take-home pay earned, but will inevitably press on to yet greater mobility and flexibility and to 'revision' of existing times and standards. on Czechoslovak Thursday August BBC 1 REVIEWED BY

Extended

Already in many offices where computers have been installed, extended hours are worked. Many shops, especially supermarkets, are staying open in the evenings and on Bank Holidays.

The latest industry to consider a major change to complete round-the-clock working is the building and civil engineering industry.

New, greatly improved floodlighting and plastic weather covers make this entirely possible.

An article in 'Construction News', journal of the building trade, in March 1970, looked at the machinery, giant earthmovers, loaders, etc. and explained the economics this way:

"The high capital cost and hire rates of the machines are matched by the capacity of 'their output, but the arithmetic goes into reverse when the machines stand still . . . the continuing poor profit margins and slow rate of growth "of most building and civil engineering firms in comparison to those in the "growth" industries should be a constant criticism of the way the industry goes on running on the same old lines. Its heaviest investment is undoubtedly in plant, yet it allows most of this plant to stand idle for the greater part of its working life' But many employers are Rossanda of the 'Manifesto' group Such is the case with firemen, maintenance workers, dockers and constructional engineering workers.

Of course, some workers already work in this way, the difference being that at present this is regarded as an 'abnormal condition' of work requiring a higher rate ot payment for the inconvenience.

The employers, however, want to move to a position where this type of working is regarded as normal and requiring no difference in payment from ordinary daytime working.

Maintenance workers in particular would cease to permanently assigned to one works, but would be moved about from plant to plant as a small, highly mobile gang of 'trouble-shooters'.

Workers must ensure complete opposition to the introduction of shift work into jobs where it is not being worked; complete opposition also to replacement of existing shifts by new systems (like the threeshift continuous).

The employers must be stopped in any attempt to extend the working week, or to reduce the ofi-work periods of the day. For the working class, the ne w machines must be the very reason why working hours can be halved—not extended round the clock. • Continued next Wednesday