Office Quandries
Peter Rachleff
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PUNCHING OUT page 1 of 3 | |||||
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Weekly Answers to Office Quandries |
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Professor Peter Rachleff |
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 Could you please tell me how many days in a row an employee can be made to work 12 hr. shifts? Some of the people I work with have had to do it
for 5 weeks straight; 6 days a week. It is also over 100 degrees in our shop
and we get no breaks from the heat and very loud noise exposure. We get
hearing protection, but it doesn't completely protect us from the constant high
noise level.
I work in a union shop (the United International Paperworkers Union), but
we don't, in my opinion, have a very good contract.
Beverly
Yes, Beverly, there is an "eight hour day." But that is merely the standard, not a hard and fast line. Labor laws only require that employers pay workers time and a half for hours over forty in a week. |
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The sort of overtime you've been working is all too common in our economy. Several years ago, Juliet Shor pointed out in The Over-Worked American (Basic Books, 1991) that the average American worker is putting in 160 more hours per year than she or he did in the 1970s! To add insult to injury, that same average worker is bringing home 20% less pay! Another study -- Michael Yates's Longer Hours, Fewer Jobs (Monthly Review Press, 1994) -- confirms Shor's data and places it in a more analytical framework.