EXCESSIVE OVERTIME HARMFUL

Grey River Argus, 10 September 1941, Page 7

EXCESSIVE OVERTIME HARMFUL

SAY EXPERTS. The sudden speed-up of industry in the national war effort is bringing a sudden increase in accidents and other occupational ailments.—N.S'.W. Safety First Council. There is no way. of knowing how much illness and death resulted from this mad rush to get explosives in a shorter time than they could properly be made..—American expert on industrial diseases. (Quotations from an A.R.U. pamphlet). An excessive increase in overtime work does not—except for short periods during an emergency —give a' proportional increase of output; on the contrary, it causes the rate of output to fall off with increasing rapidity.—British Government Industrial Health Research Board. Undue exhaustion was one of the causes of munition factory employees being absent from work. —Mr. Ernest Bevin, British Minister of Labour.

Hours in British Munitions factories are to be modified, excessive hours having had a detrimental effect on efficiency.—London cable. Extended working hours not only result in boredom, but are conducive to a greater amount of sickness and industrial accidents among workers. Overtime definitely does not pay. It is better to arrange shifts of workers than to extend the hours of the day shift. Misguided efforts to stimulate workers to feverish activity in the supposed interest of output are as useless as would be the cheers of partisans encouraging a long-distant runner -to a futile sprint early in the race.—Health of Munition Workers’ Committee, 1917. “Industrial Worker” Sept. 3, 1941.