Seems as if a lot of manual/skilled workers in industry always work 12 hour shifts, along with health care, the police and fire and rescue services.

So why dont desk jockeys, shop staff, and other sit down workers work 12 hour shifts, and why do most offices start at 9.00am, and manual/skilled workes start at 8.00am, unless theyre on 12 hour shifts.

Surely if the ones who work in offices etc worked 12 hour shifts, there would be less demand on public transport networks, more work would be completed and more free time (days off)would be available to boost the tourism industry.

It’s grim, that’s why. A different question would be why DO manual workers do it?

are you my boss ?

tbh everyone in my lab works between 10 and 8 hours sometimes more and popping in at the odd weekend, don’t get overtime or none of that and most people don’t take their full annual leave. and we are public sector workers!

I also suspect that 2 hrs extra of sedentary desk hours would increase the risk of heart disease etc

You have some reasonable points. However, as someone who had a fairly flexible working day, I found that communicating with other folk in other companies/departments was easier if we all stuck to the same core hours. Of course, this is only an issue if you want dialogue to take place in a reasonably short timescale, otherwise, email etc is fine.

Different classes of people work different shifts.

Answered that for you.

Controversial ?

True though.

Big machinery that is most efficient to run 24 hours at a time requires shifts in order to allow this.

Fire/rescue/hospital services are required 24 hours per day. Hence shifts.

Office work, by and large, can be put away at the end of one day and picked up the next.

It’s nothing to do with “class”. It’s about the role/job.

And concentration diminishes so shorter hours are more productive.

our factory workers do 8 hour shifts – 6am-2pm, 2pm-10pm, 10pm-6am. well, technically 7.5hr, as they have a half hour break in the middle of the shift.

our office staff actually work longer as the day is 8 hours plus lunch half hour. except Fridays, which are an hour shorter.

In the moulding depts at work we have large presses that are run on a 24hr-3 shift system. The presses need to be brought up to an optimum temp before operating and then maintained at that temp, it takes 2 hrs to bring each moulding tool up to temp so a nightly shut down simply isn’t feasible.
Personally i work in the toolroom so i go home at 5pm 🙂

But call centres are usully there and open 24 per day, so have 12 hour shifts, instant reducton in workforce required, and less peeps commuting.

Where a those peeps could be retrained to work in the health services and shorten shifts.

WOuld you rather speak to a oficer worker about sonmmething after 11 hours of them working, or a doctor , who has done the same shift, and has some bad news for you.

In an office worker and for the last two days have worked 6am to 9pm. That’s a 15 hour shift btw….

You haven’t really thought this through – have you?

oh yeah when I did factory work in summer hols from uni we were on 8 Hr shifts but often took extra hours for more cash up to 16 not sure if that wad legal ?

I do, regularly, and get paid for my standard 35hour week. The question should be – Why don’t office workers get paid for working 12hour shifts?

Child care and generally having a life…

I work 12 hour shifts, nights and days, one weekend in 4 off. I’m about to move to a shorter night shift… Hurrah… And a longer, 14 hour day shift. It saves money, apparently, which is for the greater good.

Whether this will improve the quality of the work we do is, as yet, unproven, but I’m only a nurse on an intensive care unit so its not that important.

Yep instead of 3 shifts of 8 hours you then have 2 shifts of 12 hours so youve lost one shift and all those staff.

Simples.

Crikey it may well be a good question to ask the management who work just day shifts.

Project – quite a lot do they just get paid for doing 5×8 hrs rather than 5×12!

because shift workers while working a 12 hour shift will not be doing it 5 days per week, every week…

Several factors probably.

Personally I have found that at the end of a 12 hour day doing a manual job I am of course tired and less productive than at the start, but still ok. However in a office job I find by 12 hr my brain is fried. After a sustained period of 12 hr days ina office I’m a zombie. This may be the manual job and office jobs I’ve done though.

I think its the no overtime issue too, for some reason there is culture of office work = no overtime; which is reasonable for managers / director / bonus based people but for production staff less so. Employers would not pay extra for the 12 hr shift so its only done when necessary.

Poly , but thats just stupid, its doing someone out of a job, and getting work done on the cheap.

Would you rather work at a machine or do something manual for 12 hours, or sit staring at a screen trying to get a spreadsheet to add up?

Office work isn’t generally core to the business in many industry’s. You just need someone for a few hours a day to tidy up the paperwork and hold a few meetings so hat the actual skilled staff can get on with their job free of the burden of paperwork etc. It makes since for them too work little and often whilst the rest of us do a three or four long shifts a week and enjoy the time off.

thats just stupid,

it is but it very hard to fight against it in most companies.

What length of shift do surgeons and other medical consultants do?

The Brick has it. I’ve done both and in general production stuff is auto pilot where much office work requires more thinking so it’s difficult to do 12 hours. Doesn’t explain the medical people working 12hr shifts though.

I’m an office worker and I’ve just finished work… 8.30-5.00 at the office, no lunch, 7.30-10.18 at home coz the workload’s so damn big. Won’t get paid for the extra though.

Just short of 11 hours all told… 👿

shorter hours are more productive

Long hours are counter-productive.

Office work isn’t generally core to the business in many industry

It is in mine.

I work long hours without overtime when I need to, but then again I can coast (and hang around on here) more when I don’t. That’s why there’s no overtime.

Office work isn’t generally core to the business in many industry

It is in many industries though it is, office work does not mean clerical. What you say for clerical / admin is true, but for many business office based work is the production end of the business.

Engineer (design and calcs)
programming
accountancy
law
finance
creative industries
research
….

You just need someone for a few hours a day to tidy up the paperwork and hold a few meetings so hat the actual skilled staff can get on with their job free of the burden of paperwork etc.

🙂

And just close down another 2 days a week when all those staff have worked their 35/36 hrs?

work 3 12 hour shifts. days and nights. weekend for me till sunday night 🙂

I knew a guy in IT who worked 4×12 then 4 days off. He hated it, because he had few weekends to go biking with his mates who all worked traditional office hours.

I reckon that in the construction industry office wallahs “work” longer hours than manual workers.

You would struggle to find a manual building worker working anywhere near a 12 hour shift on site.

we work 7 till 7,with varying start times as that is when our customers are open. Makes sense no?

Office work isn’t core to the business ?? You might not think that if all the HR and Finance wallahs went home, and you don’t get paid any more. No more stock ordering, no paying invoices. No planning, R & D, marketing, ordering, no work at all after about 12 hours.

I guess the boys could all borrow the van and whip down to B & Q in their tea break then.

Everywhere I’ve worked (light, high tech industry) everyone worked the same hours, regardless of where you worked (office or shop floor), which was, officially, something like 8:30 to 5:00. The difference would be that the shop floor get overtime, office don’t.

I think before this thread goes any further we need to establish whether manual workers actually, annually, work longer ours than ‘sit-down’ workers do (as the OP pus it) with some actual evidence or a credible source.

Or I might be tempted to think that the OP is just talking a load of rubbish he dreamed up whilst manning a machine somewhere.

A close friend of mine, who’s technically a civil servant, but works with the army, has been working 14 hour days, with work at home over the weekends as well. She probably wonders why she isn’t working a 12 hour day too.