[RKDinOKC]

The manufacturing part of the facility works 3 8 hour shifts 5 days a week and typically use volunteers for 3 shifts on Saturday. The machine operators stagger their lunches and breaks so most machines can be kept running 24 hours a day. For several years a Saturday with no overtime is rare and then typically only on long weekends like Thanksgiving.

Assembly was working 2, 8 hour shifts 5 days a week and rarely one 8 hour shift on a Saturday. The new assembly schedule is 2, 10 hour shifts 4 days a week.

Everyone thinks a 4 day work week would be better, but it has been proven time and again that quality and productivity goes down driving total costs up, despite the 2 hours a week saved because the facility is not open for the 5th day of breaks and lunches.

There has been a trend for some time as the company has aged that supervisory positions and staff that were occupied by people with specialized education have been replaced by promoting employees without that specialized education. The result is that the workplace has changed from a place people wanted to work, to a place people dread going to.

This 10 hour shift thing is just one example. When the company had a real live college edumicated industrial engineer, he did all he could to keep 3 - 8 hour shifts fully staffed with only occasional overtime, and they never worked on a Saturday. Since the well educated founder of the company passed, and that industrial engineer retired the overtime has steadily increased, employee moral has gone way down, and now we have a department going to a 4 day work week.

Hey, they are currently making money and I get to work from home managing the exchange server and a couple of other servers and take care of my Mom, so what to I care.