5-DAY WORK-WEEK IN CITY OFFICES

 

5-DAY WORK-WEEK IN CITY OFFICES

 

August 14, 1979

Work-Week

 

 

 

To,

Mr. S. R. Subramaniam

Vice-President,

Larsen & Toubro

 

 

I have examined this from 2 view-points:

 

1. Disadvantages to the city office staff/ city office operations:

 

1. Longer working hours as a result of spreading 38 ½ hours in 5 days.

 

2. Late-coming / Early-leaving will further go-up.

 

3. If 5 day working is introduced in the Bombay city offices, it would be difficult to resist introduction in regional / branch offices. With differing regional holidays, this would reduce the effective “interaction” days between various offices.

 

4. Customer visits will crowd the 5 days and thereby reduce effective hours for other work.

 

5. Sales staff will want to return to the home-base for the long week-end and restrict traveling / outstation visits to 5 days only.

 

2. IMPACT AT POWAI-WORKS:

 

Any decision to implement a 5 day week at city offices would result in a similar demand from Powai works employees.

 

It is quite likely that the union may let the Supervisors and the Managers of Powai to initiate such a demand. It would be to their advantage in 2 ways:

 

1. To embarrass the Management
2. To keep their options open.

 

If the Management were to accede to any such demand, it can only be with the con-currence of the Union. If it can be made to appear as a “Management – Requirement” to change the no. of working days at Powai, the Union would be in a position to submit its own “conditions” – two of which will be most prominent viz.

 

-         38 ½ working hours for all

-         no reduction of wages.

 

In the enclosed chart, I have tried to illustrate 6 different situations, which show the most likely combinations of the working-hours for different category of employees. Of these situation #1 and situation #2 are the most likely and the two-ends of the spectrum.

 

Whereas, the major obvious dis-advantages have been shown on the chart itself, I would like to list below some of the general problems, that could result from 5 day working.

 

The General Problems :-

 

1. Overloading of:

 

-Canteen Services

-Transport Services

-Medical Services

 

2. Holidays falling on long-week-end :-

 

    There could be a demand for substituting these on “Working “ days.

 

3. Since a good number of maintenance workmen work on the “Weekly –off” and get a       compensatory “Off ” on a working day, a long (2 day) week-end would pose problems.

 

4. One day’s absenteeism, instead of being (16%) 1/6^th of a week, would become (20%)1/5^th of the week.

 

 

5. Impact of a general power cut would be much more sever than at present.

 

6. There could be some un-anticipated problems with regard to PL/SL/CL.

 

7. Prefixing-Suffixing of a Single-day SL/CL to the long week-end may go up.

 

8. Reduced contact with the outside world in general.

 

9. There could be an increased tendency for “outdoor visits” to customers/ suppliers at the beginning and at the end of the working day.

 

10. COST will certainly go-up due to

 

1. Delay in dispatched of Finished Goods and higher FG inventory

 

2. Delayed arrival of raw materials / components from suppliers leading to assy. line hold-ups and higher WIP inventory – also a tendency to hold higher stocks of critical components.

 

3. Working Capital requirement going up due to higher WIP / FG / inventory.

 

4. Overtime working on long week-end may go up steeply.

 

5. If man-hours and / or machine-hours available in a year, are reduced, the “hourly-rate” will go up by the same extent. This would have the effect of pushing-up all cost-estimates. If on the other hand, the physical output per hour does not go up by the same extent, profitability will seriously go-down.

 

6. It must be remembered that even if the 47 working hours are not reduced but equally spread over 5 days, the physical output will go down due to the over-lap of shifts.

 

DIAGRAM

 

11. GENERAL

 

Supervisory / Managerial staff at the factory, who put in extra working hours, will no more be able to do so.

 

Trade Apprentice training will suffer (Quantity & Quality-wise)

 

For want of time, I have not been able to summarize the foregoing comments into “compartments” of

 

1. Impact on Production – Quantity

-         Quality

-         Cost

 

2. Impact on productivity

 

3. Impact on Discipline & Morale

 

4. Use of Leisure hours & Quality of Life.

 

5. Impact on Services & Infrastructure.

 

6. Long – term Future implications.