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Comment by mungoman2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't get this. Why push your work force like this? It's clearly very bad for the workers. And also for the factory, surely having 3 shifts is more efficient because your workers are not as fatigued so will work faster with fewer mistakes?

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For 24x7 production operations, 12 hour shifts make a lot of sense. You work 12 hours, hand off your role to the next incoming shift, and 12 hours later they hand off back to you. You do this for 3 days one week, 4 days the next. 4 hours of OT every day. I did this for 2 years at an LSI fab in Colorado Springs and it was great.

Why would this make more sense than three 8 hour shifts per day, for anybody but the employer?

I don't think it is the rational to come into a situation and assume that everyone but you is wrong and incapable of judging what is best for them.

in India there are hundreds of millions of workers that would love to work 12 hours shifts for more pay and a better quality of life. I'm sure there are advantages to the factory as well.

The reason it's wrong is that if you work for 12 hours per day, and sleep for 8 hours per day, that leaves you with only 4 hours per day for living your ONE AND ONLY life

The problem is you don't know what the next best alternative is for that person.

Maybe that option is working 18 hours getting fucked in a brothel and sleeping 6 hours.

Maybe that option is working 8 hours, but watching your children starve to death.

If people are lining up for these jobs, it is clearly better than their next best option in their mind. Who are you to say they are wrong?

The next best option for that person doesn’t impact the morality of the people making massive profits off them working their life away. They may not have another option because apple needs to add another percentage point to their profit margins, not because that’s the natural state of the world.

So, no, they are definitely not wrong. But anybody who is profiting off their choice while living in comfort is wrong beyond belief.

When workers work longer hours, employers can lower wages due to higher labor supply.

I don't think this is meaningfully impacting the labor Supply in India

You see this in hospitals too and I believe the rational there is that you want to reduce the number of shift changes. In a manufacturing context where you might need to shut down the line in order to change shifts it might be a big money saver to only have to do that twice a day even if you're paying out overtime.

Except that rationale has time and time again shown itself to be horseshit, and doctors would be better off with more shifts (so they weren't overtired like half of their shift and therefore making mistakes) and better processes for hand offs.

It only makes medical error and accidents in US hospitals the 3rd leading cause of death, estimated at more than 250,000 deaths per year. But the hedge fund managing hospitals around the country save so much money by not having to hire sufficient staff and have reasonable shift turn-overs they all got bonuses, so it's all good.

I'm not talking about doctor's here there scheduling is basically hazing, I was talking about nurses where they have to do a complicated patient hand off every time the shift changes and each time they do it there is a chance some ball can drop. My kid has had some extended stays in the hospital, so I can say as somebody with skin in the game that 12 hour shifts for nurses have at least a plausible benefit.

Simple, because it is cheaper for companies. Less logistics to take care of. As for worker welfare they wouldn't give two hoots, if they are fatigued and produce defective parts they can be fired and replaced.

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