TIC
Extra work hours and skills are two different words, but knowing that they are related is very important.
First, let’s talk about the definition of the working hour; the definition of the working hour has been written in various ways we already know. As I am writing about the working hours of garment industry workers, it is appropriate to mention the definition in the Bangladesh Labor Act 2006. It is written that “working hour means the time during which the workers employed are at the employer’s disposal excluding any interval allowed for rest and meals.” When an employee works more than the general hours, it is considered extra work hours.
We understand that a worker’s skill is the ability to end a task with minimum wastage of time by giving maximum effort with predetermined results. This, in another sense, is efficiency. The theory for calculating the efficiency of an operator is = ((Total Output x SMV for Operation) / Total Working Minutes) x 100. Where Total output means the total quality of garments produced by the operator in a day, SMV means standard minute Value (Time required for a qualified, well-trained person working at a normal pace to perform a specific task), and total working minutes means how many minutes the worker has taken to produce the total output.
Now that we know the definitions of working hours and efficiency let us discuss the labour law instructions regarding a worker’s working hours. The Bangladesh Labor Law- 2006 says that the general working hour limit is 8 (eight) hours a day, and including additional work, working hours should be up to 10. Additional work hours are mentioned in section 108, and the essence of this is that A worker cannot work more than 10 hours a day with extra work hours. Let’s look at the code of conduct of the buyers of the European Union, UK, and USA. The normal working hours and additional hours are allowed in a maximum of 10 hours of work a day where it is necessary to get workers’ permission for the extra hours supposed to be worked.
However, there are some exceptions to the mentioned topics; when the demand/order of the buyers in Bangladesh’s garment industry is high, the government-appointed authorities have a special duty to circulate special waivers to extend the extra work hours to 2 hours. On the other hand, many buyers also provide the factory a chance to formulate and implement a remediation plan to improve the working hours. But most buyers do not accept Excess over time.
If we need to think about ideal working hours, we will first have to discuss the perfect time recognized worldwide. If we think of the balance between working hours and personal life, we can talk about a theory raised by Robert Owen (a renowned social reformer) in 1810, where he divides 24 hours of a day into three parts. From them, 8 hours is for work, 8 hours for recreation, and 8 hours for rest or sleep. On the other hand, if we review the history of Great May Day, we will see that there was also this same claim about the work hours. Later, this was recognized worldwide. According to medical records, an adult man’s standard resting/ sleeping time is 7/8 hours a day.
If we discuss skills by considering our living standards as workers, a question may arise: When can we work efficiently? The general answer is that our minds and bodies stay healthy. No one will deny that it is necessary to sleep in modest amounts if you want to keep the body well. Many things are related to keeping the mind healthy, i.e., family, social, social activities, personal, etc. We don’t feel good if a family member is sick or if we cannot spend time with other family members. On the other hand, we feel sorry when we don’t have time for social responsibility, conventions, or events such as weddings, birthday parties, etc. For all of these, you need time, but where will you get it?
Let’s think You’re a manager of a garment factory. If we analyze your daily activities, we can see that you wake up at 6 am, get ready for the office, and go to the office. You work at the office till 8 or 9 pm and reach home at 10 or 11 pm because of traffic. If your children are sleeping, you have dinner, then go to bed at 1 am and sleep at 1:30 am. The next day again, would you have to rise on six? In this case, you sleep only for 4 hours and 30 minutes! Is it enough? When you sleep for four and a half hours, will it cause physical fatigue the next day? On the other hand, the distance created with the family day after day will be the reason for your depression, won’t it?
Now, if we think about a woman worker, she wakes up at five o’clock in the line for her bath and finishes the, then starts for the office and office. If she works till 9 pm (for example, 4 hours overtime), she will reach home at 10! After reaching home, she bathes and does other household activities until 12! Sleeps at 1 o’clock! So the next morning, she again rises at 5 am! In this case, she gets rest for 4 hours only. When this operator comes to work in your factory, she would be snoozing for the first 1/2 hours, wouldn’t it? If we consider her target for 2 hours to be 220 pcs, she will hardly be able to produce 150 pcs in such circumstances. If your expected target for 10 hours is 1100 pcs (note: most of the factories set their plan for 10 hours where there are some exceptions), if she is somehow able to achieve the hourly targets of rest 8 hours till she will have to work additional work hours again to fulfil the 70pcs shortage from the morning. In this case, this extra work hour will bind you to a cycle from which you can hardly regain control over working hours! Sometimes takes one week and sometimes one month! Remember, you & I are not working with the machine directly, so we can do our work if we feel sick! However, if a worker who runs a machine directly feels ill, getting the desired target from her is inconsequential. On the other hand, this worker cannot give time to her family like we do. Maybe her child stays at the village house and has come to visit, or her parents have come, but she cannot give them time! Which has become the cause of her mental dejection? In this case, even if her body is good, her mind will not be good, which will directly impact production because all the above-mentioned things will directly affect his skills or ability. Our organization Impact Limited is a UK-based management consultancy firm; we have interviewed thousands of workers from 128 factories and knew that most of them don’t want to work more than 2 hours of over times ( A sum of 8 hours is general working hours and two hours over times means 10 hours in the day). In this case, can we also speak with the workers of our organization? We all know there is an urgent issue to keep extra working hours in control if we dream of our factory as a target achiever and productive.
