Medical Grading of the Industrial Worker

Abstract

Towards the middle of 1943 the problem of supplying workers to replace the labour turn-over in a large Royal Ordnance Filling Factory became more acute through the transfer of a large number of the younger male and female workers to the forces and to other industries. Local recruitment on a large scale was necessary and in the fourth year of total war unemployed persons in an indus trial area were inevitably for the most part physi cally substandard or aged. The level of production of filled ammunition had to be maintained and this could only be done if full use was made of the maximum productive capacity of each individual. At a meeting of senior production and labour management staffs, instructors of the Training School and the medical officers, it was agreed that the work carried out in the factory fell within five grades, and the medical department was asked to determine at the time of the entrant's examination which grade of work could be most efficiently per formed by the applicant. The agreed grades of work were as follows : (1) Heavy general labouring. (2) Rough assembly, i.e. unskilled work involving the handling of stores not exceeding 25 lb. in weight. (3) Machine operating. (4) Semi-skilled assembly. (5) Skilled assembly. It was decided to limit initially the entry of graded labour to 800 men into one section of the factory, a section in which there was a demand for all ?ve grades of labour. The selective medical examina tion of entrants being wholly the responsibility of the medical department, it was necessary to organize in detail a routine of examination that, in view of the large influx of new labour that was expected, would not consume too much of the time of the medical officers who had numerous other functions to carry out in the factory. All jobs carried out in the section were carefully reviewed and particular note made of a few specific jobs falling within the definition of each grade. Examples of these jobs are: Grade 1. Loading railway trucks in transit sheds. Grade 2. Unpacking and cleaning empty 4*2 inch trench mortar bombs.