Manufacturing Production Workers Research Articles

A Study on the Factors Influencing Overall Fatigue and Musculoskeletal Pains in Automobile Manufacturing Production Workers

In South Korea, the automobile sector is a key industry that occupies a very large proportion of production, employment, and exports in the national economy. However, production workers in the automobile industry are still exposed to a wide range of risk factors. This study aims to investigate the relationships between personal characteristics or occupational hazard exposure and subjective overall fatigue or musculoskeletal pains in the automobile manufacturing industry. We extracted 446 automobile manufacturing production workers as subjects from the data of the 5th Korean Working Conditions Survey. The χ2 test is performed to test whether there are differences in the distribution of complaints of musculoskeletal pains or overall fatigue in view of personal characteristics and exposure to working environment hazards and logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the relationships between them. Results showed that the proportions of the overall fatigue and musculoskeletal pains of the complaining group increase as the hazard exposure time increases. Longer exposure to tobacco smoke shows higher rates of complaints of overall fatigue and musculoskeletal pain. Results of logistic regression show that gender, longer exposure to fumes and dust, manual heavy loads handling, and to repetitive motion were the risk factors for overall fatigue and that gender, work experience, longer working hours, longer exposure to noise, fumes and dust, awkward posture, and high temperature were risk factors for musculoskeletal pains. The results show that there are close relationships between personal characteristics, working environment hazards, overall fatigue, and musculoskeletal pains.

Hours, Employment and Earnings of American Manufacturing Workers from the 19th Century to the 21st Century

For a century, two labour market empirical regularities characterized the movements of the hours of work, employment and hourly compensation of American manufacturing production workers. They resembled conditional labour supply functions. Increases in employment substituted for reductions in hours per worker. The implied elasticities of hours and employment with respect to hourly earnings declined in absolute value over time. The activities of trade unions and the effects of statutory legislation contribute to the explanations for what is observed. Recently, changes in real hourly earnings contribute little to understanding movements in hours of work and in employment of these workers.

Hours, Employment, and Earnings of American Manufacturing Workers from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries

For a century, two labor market empirical regularities characterized the movements of the hours of work, employment, and hourly compensation of American manufacturing production workers. They resembled conditional labor supply functions. Increases in employment substituted for reductions in hours per worker. The implied elasticities of hours and employment with respect to hourly earnings declined in absolute value over time. The activities of trade unions and the effects of statutory legislation contribute to the explanations for what is observed. Recently,changes in real hourly earnings contribute little to understanding movements in hours of work and in employment of these workers.

The relative weakness in earnings of production workers in manufacturing, 1990–2018

The relative weakness in earnings of production workers in manufacturing, 1990–2018

Weekly Hours, Overtime, and Employment of Manufacturing Production Workers: Fluctuations over the Business Cycle

This note analyzes how weekly hours, overtime, and employment of production workers move over the business cycle.

Deskilling among Manufacturing Production Workers

I use new occupational wage and employment data from more than 160 countries to document a global decline in the demand for skilled production workers in manufacturing since the 1950s. They tended to work in craftsman occupations, and their declining relative wages and employment have been associated with increasing capital intensities of production. My findings reconcile conflicting characterizations of technological change throughout the 20th century as either ‘skill biased’ or ‘deskilling’, and point to a globally decreasing number of manufacturing jobs in which workers with little formal education can acquire significant marketable skills.

Postoffer Pre-Placement Screening for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in Newly Hired Manufacturing Workers.

We determined the predictive validity of a postoffer pre-placement (POPP) screen using nerve conduction velocity studies (NCV) to identify future cases of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). A cohort of 1648 newly hired manufacturing production workers underwent baseline NCS, and were followed for 5 years. There was no association between abnormal POPP NCV results and incident CTS. Varying NCV diagnostic cut-offs did not improve predictive validity. Workers in jobs with high hand/wrist exposure showed greater risk of CTS than those in low exposed jobs (relative risk 2.82; 95% confidence interval 1.52 to 5.22). POPP screening seems ineffective as a preventive strategy for CTS.

Unemployment, union density, and wages

We investigate, both theoretically and empirically, whether long-run industry unemployment rates modify the wage impact of union density on the earnings of members. Our theory suggests that the density effect increases as unemployment increases. Our empirical estimates use wage equations exclusive and inclusive of unemployment and of the interactive effect of unemployment and density in influencing wages. Based on a 1985 sample of manufacturing production workers, our findings indicate that the wage effect of union density for union workers as usually measured is only 41 percent as large as the effect when unemployment is in the model.

Immigration Reform: The Effects of Employer Sanctions and Legalization on Wages

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) represents an attempt to use labor market regulation to control illegal migration into the United States by imposing fines on employers who hire unauthorized workers. Sanctions lower wages directly because they act as a tax on hiring additional workers. In addition, IRCA legalized many longtime illegal aliens. Legalization affects wages by changing the relative supply of authorized and unauthorized workers. This study estimates IRCA's impact on wages of manufacturing production workers in metropolitan areas and finds small but statistically significant effects: sanctions lower wages, while legalization raises them.

The Strategic Role of Producer Services in Regional Development

In recent years, employment in services, especially in producer services, has expanded rapidly in the United States. Meanwhile, employment in manufacturing has remained relatively constant, although the proportion of production workers in manufacturing has declined. A common belief is that these phenomena have adversely affected productivity because most productivity gains are made in the direct production of goods. This view fails to take into account the complex nature of production organization in an economy increasingly based on flexible production, knowledge, information, and communications. Producer services, through their sophisticated interactions with goods production and other service activities, have been playing a strategic role in increasing productivity. Moreover, producer services are frequently exported and can provide a catalyst for regional development. There needs to be greater recognition of, and more research on, the nature and significance of productivity-enhancing interactions among producer services, goods production, and the quality of the labor force.

Unionism and the Cyclical Behavior of the Labor Market in U.S. Manufacturing

T HE traditional view of market dynamics implies that when demand varies, intertemporal variation in quantities exchanged increases as prices become less flexible. This reasoning leads to the proposition that wage and price rigidities are important contributors to cyclical fluctuations in output. Fischer (1977a) and Gray (1978) based formal macro models on this principle. Although this view is common, it has little empirical support.' The coexistence of union and nonunion establishments engaged in similar activities contains potential for testing its merits. Economists have long maintained that in the short run, union wages are less flexible than nonunion wages (Dunlop (1950), Rees (1951)). This difference should produce larger fluctuations in union employment and hours. Empirical studies have generally supported the union wage rigidity hypothesis (Lewis (1963), Ashenfelter, Johnson, and Pencavel (1972), and Hendricks (1981)),2 but until recently, lack of data precluded analysis of hours and employment. Definitive answers to the important questions concerning unions' influence on cyclical behavior require yet unavailable information matching the behavior of firms and characteristics of workers, but data from modem surveys have allowed considerable progress. Nevertheless, it remains a challenge to determine how much of differences observed in the stability of labor utilization are attributable to differences in the stability of demand. Medoff (1979) and Raisian (1979) report that cyclical variation of employment and hours is indeed greater for union labor. But despite attempts to allay suspicion that their finding arises primarily from concentration of union members in cyclically sensitive industries, both studies leave room for doubt. Raisian estimated functions relating an individual's wage and weeks worked in a year to a proxy for excess demand (that year's unemployment rate) in the worker's industry. The technique is attractive, but Raisian's data included workers from the entire economy, and the industries were broad aggregates. Thus, differences in the union and nonunion groups' compositions may play a large role. Medoff, who confined his study to production workers in manufacturing and used data allowing finer partitions, investigated the importance of composition more thoroughly. But he did not estimate relationships between adjustments in employment or hours and a measure of demand. Furthermore, his focus was principally on the composition of manhours adjustments rather than their size. In this paper I combine the strongest features of the Medoff and Raisian studies in further examination of the influence of unionism on cyclical fluctuations. Using Current Population Surveys (U.S. Department of Commerce (1978)) from May of 1973-75, my analysis covers production workers in manufacturing during a period of rising inflation and unemployment. The heart of the analysis is a measure of residual employment that quantifies, by three-digit industry and year, shortrun excess demand for labor. I construct this variable from employment time series and use it to estimate union-nonunion differences in the cyclical responses of unemployment, hourly wage rates, and hours worked. The results are consistent with the view that increasing rigidity in wages amplifies cyclical fluctuations in the utilization of labor. The wage regressions add further to the literature's already strong support for the union wage rigidity hypothesis. The employment status and hours regressions imply that the sensitivities of employment Received for publication August 12, 1981. Revision accepted for publication February 11, 1983. * Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. This paper is based on my Ph.D. dissertation, which was completed at UCLA with financial assistance from the Rand Corporation and the Department of Labor. Comments by referees and by participants of labor workshops at UCLA and the University of Chicago, as well as the computation assistance of Brian McKee, are gratefully acknowledged. I am responsible for any remaining errors. The views expressed should not be attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System. ' One study is Gordon (1982), who concludes (page 41) that, macroeconomic instability in the United States has been aggravated by the unusually sluggish behavior of nominal wages in the postwar era. 2See also Johnson (1975), Parsley (1980), and Moore and Raisian (1980).

The Increasing Economic Value of Human Time

American Journal of Agricultural EconomicsVolume 54, Issue 5 p. 843-850 General Session—Education and Development The Increasing Economic Value of Human Time Theodore W. Schultz, Theodore W. Schultz professor of economics University of ChicagoSearch for more papers by this author Theodore W. Schultz, Theodore W. Schultz professor of economics University of ChicagoSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 December 1972 https://doi.org/10.2307/1239227Citations: 16AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume54, Issue5December 1972Pages 843-850 RelatedInformation

The North–South Differential in Human Capital Among Manufacturing Production Workers

The North–South Differential in Human Capital Among Manufacturing Production Workers

Regional Wage Differences in Manufacturing in the Postwar Period

I NTER-REGIONAL wage differences have traditionally constituted an important aspect of the analysis of the wage structure of the United States. But, despite continuing interest in the subject, there has been no comprehensive examination of the course of such differences since World War II.' The present paper attempts to fill this gap, at least partly. Specifically, the paper examines the changes in the pattern of regional wage differences in manufacturing between I947 and I954, and considers the major factors responsible for these changes. The wage statistics used are average hourly earnings of I93 so-called digit industries. These statistics were derived from the data on gross earnings of production workers and on manhours worked, published in the U.S. Census of Manufactures for I947 and I954. From these data I computed for each industry regional average hourly earnings in the four broad regions of the countryNortheast, North Central, South, and West.2 The Pearsonian coefficient of variation was used to measure the degree of difference of earnings among the four regions. Comparison of the I947 and I954 coefficients for each industry thus indicated the change in the interregional dispersion of average earnings. In terms of employment of manufacturing production workers the coverage of the study is quite large. The I93 industries for which it was possible to make a meaningful comparison of regional wage differentials in both years employed in I954 6,984,000 workers. This figure represents 56.5 per cent of all manufacturing workers in that year.3

Industrialization and Economic Progress in the Southeast

The growth of industry in the Southeast is not a recent phenomenon. Manufacturing has expanded steadily in the region over at least the last fifty years. Since the turn of the century, manufacturing employment in the Southeast' has increased three times as fast as total population-250 per cent as compared with 79 per cent.2 Over every decade since 1899-including the depression 1930's-the Southeast increased its number of manufacturing production workers. The greatest per cent increase over the last half century occurred in the early 1899-1909 decade when the cotton textile industry had its largest growth in the region.3 (See Table 1.) After this early boom period, the rate of increase declined progressively until the World War II decade, when the Southeast experienced a renewed high rate of expansion in manufacturing employment. Over the recent 1939-49 decade, the Southeast experienced its greatest absolute increase in manufacturing production workers. The regional totals, of course, obscure great differences among the states of the Southeast in the timing and extent of industrial expansion. Over the entire half-century, the increase in manufacturing production workers varied from a high of more than 400 per cent for North Carolina to a low of slightly more than 100 per cent for Arkansas. Over the recent 1939-1952 period, the expansion in