Can't unionize if you don't have the energy to fight.

This seems idiotic from the employer's perspective. You're limiting your pool of candidates a lot by requiring that their life can accomodate essentially 24 hours of possible shift time. Companies do shit like this and then complain "nobody wants to work anymore"

They can rotate my balls in and out of their mouth

Because we havent had a general strike in a while

Industrial engineer here. I have no fucking clue. It was theorized it might be better overall like 30 years ago, but by the time i graduated college it was understood that so long as you have management during changeovers so later shifts aren’t left confused or unsupervised you get all the real benefit of rotating shifts without the tremendous downside of all your workers being constantly off and pissed.

Also they should be providing later shifts with free healthy lunches and other incentives to keep them in good health to reduce the costs to their bodies of later shifts. Late shift operators need extra assistance because they’re living against society and circadian rhythms. Poor health also reduces performance so this isn’t what they should do because it’s right, it’s what they should do because if they don’t they’re always going to be frustrated at late shift performances

I don't think this is intentionally evil, it's simply most people don't want to work the night shift, and they don't want to pay extra for people to want to work the night shift, so they distribute the night shift load on a schedule. So everyone has a crappy night shift every couple weeks but no one person constantly has the night shift.

I'm sure if you volunteered, they give you the night shift every day if you want

What I have gathered after seeing threads like this pop up on Reddit periodically over about 11 years, and most of the responses here, is...

Fuck if there's a reason.

No, seriously. Pretty sure it's become standard and as Capitalism and Management do, they follow whatever bullshit tradition exists.

That said, I personally have always felt factory and retail work fuck with schedules so much because it maintains control and limits sociability outside of work and work groups. Thus increasing retention by artificially creating social nodes we feel a part of and/or do not want to be removed from. Likely created by the same people who cut pensions and created things like Mining Towns.

Because you’re not expected to have a home life that takes precedence over work anymore.

Rotating shifts sacrifice the employees everything to reduce staffing and training costs.

Most people only choose swing or graveyard with a differential. Rotating allows employers to fill shifts without offering differentials.

I used to work nights and got a differential. I would have been significantly less complacent without one.

Sounds like they had to do that to keep the night shift people from quitting. Probably not a place to go work lol.

Are they just trying to destroy your soul and your health?

Yes,

But likely for a very stupid reason like 50 years ago some consultant had to give a plan to increase efficiency but forgot until the night before.

I used to work at a place with 3 shifts, and they rotated them because everyone wanted 1st shift rather than 2nd and 3rd. I chose to stay on 2nd because it paid a bit more and I don't like getting up early. It would have been hell to switch every single week!

I think the big issue is that the rotation is every week. Every other week or more would be better.

In a strong union environment, this would likely get addressed with a combination of higher pay and seniority. Senior people choose their shifts and if junior members have to work night shifts, at least they get compensated.

It's because there aren't enough unions in this godforsaken country.

Get rotated idiot.

Kia plant I worked at for 4 years was like this. Countless wrecks after shift change, untold divorces and ruined lives due to never being able to plan anything. Terrible

If Green Tractor Factory ever starts hiring again you're welcome to come here, we don't rotate shifts, we make 90k a year, we get free health insurance. Because we're UAW. But we're also about to lay off so it might be a minute.

I've worked all three shifts. There's guys been stuck on 2nd for 20 years, and 2nd shift is fucking WACK. From that perspective I kind of understand rotating shifts because everyone gets fucked the same. It's more equitable. From every other perspective it's shitty as fuck.

If anyone's willing to put up with that schedule you might as well try for being an air traffic controller. Way higher salary.

I've worked this shift pattern before, and found it very difficult. They call it a 'continental' shift pattern in the UK - it's not a new thing, 'cos the job I'm thinking of was 30 years ago. Switching from sleeping during the night to sleeping during the day is okay if you're on permanent nights, but trying to change every couple of weeks can be impossible (I remember once failing to get any real sleep during the day, having to spend the next 12 hours at work, and then collapsing on my way home the next day.)

Fuck if I know the answer to this, but someone I know well and respect works one of these shifts, and I don’t get it.

4 on 3 off and swap the next week, I get.

But it’s like these were designed to fuck up the workers’ health and lives. Oh, wait, they probably were.

I work a "9-5," which is basically remote meetings or email from 7-8:30 while I try to eat something and get my kids dressed, work through lunch so I can take "lunch" at the end of the day to be able to pick my kids up in time, go home and finish emails and hope to wrap up by dinner.

How people are working schedules like this is beyond me. I'm going insane as it is, and my job is "cushy." My doctor tells me I need to work less and create less stress in my life or I'm going to start bleeding out of my ears, and he looks more tired than I do. I feel like the only hour or two I get to relax is right before bed, which makes me stay up late desperately trying to hold onto that feeling of mild relaxation because I know, at best, I won't feel that way for another 24 hours.

My doctor says I need to follow up and crap for concerns, and I keep explaining to him that I have to come during work, which means 12min out if his day, but between driving, checking in, waiting in the waiting room, finally going back to the patient room, nurse check in, waiting, talking to the doctor, checking back in at the front desk, then driving back to work DURING THE WORK DAY is like two hours, and it also means if I do the follow up, labs, follow ups, specialist, labs suggested... I'll lose my job, which provides the insurance to afford those things in the fucking first place.

Everyone where I work is scared to quit for fear of working more hours on a worse schedule for less money. Everyone at the top seems to work remote at will and forces us into meetings about how to reduce burnout like they do, which is apparently by working less, having more schedule freedom, and then bragging about it by holding meetings about how to live more like they do, which, if we did, would get all of us fired within a month.

I work a job where I'm covering other shifts a fair amount as well as working doubles. I also do not get Holidays/any extra days off. Prior to this I was in a salaried corporate middle management job, so for the past 20 years I've worked 55+ hours a week on average. I can tell you that for this particular job, yes, their goal is to destroy your health so that they get a few good years out of you and then you'll leave because it's too hard on you. That way they never have to worry about paying their workers (outside of a small percentage with high fortitude) wages that are much above baseline.

I was a manager of a team with rotating 12 hour 6 to 6 shifts.

It was a datacenter. We had to staff the building 24x7x365. Billions of dollars of equipment, not to mention the transactions flowing through. No mistakes allowed here.

We paid $15/hour in 2010. Entry level. But it was a foot into the industry for someone without experience. Tasks were light security, walk the floor, swap drives, be on hand for server emergencies.

We used the rotation to onboard. No one did nights solo (no one else in the building) until they knew the job. Two weeks days, two weeks nights, back and forth. Two days on, one day off. 6-day rotation meant no one person was always stuck with weekends. And overtime pay every week.

We managed the schedule with a staff of 4.

Prior, the night shifts were handled by sysadmins who would work a day shift, go to the break room and get a few hours of sleep between tasks, then shower and go back on day shift. That really sucked. I did it for more than a year.

We had plenty of applicants every time a position opened. Folks tended to like the rotation as no one would get stuck with repeat holidays or all overnight. It sucked in a fair way to everyone. And if someone missed a shift (sick, emergency, etc.) I would have to fill the shift. It happened at least once a month. It was a good team. I liked all of my people, and after I got canned, they all wrote recommendations for me on LinkedIn.

It's usually because they can't get full teams willing to work only the shitty shifts. So they rotate.

When I was in retail management we had a 3-week rotating shift as well, and it was super dumb. We'd end up over 3 weeks opening, closing, or having off each day once, except for Tuesday, which we opened twice (Tuesdays were staff meetings so all managers worked).

But the worst part was each week we'd start with 2 closing shifts and end with 2 opening shifts instead of doing all opens or closes, so each week we'd have a night we'd get out the door around midnight and have to be back to open the doors at 6am...

i like that you only have to work 2/4 weekends in a month. That's pretty cool.

How nice and thoughtful of them.

Sounds like some dinosaur is operating these facilities thinking they're still in the time period where that was acceptable.

I am guessing these workers don’t have a union.

if you have to work all three shifts every three weeks, you can't realistically hold-down a second job or attend regular classes, you're exclusively at the disposal of your masters.

You don't wanna see the schedule of a relative of mine that works as a hospital nurse then.
And she has the good version of the schedule.
You really don't wanna see the schedule of an emergency admission nurse.
Daily changing hours of various schedules switching between early and late with maybe the minimum or 2-3h more of break between shifts...

no, it's that they don't give a shit about those and have found a way to make more money, so they believe, no doubt on a paucity of evidence and a big kick of power madness.

Wow, that's nuts. At least the manufacturing jobs I see around me are just 4on 4off 12hr shifts, which still sucks IMO, but isn't abusive to employee's mental well being.

The rotating to an earlier shift is even more insane. Maybe I'm wrong but I imagine almost everyone finds it easier to push through and stay up later than try to go to sleep 7 hours early.

Companies now want 24 hour productivity, which means they will abuse their workers to keep that cycle going. Worker healthy is probably not even a thought, just: how do we get more out of them?

We still got shift differential on swing shift. I did it for 7 years. It maximizes 24/7 coverage with less crews, but it has a side effect of the end users of the schedule developing severe alcohol abuse and depression.

Sat - Friday 8 hours day

Wednesday - Tuesday 8 hours night

Friday - Thursday 8 hours second

The pay period was separated in such a way that you would not get double time even though you are scheduled 7 days in a row every week.

I messed the schedule up so I fixed it. And yes, there was only 1 day off between second shift and day shift rotation.

I work some where that does double shift which is mornings one week and afternoons the next. It's OK but id prefer standard days, I have however done triple shift for a year at one job and it completely messed me up, and to this day I blame it for giving me super high blood pressure I didn't have before I started it. It all comes down to profits, why buy another machine to manufacture whatever it is you do when you could simply run the same machine 24/7. Although it inevitably leads to disaster one machine doing all the work as triple shifts leave little time for maintenance and seeing managers flap about because a machine broke down because you were allowed to shut it down to grease the bearings once a week is hilarious.

Possibly so they don't have to pay night shift more?

Too many billionaires

No one wants to work constant nights, but plants need to run constantly, so you get this bullshit.

They want to keep production rolling continuously to avoid the lag of shutting down and starting the machinery back up again, but they also know how few people are around who'll willingly work the graveyard shift so they're basically trying to package it into the job no matter what so that they don't have to negotiate for volunteers, because now it's part of the job description contract you signed!

Are there no shift differentials? This is probably a way to avoid paying a bump to fill off-peak shifts.

I would assume it's because each hour an expensive machine is not being used is going to waste and if machine goes obsolete in 10 years and being replaced - there is a difference between it doing 30k hours of work and 90k. I'm not sure if that's the reason, but that would make sense to me personally.

Too tired to look for a better job?

I don't know either, but there were so so many jobs I didn't even apply for because of this very thing. Seems like more places need unions

By keeping you rotating they don't have to pay you extra.

My theory is so you cant work a second job thus reducing risk of accidents. Just a theory though.

The managers schedule at a trader Joe's is Start the week working 4am to 2pm. End the week working 2 pm to midnight. Every week.

The second bullet point is called the DuPont Schedule and has been around for decades

Productivity. It gives the company and increase productivity when you have fresh-ish workers vs burnt out ones in the "undesirable shifts" and have to pay them a fuck ton more to work those shifts to compensate those who have to constantly work those other shifts. But rotating shifts like this really screws up worker health and their circadian rhythm but hey, more profit for the company.

There was a place by me. Big factory might have even been government owned back in the day, but it was unionised. It used to be 9-5 or maybe double shifts. They wanted to change it to 24 hour production, 12 hour shifts. The workers fought it hard but the option was change the shift pattern or the factory will have to close due to not being profitable.

Anyway they changed and everyone that fought the shift ended up loving it. Turns out people really like the extra days off with those shifts.

Same as another business I worked for. I asked the factory manager (who came up from that shift pattern) about changing some people over for a few weeks onto days to get some work done. He said you'd have to pay them extra to move to days. People love the shift pattern.

It seemed to me preferable to change the pattern every two weeks but apparently the reports said every 1 is better because people get too sad that they miss a lot of things in a row.

They probably want to maximise the uptime of the machinery

Yep