CHAPTER V. SHIRT PRODUCTIVITY

Production achieved on the shirtline often provides one of the basic indexes of over-all plant efficiency. Shirt output also lends itself readily to measurement. Laundry owners are more apt to be familiar with the output of their shirt crews than of other groups of workers, not only because the frequent use of incentive pay on this operation requires that production records be kept, but also because many owners watch shirt output closely to provide them with some means of evaluating productivity. Information was therefore obtained from employers on the number of shirts finished by the shirt operatives. With relatively few exceptions, employers were able to supply this information, most often by reference to actual production records. In a few plants, authoritative estimates were accepted.

FACTORS INFLUENCING PRODUCTIVITY

Type of equipment appeared to be among the most important determinants of productivity. Even skilled, competent operatives, working under good conditions, cannot overcome the mechanical limitations of the equipment itself. They cannot exceed the capacity of the machines. Employers whose shirt operatives had achieved relatively high output frequently attributed it to their modern equipment, in a good state of repair, and of the type not requiring hand finishing. The importance of equipment was corroborated also by employers with low output who ascribed their low output to equipment that was old, or subject to break-downs, or of the type requiring hand ironing. Important too are the steam pressure and air pressure used in the machines. The steam pressure controls the degree of heat in the presses, and the air pressure (on modern equipment) controls the speed with which the head of the press is lowered and raised. Equipment that eliminates the need for hand ironing was often stressed as an essential to good production.

Good equipment, in itself, cannot guarantee good output. There are other basic factors influencing productivity which, like equipment, can be controlled by the employer. The volume and flow of work have an appreciable effect on the output of the operatives. Too many shirts one day and a prolonged lull the next do not assure sustained, high output. Also, extreme fluctuations during the course of a single day have an adverse effect on the work-rhythm of the shirt crew. Employees who have to wait for varying lengths of time for work to be brought to the unit cannot be expected to maintain consistently good production. Another factor is the division of labor in the unit and the definition of each employee's job. Shirt operatives work as a team on specialized presses; each member of the team performs successive operations on the same shirt. An individual shirt unit may consist of 2, 3, often 4, and up to as many as 8 operatives.

A poor division of labor and a failure to determine specifically each individual worker's responsibility are obviously not conducive to high output for the unit as a whole. The timing of the work-flow through the unit should be such that each successive member of the crew is ready to handle the shirt when the preceding operative has finished her part of the processing. This calls for the elimination of wasteful, unproductive, and duplicating motions and a clear-cut understanding on each worker's part of her specific contribution to the work of the unit and to the standard of production she is expected to meet.

Several other elements which affect productivity revolve around the labor force itself-experience, teamwork, stability, regularity of attendance, training, supervision, and employee interest. Employers who expressed themselves on this subject attributed high production to careful selection of workers, expert training, the use of skilled operators, good teamwork, adequate supervision, and low turn-over. On the other side of the picture were the employers with low output caused, they said, by the type of worker available to them, by the use of inexperienced workers, and by high turn-over. There is no doubt that the war years were not propitious for increasing or even maintaining output. Experienced workers left for higher wages in other industries, and employee turn-over increased alarmingly. The employer who said he could not get normal output because a learner was frequently on one or more of his shirt units was not alone in that predicament.

A few employers mentioned they stressed quality or hand finishing (even when the equipment did not require it) rather than quantity and were therefore not too much concerned about their relatively low shirt production. Other employers (primarily in Chicago), desirous of attaining good output, at the same time placed controls on maximum output. In contrast with so many of the southern_laundry owners who said their workers were not achieving the desired output, many Chicago employers were confronted with the problem of putting a brake on very high production in order to protect quality. Inasmuch as shirts are dried as well as ironed by the presses, it is necessary that the shirts remain on the heated presses long enough to dry. An operator can, by removing the shirt from the press too soon, reach an unusually high output, but the shirt, not thoroughly dry, will soon look wilted. Employers, in explaining why deliberate top limits were placed on production, generally referred to the need to preserve quality, but it is undoubtedly also true that they wanted to keep their wage bills in hand, because their shirt operatives were often paid according to the number of shirts finished.

Several employers attributed good production on the shirtline to their use of an incentive method of wage payment to the operatives, but, as will be discussed later, incentive pay did not prove to be an indispensable prerequisite to high output.

VARIATIONS IN SHIRT OUTPUT

From the information supplied by employers, shirt output per operator-hour was calculated. For example, in a laundry with 3 shirt units, each composed of 4 operators, and averaging a total of 240

shirts an hour, the hourly output of each unit would average 80 shirts, and of each operator, 20 shirts.

Productivity varied markedly from one laundry to another within each of the cities surveyed. In many cities there were 1 or more laundries with output as low as 10 or fewer shirts per operator-hour. At the same time, most cities had substantially more productive laundries where output reached 20 and sometimes as high as 30 or more per operator-hour. In Chicago, for example, with its relatively high production standing, the plant with the highest output achieved 30 shirts per operator-hour whereas another only 10. In Norfolk, the spread from low to high was little different from Chicago. One Norfolk laundry produced as few as 11 shirts an hour, in sharp contrast with another whose operators were turning out 34. Even in a city like Birmingham, where the vast majority of the plants were able to reach less than 14 shirts an hour, some laundries attained considerably higher production. Extremes in production were common to practically all the cities visited. Undoubtedly the conditions in the war years, when the demand for laundry service exceeded the supply, enabled many inefficient plants to remain in operation.

However, even if one were to remove from consideration the very low-output establishments in each city, there would still be substantial differences in production in the remaining laundries in most cities. Of only a very few cities can it be said that production in the majority of the establishments was similar or only slightly different. Memphis is one of them. Here most laundries reached a production figure of 13 to 16 shirts per operator-hour. Indianapolis is another; about half the laundries produced 17 to 20 an hour. But this relative uniformity was not found in most of the other cities and, like the striking differences in earnings, offers further evidence of the lack of standardization within each city.

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Differences in average output from city to city, though found, were not as widespread as the differences within each city. The average output for most localities was 15 to 18 shirts per operator-hour. This average was substantially exceeded in St. Louis, Louisville, and Chicago where average output topped the list at 24 in St. Louis and in Louisville and at 21 in Chicago. At the other end of the scale are Birmingham and three small cities of North Carolina where production lagged behind at an average of 12 and 11, respectively. Therefore, although the localities at the top of the list averaged twice as high a production as those at the bottom, it is possible to refer to a norm, or standard production, of 15 to 18 shirts which most localities averaged.

These locality averages, useful as they are for an over-all view of production, are of limited value because they are based on extremes within each city and obscure significant differences between the midwestern and southeastern regions. Of the 80 midwestern laundries. able to supply production data, over half (53 percent) reported output of 20 or more shirts per operator-hour. This is better than twice the achievement in southeastern laundries where only one-fourth reached an output of at least 20. Laundries in southeastern cities

This average is based on a median average-half the laundries produced more: half, less. A median average was used rather than a simple arithmetic average because of the extremes in output found in most cities.

Con

appear prominently at the low-production end of the scale-44 percent of them reported production of less than 15 shirts and 7 percent, less than 10 shirts. On the other hand, only 23 percent of the laundries in midwestern cities produced under 15 shirts per operator-hour, and those with production falling below 10 were very rare. spicuous as low-output midwestern cities are Terre Haute, Ind., and three small Missouri cities. Among the southeastern cities, Louisville is outstanding for its high productivity. The Hampton Roads area in Virginia also stands out as above average. But almost all the other localities had relatively high proportions of their laundries with particularly low shirt output.

Some southern laundry owners blamed low output on the supposed low productivity of Negro workers. The fact of the matter is (surprising as it may be to some) that the 3 laundries with the highest rates of shirt production of all those visited-one in Chicago with 30, another in St. Louis with 33, the third in Norfolk with 34-were staffed with Negro women who constituted 99, 95, and 85 percent, respectively, of all their women production workers.

The information on shirt output in each locality is presented in table 12.

Table 12.-Shirt Production per Operator-Hour, by Locality