Expanding Economy Means More Overtime--and Efforts to Avoid It

As the U.S. economic expansion continues, increasing numbers of companies are requiring their employees to work overtime--with mixed results.

“Some employees want all the overtime they can get. Some don’t want any. And some want just enough to make the boat payment,” said John Britton, media director for Pacific Bell in San Francisco.

“I don’t think manufacturing overtime has been this high since World War II,” research analyst William Goodman of the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. Last May, overtime averaged 4.8 hours per week, “quite a high level,” he said.

Surveys of the service industry also suggest an upturn in hours spent on the job. Professional Secretaries International of Kansas City, Mo., reports that the percentage of its 27,000 members putting in 40 to 44 hours a week climbed from 64.7% to 68.4% since 1992, according to spokesman Jim Braibish.

The National Restaurant Assn., a trade group, said weekly hours logged by its professionals rose from 51.2 in 1992 to 56 this year.

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Employers, mindful that economic upturns can also turn down, are reluctant to hire more help only to have to lay them off later. Each new individual hired adds new benefits costs, whereas paying overtime does not. Employers are also trying to limit overtime through closer supervision or adding new work shifts.

Last year, Pacific Bell, whose technicians can earn $30 per overtime hour, was overwhelmed by freakish winter weather and what Britton termed “the largest demand for phone lines in [our] history.”

“Periodically, it was a seven-day workweek, and our members are not machines,” said Louie Rocha, president of Local 9423, Communications Workers of America. “They need their family life and their social life.”

Britton agreed. “There was a reaction,” he said. “So we went to voluntary overtime for those who wanted it. We have not mandated overtime since early this year.”

The utility also hired hundreds of workers and brought in 350 Canadian technicians on 90-day visas.

“The use of temps has been increasing,” said Murem Sharpe, senior vice president of Kelly Services Inc. in Troy, Mich., “because employers are more sensitive to the liabilities associated with injuries that result from employees being at work too long.”

Temporaries are putting in longer hours, too, some of it overtime. The average number of weekly hours worked by temporaries, said the Bureal of Labor Statistics, rose from 27.1 in 1982 to 32.3 this year.

“Many of our manufacturing areas are now using contract employees when there is a need for additional work,” said Joanne Engelhardt, personnel communications manager at Hewlett-Packard Co. in Palo Alto, Calif.

For example, HP brought in 500 temporary workers to help out at its Vancouver, Wash., plant, she said.

“We try to use volunteers before mandatory overtime but at times we have to resort to mandatory,” said spokesman Peter Conte of Boeing Co., where airplane production is “ramping up” from last year’s 18 per month to 22.

At Columbus Foods Co., a Chicago-based distributor of edible oils, controller Michael Nuccio said, “We’re at a high point. Our regular employees are running eight to 12 hours overtime a week, and we’ve hired temps to help them.”

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At Nucor Steel in Charlotte, N.C., where 1997’s anticipated sales of $4 billion will be significantly higher than 1996, workers earn up to $33 an hour with overtime, said Jim Coblin, general manager of personnel services.

Overtime worked “is closer to mandated than voluntary,” Coblin said, and some Nucor employees put in eight overtime hours weekly.

To ease their burden, Nucor hired more workers and is running some mills around the clock, seven days a week, with the extra crews.

In some cases, overtime is being cut by closer supervision. Restaurant owners are staying later, so they know when to send waiters and kitchen help home early on slow nights, the National Restaurant Assn. said.

According to Michael Schwartz, director of corporate outreach at Pace University in New York, overtime hits skilled workers hardest. “There are not enough of them to do all the jobs out there, so people who are skilled have to do more jobs.”