A combination of the needs of business, employee desires
and safety and health considerations is stimulating increasing
attention to the time spent by people at work and the timing
of that work. Particularly we are seeing: - innovative work schedules for 24-hour mining
businesses; and - response from industry to accommodate the needs,
even the desires, of employees in return for systems
which are more productive and more capital efficient. There appears to be an evolutionary trend for business
management to become more sophisticated and responsive to the
need for achieving close to best cost work schedules to sustain
continuous improvement. The underlying motivating forces
driving this trend for improved techniques in organising
attendance at, and time spent at work, is the seemingly
inseparable combination of technological advance and
ever-increasing accumulation of capital. The mining industry has not remained untouched by this thrust
for ever-increasing need for best use of labour, to adopt advances
in technology and to provide attractive opportunities for putting
accumulated capital to work. An essential component of this
on-going thrust is a substantial effort by the mining industry to
improve the performance of labour by providing most-productive
work schedules.