These suggestions have been compiled from the experience of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Army Air Forces in their various investigations of the problem in a number of plants throughout the country. Specific causes of absenteeism, it has been found, can be dealt with directly. Where no obvious reasons are evident and specific causes cannot be singled out, the suggested approach is to place emphasis on the maintenance of worker morale.

I. Check List for Maintenance of Records

A. Plant records:
1. Does the company follow the definition of absenteeism
as specified below..

"An employee is considered as an 'absentee' who
does not report for work during the entire period of any
shift on which he is scheduled to work. Include lost
time through absence for a whole shift without permis-
sion and through absence for a whole shift due to indus-
trial and nonindustrial sickness or accidents. Do not
include time lost due to tardiness or to officially granted
vacation or leave (other than sick leave, which should
be included) or to lay-offs; nor time lost for a partial
shift for any cause."

2. Does the company maintain a daily force report of em-
ployees scheduled to report for work, this report de-
tailing the employees present and absent?___

3. Treatment of terminations:

(a) Does the company terminate the employment
of absent workers after a specified lapse of
time?...

(b) Are absentee records and rates adjusted for
quits without notice?.

B. Employee records:

1. Notification of absence:

(a) Does the company require employees who
absent themselves to contact their super-
visors by phone?_

(b) Are preliminary absence reports prepared on
the basis of these calls?__

2. Does the company require returning absentees to submit
a written report explaining the reason for the absence?
3. Do individual employee-absence records show the
following:

(a) Department

(b) Shift.

(c) Hours of work.

(d) Sex..

(e) Age..

(f) Occupational title..

(g) Marital status (number and ages of children,

if any.

Employment of husband and wife). (h) Date of absence (date and day of week with special note of week-ends, holidays and pay days)

(i) Cause of absence.

(j) Length and frequency of absences.

(k) Authorization (excused or unexcused).

(1) Comments on absence after interview with
absentee____

4. Are these records regularly tabulated and analyzed
according to shift, department, and for the entire
plant?

5. If formal records are not maintained, is the absentee
required to make an official explanation upon return
to work?.

534879-43-2

II. Suggested Measures to Reduce Absenteeism

II. Suggested Measures to Reduce Absenteeism-Continued

Cause

Possible remedies

B. Transportation and hous- 3. Joint cooperation of companies, local commun ing-Continued. ities, and the Federal Government to providefor

C. Personal reasons.

1.

(Family difficulties; home responsibilities; shopping; personal needs; rationing; selective serv- 2. ice; tax and legal matters; etc.)

Establishment of ration boards in plants, where employees may obtain food-, gasoline-, and tire-ration books and certificates, and receive advice on rationing.

Maintenance of a draft-board adviser in the plant to assist employees in handling selectiveservice matters.

3. Provision for legal and tax advice in plant at specified periods.

4. Cooperation of local professional societies to provide legal, medical, and dental service to employees during nonworking hours.

5. Surveying adequacy of shopping, banking, barber and beauty shop facilities in vicinity of plant and in nearby communities.

(a) Arranging with merchants' associations and local communities to keep these facilities open during employees' nonworking hours.

(b) Where nearby facilities are not available,
providing such services on plant
premises.

6. Surveying child-care facilities available to plant
employees. Cooperating with local communi-
ties in establishing and operating such facili-
ties to care for children of woman workers.
7. Determination of home responsibilities before
hiring married woman workers (e. g. number
of children under school age, children aged
6-10, number of workers in family, etc.).
8. Utilization of housewives, white-collar workers,
and students for part-time work.

9. Arrangements for authorized leave or part-time
attendance for employees with small businesses
or farms requiring partial or seasonal atten-
tion.

D. Willful absences-worker 1. Publicity and morale-building campaigns: morale.

(In taking steps to deal with willful absences the company should maintain records which enable it to distinguish between excused and unexcused absences. Unexcused absence or chronic or repeated absence may not necessarily be willful.)

(a) Direct appeal to workers by means of
posters, bulletins, company publica-
tions, speakers, radio programs, etc.,
to impress workers with the impor-
tance of being on the job.
(b) To promote feeling of personal partici-
pation in war work, information to
employees on the use to which their
products are put and how each work-
er's job is linked to the finished
product and to actual combat.

II. Suggested Measures to Reduce Absenteeism-Continued

Cause

D. Willful absences-Worker

morale-Continued.

Possible remedies

(c) Employee-suggestion programs, drives, war bond and stamp d paigns, and other means of genera stimulating morale.

(d) Rewards for good attendance, suc. individual and group banners, co icates and pins, participation in tery drawings, etc.

2. Machinery for sympathetic discussion of ployee job problems with representative management labor-management, or

committees, in order to solve individ worker problems.

3. Proper classification of workers to insure utilization of skills; provision for transfe workers where work is not appropriate to ployees' skill, physical ability, or temperam 4. Adequate supervision of personnel with tinued checks on worker-supervisor relat ships.

5. In-training and up-grading programs to re nize superior ability and stimulate ambit for promotion.

6. Training programs for supervisors.

7. Recreation and entertainment:

(a) Cooperation with local communitie

providing adequate entertainn facilities for workers during t leisure time.

(b) Provision by company for recreatie facilities in vicinity of plant or plant premises.

(c) Organization by plant of competitive reation among employees, such bowling and baseball teams.

Co

8. Disciplinary measures (disciplinary meas
should be considered with great care.
eration of labor-management committees a
unions should be secured for any action):
(a) Removal of absent workers' time ca
from racks and substitution of
warnings" or visual reprimands.
(b) Filing of written explanation of
sences and mandatory interviews w
foreman, personnel department,
absence-control unit before absente
can return to work.

(c) Referral of the names of willful
sentees to labor-management or uni
committee for reprimand or dis
pline.

(d) Posting public notices of absentees 8 individual group rates of absenteeis on bulletin boards.

9. Discouragement of "job shopping." Strict c formity with War Manpower Commissi regulations governing certification requi ments and clearance from the plant befo U. S. Employment Service will consider app cations for other jobs.

TURE wartime increases in production of munitions of war and cessary civilian goods in Great Britain will depend upon the success present efforts to raise labor productivity and the extent to which rt-time work can be contributed by persons in the population who ve other necessary duties to perform, such as the care of their ildren and homes by married women.

In this crucial year, 1943, the British have materials in excess of e amounts that can be processed by the already greatly expanded bor force. Therefore emphasis is being placed on means of raising dividual output-by adjusting hours to obtain maximum producrity, improving working conditions, and granting vacations in order at the workers may be more fit to perform their tasks and will >t have periods of unexcused absence. Recruitment and allocaon of new labor have been placed under more complete Government rection than at any time since the war started. In the absence of a .fficient supply of full-time employees, the need for part-time workers so great that the Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Labor, an address made last March, stated that some employers had clared their willingness to take part-time workers, if they fitted in ith factory arrangement, but it was their duty to make such factory rangements fit the convenience of the part-time employees. The ct that they worked part time meant, he said, that they had other ecessary duties to perform. The Director-General of Manpower also ated that home-work schemes were likely to be extended, either by ermitting persons to work in their own homes or by employing them 1 decentralized workshops. This is not to be done at the expense of ecruitment for factory work which, he stated, is in every respect more roductive.

Extent of Employment

GENERAL

In 1931, when the latest official British census was taken, the gainully occupied population, totaling 21,074, 751, represented 47 percent of the 44,795,357 inhabitants of Great Britain. Since that time the otal population has increased to about 46,750,000; nearly 23,000,000 men and women were in full-time service or employment for the country in the spring of 1943, according to a statement made by the Minister of Labor. Included in this working force were 2,500,000 married women. Including persons above the age for calling up for military duty, who were voluntary workers, the total at work was nearly 25,000,000. Besides all men of working age, over 90 percent of the single women between the ages of 18 and 40 years were in the war effort, as were also three-quarters of a million, or 17 percent, of 4,500,000 older men and women of pensionable age who either had remained in their former occupations when reaching the age for retirement or had taken jobs.

In peacetime the British Ministry of Labor issued statistics, by industry, showing the number of persons insured against unemployment (the coverage of which was very broad). For reasons of national