Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 30, 1994                   TAG: 9409300024
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GM STRIKE SPOTLIGHTS NEW LABOR GRIEVANCE: FORCED OT

``I keep thinking that maybe if I'd been able to spend more time with them this wouldn't have happened,'' she said. ``But there's this constant pressure to be at work.''

Coleman and 11,500 other unionized workers at General Motors Corp. have been on strike since Tuesday in a dispute that illustrates a trend in the American workplace of late: forced overtime.

From automaking to steelmaking to fast food, business is booming and bosses are demanding that workers toil longer instead of hiring more help. GM's workers rebelled, saying the extra pay isn't worth the price.

``It's happening to everyone. It's not just a union concern,'' said Mitchell Marks, an industrial and organizational psychologist who wrote the book ``From Turmoil to Triumph: New Life After Corporate Downsizings.''

After years of shedding workers, many American companies are reluctant to hire even if the economy appears to be getting healthier.

The proof can be seen in Labor Department statistics, which show a small decrease in the unemployment rate but a rise in the number of weekly hours worked.

Over the past decade, the nation's largest companies eliminated 4.7 million jobs, or one-quarter of their work force, said David Birch, president of Cognetics, a Cambridge, Mass., firm that tracks U.S. businesses.

In GM's case, it has cut the hourly U.S. work force by 52,000 jobs since 1991 in an effort to restore profitability at its North American operations. Now the market is strong, and the world's No. 1 automaker can't build cars fast enough.

Many corporations have responded to surging demand for their products and services by hiring temporary workers.

But others, like GM, are asking employees to pick up the slack, paying them overtime because in the long run that's cheaper than hiring new people, temporary or permanent.

To be sure, many workers welcome overtime because it fattens their paychecks with a 50 percent premium for anything over 40 hours. But long hours on the job carry drawbacks as well.

Dr. Arthur Rifkin, a psychiatrist at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York, said long hours without recreation and rest can worsen a range of physical and mental maladies.

John Patterson, a weld checker at the strikebound GM Buick City complex, has worked 60-hour weeks, including three Saturdays a month, for a year.

His arms hurt, he doesn't sleep enough, his wife is fed up and his kids miss him, he said.

Since June 1993 the workers at the Buick City complex have worked an average of 57 hours a week, including many Saturdays. The United Auto Workers union contends that 8.7 percent of the strikers are on sick leave with a documented ailment, twice the level at GM plants elsewhere.

Forced overtime isn't limited to blue-collar jobs. Insurance, banking and health care industries are among those now pushing their workers the hardest.

David Noer, author of ``Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Operations,'' said many companies that cut their staffs aggressively in recent years are paying for it in the form of staff exhaustion and low morale.

``Companies find people don't work well under those conditions,'' Noer said. ``They just get tired and burned out.''

Part of the problem, Marks said, is that the corporate cost-cutting of the late 1980s and early 1990s was done without regard to what the company would do if demand picked up.