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It is often the case that policy makers are slow to adopt the results of economic analysis in their policy formulation. Shiftworking is one of those rare cases where policymakers have seized upon something as having particular significance which economists have on the whole neglected. Robin Marris published a seminal work, The Economics of Capital Utilisation, in 1964, but it was not until the later 1970s that further substantial work was undertaken by economists and shiftworking appears to be regarded as hardly worth a mention in the standard labour economics texts. This relative neglect by economists is surprising given the significance and growth of shiftworking in a number of countries. Where data are available it is estimated for instance that, as a rough approximation, the number of workers engaged on shiftwork doubled between 1950 and the mid‐1970s. For the UK one estimate is that between 1954 and 1964 the proportion of manual employees working shifts in manufacturing industry increased from 12 to 20 per cent, and that by 1978 the figure was 34 per cent (that is approximately 1.5 out of 4.27 million employees). Shiftworking has in fact reflected a conflict of goals for the policymakers. On the one hand in both the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the European Commission (EC) concern has been expressed at the possible harmful effects on workers of particular shiftworking patterns and proposals have been made to limit its incidence and control its form (this being particularly the case with nightwork and with the hours of women and young persons). On the other hand, concern with the growing problem of unemployment has led policymakers in other sections of these same bodies to propose an extension of shiftworking, as one particular form of work‐sharing, in order to generate jobs. The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of shiftworking for male manual workers in British manufacturing industry in order to cast some light on these issues. In particular supply equations are estimated in order to understand what factors lead workers to select this particular form of work and demand equations to determine the nature of the employer's demand for labour. These structural equations form the basis of a simultaneous system in which plant size (measured in terms of employment) is estimated as a function of shiftworking and a vector of other explanatory variables in order to determine whether in fact it is reasonable to conclude that an extension of shiftworking will generate additional jobs in Britain. Before presenting the regression results it is however necessary to examine in more detail these socio‐economic policy aspects of shiftwork, to clarify the theoretical framework and to discuss some of the problems of estimation which stem largely from data deficiencies, but also involve problems of simultaneity notably in the relationships between shiftworking, capital intensity and plant size.

Policing requires atypical work hours. The present study examined associations between shiftwork and pregnancy loss among female police officers.

Participants were 91 female officers with a prior history of at least one pregnancy. Shiftwork information was assessed using daily electronic payroll work records. Any prior pregnancy loss (due to miscarriage) was self-reported. Logistic regression estimated odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for main associations.

On average, the officers were 42 years old, had 14 years of service, and 56% reported a prior pregnancy loss. Officers who worked dominantly on the afternoon or night shift during their career had 96% greater odds of pregnancy loss compared to those on day shift (OR = 1.96, 95% CI:0.71–5.42), but the result was not statistically significant. A 25% increase in percent of hours worked on night shift was associated with 87% increased odds of pregnancy loss (OR = 1.87, 95% CI:1.01–3.47). Associations were adjusted for demographic and lifestyle factors. Objective assessment of shiftwork via electronic records strengthened the study. Limitations include small sample size, cross-sectional design and lack of details on pregnancy loss or the timing of pregnancy loss with regard to shiftwork.

The present study is preliminary and cross-sectional.

With considerable further inquiry and findings into this topic, results may have an impact on police policy affecting shift work and pregnant police officers.

Implication on the health and welfare of police officers.

To our knowledge, there are no empirical studies which associate shiftwork and pregnancy loss among police officers. This preliminary study suggested an association between shiftwork and increased odds of pregnancy loss and points out the need for further study.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues in the shiftworking literature and to apply these to an administrative environment.

The scope of the paper is the issue of health problems in shiftworkers in administrative environments. The method was to use case study organisations which had introduced shiftwork and discover from semi‐structured interviews of staff what the effects had been.

Given the choice, employees opted for shiftwork, especially women and especially for a night or evening shift; anticipated problems of absenteeism and labour turnover and low performance related to health issues were not present.

The design was limited to two organisations which gave access; this may have been because they were able to report positive outcomes. A broader survey may uncover negative aspects which this paper could not.

The concerns over health cannot be transferred to an administrative environment. This may encourage organisations to introduce more shift patterns, given full employee involvement from the outset. Shift premia, so common elsewhere, and a concern to cost‐conscious managers were not paid.

The concerns over health uncovered by previous research on shiftwork are not present in administrative environments.

Major demographic trends are affecting the work schedules of U.S. employees with likely consequences for health and quality-of-life outcomes. These trends include long work hours, at least for some groups of employees, and an increasing proportion of employees in the U.S. and other countries who are working nonstandard work schedules. This chapter contains a review of the empirical literature linking the number of hours worked and the distribution of those hours at the individual and couple level to a variety of outcomes, cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In addition, because the majority of U.S. workers live in dyads (Jacobs & Gerson (2004). The time divide: Work, family and gender inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), major attention is given to the impact of work hours on the employee's spouse as well as on the employee. It is also noted that the relationship between work hours and outcomes might be different among employed single women with children. Data are presented from two new studies conducted by my research team to fill some of the critical knowledge gaps. Finally, I suggest some directions for future research.

The post‐war period has been characterised by a persistent and substantial expansion in the employment of women. At the same time, women have become increasingly protected in employment by a legislative framework that includes the Equal Pay Act (1970), the Social Security and Pensions Act (1975) and the Sex Discrimination Act (1975). Nevertheless, a number of vestiges of discrimination under the law still remain, such as the special treatment of women with regard to the length and timing of their paid employment. Despite the attempts to remove discrimination by legislation, there remains a considerable groundswell of opinion that there are still substantial differences in the treatment of women vis‐a‐vis men in employment. One continuing concern is the tendency of the organisation of tasks to polarise into men‐only and women‐only jobs. As a result, it has been argued that the situation approximates to a dual labour market, with women being funnelled into the secondary labour market. Complex, interacting forces are at play that make the estimation of statistical models of the existing distribution of employment by sex (from which evidence of sex discrimination might be sought) extremely difficult. A potentially more rewarding approach is to examine those jobs that employers believe to be of the men‐only or women‐only types. Questions of this type were included in a recent survey of employers across all sectors of employment in British industry. While the formulation of such questions and the interpretation of the results are associated with important problems, nevertheless, the survey provides a useful impression of the size and nature of the barriers faced by women in their search for employment opportunities and the manner in which these barriers may be broken down.

To characterize changes in work hours across a career in law enforcement.

N = 113 police officers enrolled in the BCOPS cohort were studied. The police officers started their careers in law enforcement between 1994 and 2001 at a mid-sized, unionized police department in northwestern New York and continued to work at this police department for at least 15 years. Day-by-day work history records were obtained from the payroll department. Work hours, leave hours and other pay types were summarized for each calendar year across their first 15 years of employment. Linear mixed-effects models with a random intercept over subject were used to determine if there were significant changes in pay types over time.

A total of 1,617 individual-years of data were analyzed. As the police officers gained seniority at the department, they worked fewer hours and fewer night shifts. Total paid hours did not significantly change due to seniority-based increases in vacation time. Night shift work was increasingly in the form of overtime as officers gained seniority. Overtime was more prevalent at the beginning of a career and after a promotion from police officer to detective.

Shiftwork and long work hours have negative effects on sleep and increase the likelihood of on-duty fatigue and performance impairment. The results suggest that there are different points within a career in law enforcement where issues surrounding shiftwork and long work hours may be more prevalent. This has important implications for predicting fatigue, developing effective countermeasures and measuring fatigue-related costs.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of mental health on the job performance among nurses, how shiftwork affects the impact and how social support alters it.

Data were collected through a questionnaire survey from 683 Indian nurses working in multiple hospitals in two major cities in Northern India. Descriptive statistics, correlations and hierarchical regressions were employed to investigate the links between job stress, emotional exhaustion and job performance along with the simultaneous moderating effects of shiftwork and social support on this relationship.

Both job stress and emotional exhaustion were negatively related to job performance. However, three-way interaction analysis revealed that social support moderated the above relationships differently between shift workers and day workers. Social support significantly altered the pattern of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables among day workers but had no impact in mitigating the relationship among shift workers.

The findings endorsed the usefulness of the stress theory, burnout theory, the conservation of resources model and the social support resource theory in modeling the phenomenon and explaining the behavior of day workers but not that of shift workers.

It paved the way for evidence-based practices in health-care management.

This study extends theoretical predictions to India and demonstrates their global portability. It focuses on shiftwork and social support as simultaneous moderators, and through a unique three-way analysis, documents complex interaction patterns that have hitherto been unrecorded. It also brings scholarly attention to the nursing population in India whose organizational behavior is poorly documented in the empirical literature.

The application of flexibility to shift systems of working has generally been limited to individual arrangements between ‘opposite numbers’ on other shifts. This article describes a successful experiment to design and implement a flexible system that greatly extends the discretion accorded to operatives on shiftwork in their overall use of time. The scheme appears to be unique in that over 1,500 production workers are involved in operating a scheme that was largely designed by themselves.

Balancing work and family in dual-earner households can be stressful. Research suggests that increased work-family conflict (WFC) significantly predicts poor psychological health and increased stress in police officers. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether child care stress was associated with anxiety symptoms and if stressful work events and shift work modified this relationship among 163 Buffalo, NY police officers.

Participants indicated child care stress by reporting how much stress they felt (0 – none to 10 – high) when making child care/daily living arrangements. Shiftwork was assessed from pay-roll data (1994 to date of exam) and by asking, “Do you work opposite shift from your spouse/partner to care for your children?” to assess partner’s shift. The Beck Anxiety Scale and Spielberger Police Stress Survey were used to assess anxiety and work stress, respectively. Effect modification was assessed by stratifying on police stress scores using their median values, and on partner’s shift. All models were adjusted for age, alcohol intake, sex and smoking status.

Results suggest that child care stress was positively associated with anxiety symptoms and that this relationship was moderated by high (>median) work stress factors and afternoon/midnight shift-work, but not having a partner who works opposite shift. These results indicate that child care stress is associated with anxiety symptoms and that this relationship may be modified by work factors.

A number of limitations should be considered while interpreting the results. This study is cross-sectional, which prevents causal inferences; therefore, the temporal pattern between exposure and outcome cannot be determined. The independent, dependent and moderating variables are all self-report measures, which may introduce recall bias. Lastly, generalizability is limited to police departments of similar size and geographic area.

Police experience high stress as part of their jobs, these results indicate that similar to other professions, WFC can also affect police officers, and is associated with higher levels of anxiety.

Few research studies have evaluated the affects of family issues in police. Specifically, the relationship between child care stress and anxiety, and how this relationship may be modified by high work stress.

In this article the authors discuss how technological advances may be frustrated by the changing values of different organisational groups, and examine the impact of changing social values on an attempt to increase shift working. In particular, they consider the viewpoint of managers and manual shift workers. They conclude that any increase in shift working might, in the long run, be constrained by these changing social values.