29

THE FIVE-DAY WEEK

one to three and one-half, which conforms quite closely to
the general industrial average.
The average size of the plants covered is, likewise, strongly
influenced by the figures from the Ford Motor Company.
Thus, the entire 270 establishments studied reported a total
of 218,219 employees, or an average employment of 808,
whereas if data for the Ford Motor Company were excluded
the average employment in the remaining plants would
amount to 155, which indicates that most progress in adopting
 the five-day week schedule has been made in establishments
 in the small-plant category. In fact, as shown in
Table 5, more than two-thirds of the companies covered employed
 fewer than one hundred wage earners, and 919, of the
plants had an employment of 500 or less. The average size of
plants operating on a five-day schedule is, of course, strongly
influenced by the large proportion of establishments in the
garment trades, where employments of comparatively few
wage earners are the rule. Several of such plants included in
this study employed fewer than ten wage earners.
TABLE 5: DISTRIBUTION, BY SIZE OF ESTABLISHMENT, oF 270
MANUFACTURING ESTABLISHMENTS OPERATING
oN Five-Day Week
(Source: National Industrial Conference Board)
Employees
Number | Per Cent

Less than!
100 to 2:
251 to SC
501 to 75
751 to 100
1001 to 2000
Over 2001

Wo

Tote

ren
27
nA

£46
-3.6
fq
41

5,356
6,237
6,484
7.377
ang

1.5 02,93
270 1 100.0 | 218,219

2.4
2.8
3.0
34
0.8
3.7
83.8
100.0

Lasor Povricy oF Five-Day Week PLanTs
Management policy with regard to organized labor in
establishments operating five days a week assumes considerable
 importance when it is realized that the factor of
free-will adoption of the shorter schedule or its adoption
under compulsion of the labor union has in many cases