That’s kind of a pipe dream.

The reality of manufacturing is that unless people are physically in the building, the business isn’t making money. Tool and die is largely a support role. We’re not just making the tooling, we’re making sure the press is still running all day.

That means that if the machine is running, we have to be here. The machine has to run frequently to make sense. They’re simply aren’t enough people for a 4 shift rotation, which is what we’d need to have reduced hours. We struggle to fill 2. Right now we’re running 3 maintenance shifts and 2 production, and that’s more than most manufacturers near me can handle. The labor just isn’t there. We’ve tried 4x10 shifts and that’s difficult to sell to 2nd and 3rd shifters. About half of first shift couldn’t make it work. But it didn’t really matter, ultimately.

The reality is that most of the building is working 5 ten hour shifts and a 6 hour Saturday for the foreseeable future. Could we attract young people with fewer hours? Maybe. It’s manufacturing and it’s a hard sell regardless. I love my job, I work with a lot of people who love their jobs, and that includes guys on the floor who do little more than plug parts in to machines. It can be immensely satisfying work, but it’s hard, dirty, and loud. Ask 50 teenagers if they’d rather stand next to a punch press every day or throw burgers out of windows through college, 49 are gonna throw burgers.