Yes, nice when you can get it and at least in times past, when my brother in law worked there, even nicer when you could get an "off the line" job like putting steering columns together or whatever. It paid 8 hours every day but when you completed your list for the day you went home. The best took only around 4.5 hours and pretty much all were gone within 6 hours but all still got paid for 8.
So, if you are paid to run 500 miles, but find enough 'shortcuts' that it's only 450, do you refund the money for the 50 miles you didn't drive?
That was a rhetorical question - here's a real one: do you know why the job your BIL did [like most] was governed by a list of expected achievements per hour/shift, rather than workers doing whatever they could?
It's because MANAGEMENT insists upon it. They worried that workers would slack off and not do enough work, if there were no 'quotas', is why. They hired occupational experts to run time/motion studies on each job, and decide how much was an acceptable output per hour, so that's what workers must abide by. Can you blame them for not wanting to increase the output on days when everything goes well, knowing that if they do, the 'quota' will be increased to reflect it, and on the days when things don't go well [bad parts, no parts, machinery problems, etc, etc, etc] they will be required to explain why they didn't do as much. This I know from personal experience, not just hearing it second or third hand. There were many days when I could have done more than required, but if I did, it would become the expected, and on the days I couldn't do it, I'd be grilled on why not.
Management required the quotas, not the workers, so if it bothers you, at least pin the blame on the right party.
Just curious: Who do you suppose is responsible for the provision of the mailing address on the load info for truck drivers, rather than the shipping address, which is usually on another street altogether? Or the placement of signage [or more accurately, the lack thereof] directing trucks to the truck gate? Or signage that is inadequate [ie "Trucks use Dipstick Street Entry" with no clue as to where that is located, or signs that disappear in the dark, or cannot be read from the cab of a truck on the street, etc, etc, etc?] Hint: it's not the workers or the union behind the stupidity of forcing truck drivers to focus their attention on searching for signs [which may or may not exist, or be readable from the street] instead of the traffic on the busy street around them!
And who schedules just one person to load & unload trucks, knowing there will be 10 or 12 arriving first thing in the morning, every morning? Who decided the whole shipping/receiving crew should take lunch/breaks/mandatory meetings at the same time, leaving no one to load/unload trucks?
Yep: that would be management, every time. And for these brilliant decisions, how much are they getting paid?