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Allowances Provided to Workers: 3

Types | Industries
This article throws light upon the the three main types of allowances provided to
workers. The types are: 1. Process Allowances 2. Personal and Rest Allowances 3.
Special Allowances

Type # 1. Process Allowances:


They are meant to compensate workers for the enforced idleness due to the
character or nature of a process or an operation. If the idleness would not have
been enforced, the workers would have earned more.

Such idleness is unavoidable when a worker handles a machine which works


automatically for a part of the total working time or where a number of workers
perform independent operations on the same job and it is not possible to
completely balance the production line.

A worker generally feels discouraged if unluckily the idle lime becomes a major
portion of the total cycle time because even if he works at a fast pace rate during
the non-idle time, he can hardly boost his low earnings.

Type # 2. Personal and Rest Allowances:


A worker cannot work continuously like a machine and hence such allowances
are provided to him in order to satisfy his personal needs (like visiting toilet, etc.)
and to recover from the physiological and psychological effects of energy spent
while performing an operation under existing working conditions.

Rest allowance is a relaxation allowance to a worker to overcome fatigue incurred


during working. Excessive fatigue affects badly the performance of a worker.
Fatigue is the result of unhealthy working conditions, physical exertion,
inconvenient postures, concentration, etc. Relaxation allowances may vary from
12% to 20% (or even more) of the normal time from light to heavy works.
Type # 3. Special Allowances:
They may be temporary or permanent and are given for activities which are not
generally the part of work cycle but are considered essential for performing the
work satisfactorily, special allowances can be classified as;

(a) Periodic Activity Allowance:


Periodic activity allowance, which is for the activities to be carried out
periodically during work cycle, for example, setting up of a planer, regrinding a
lathe tool etc.

(b) Interference Allowance:


Machine interference allowances are provided when a worker is looking after two
or more machines and one or more of them stop (at random or cyclically) while
he is attending to another (machine). The result, of machine stoppages or
machine interference, is loss in production or total output. Thus, for no fault of
his own, the worker suffers because of low output. Interference allowance
compensates these aspects.

Machine stoppage may be cyclic or random and thus ‘cycle interference


allowances’ or ‘random interference allowances’ are specified. Cycle interference
allowances are generally given to a worker handling more than one automatic
machines which have different automatic cycle times.

If the worker is attending machine B and the automatic cycle time of machine A
is over, naturally machine A will stop and the worker is not in a position to attend
the same until he makes machine B to start. ‘Random interference allowances’
are given on machines which stop or have to be stopped due to certain causes
occurring at random (e.g., when a yarn breaks in winding).
“A contingency allowance is an allowances of time that is to be added in normal time or to be included in
standard time to meet the legitimate and unexpected items of work or delays, the precise measurement of
which is not economical due to their irregular and infrequent nature of occurrences.”

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