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b'Hello all, Marty with you again from Warehouse and Operations as a Career. It always makes us feel good to wrap up another week doesn\\u2019t it. And I guess for many of us it\\u2019s a Holiday week as its Thanksgiving here in the States. In any event the weeks coming to a close, and I hope we\\u2019ve all had a Safe and Productive one!
\\nLast week, on two separate occasions the topic of general labor came up and I\\u2019d like to talk about it a little bit today. The term general labor is a pretty broad term and encompasses a lot of different tasks in the warehouse and transportations fields I guess but I think there\\u2019s some confusion, at least in my opinion of what general labor jobs are.
\\nLast week I was asked about the difficulty of finding candidates for general labor positions. In my experience General Labor work is readily available as well as there\\u2019s people to work those positions. When I think of G/L positions I\\u2019m seeing a task that doesn\\u2019t require any type of machine operation or equipment maybe usage. The way I\\u2019ve always thought is that if your trained on a particular machine you\\u2019d be a machine operator or if your operating a piece of warehouse equipment then you\\u2019re an equipment operator. With both of these examples theirs some training involved, you can\\u2019t just walk up to the machine, hit a green button and its done. I mean we have to know what that button operates, why the machine runs as it does and what it\\u2019s accomplishing. I bet since it\\u2019s electric, gas or fueled there\\u2019s going to be some sort of Safety training involved also. And of course, the same goes for any equipment as well, the way I view it is even if we\\u2019re using a hand truck or dolly there ought to have been some time spent training us on its proper use.
\\nI know of one facility that boxes and bags food products. A general labor task there is a person reaches out and grabs a #40 bag of meal or flour and stacks it on a pallet right there beside them. Their responsible for the proper ti and hi and to make sure its stacked well and somebody else hauls it away with an electric palletjack. It\\u2019s repetitious, and requires someone that can stand for long periods of time, takes their stacking seriously and enjoys the workout. This facility considers the palletizer position as an entry level position and then promotes from within on to the palletjack operators, forklifts, and receivers etc. Of course, the normal safety procedures are given and reviewed daily, they really teach proper lifting and ergonomics to the new hires but the job description and hazard analysis for the position is pretty general. A good general labor position is a great way to break into our field and start learning warehousing.
\\nMy talks last week we\\u2019re focused around unloading or lumping trailers and containers. At this particular building they unload hundreds of items, all of which are separated by item and stacked or separated as to fit into a certain slot according to their WMS or warehouse management system with a proper ti and hi etc. As we\\u2019ve learned a ti is how many cases are on each layer & hi tells us how many layers to stack up, rotating the configuration or reversing it with each layer as to kind of lock the cases together creating a sturdier pallet or load. I definitely do not consider this a general labor position. We have to be taught to read the load breakdown sheets, understand the pallet configurations and the importance of separating all the products correctly and in the most efficient manner possible. Now if we\\u2019re talking loads and loads, trailers and trailers of the same item or product I\\u2019d agree that\\u2019s more of a general labor task. You take the cases out of the trailer, place them on a pallet in the same configuration every time with somebody hauling them away for us and we repeat our task the same way all day long. That, to me, is more of a general labor job.
\\nI think we may see more general labor jobs in the production side of wareh...'