Investigation of Disorders and Problems caused by Shift Work in an automotive industry

Shift work can cause the decreased productivity، changing eating habits، increased fatigue and insomnia، individual and social life disorders and health problems. The workers of automotive industry experience shift wok system according to their workplace conditions. The purpose of this study is the investigation of the health، family and social life problems among the workers of this vital industry. In this Descriptive - analytic study، 150 workers of the automotive industries at Tehran were selected by simple random sampling. Data collection tool was Survey of Shift Worker questionnaire (SOS). Reliability and validity of the mentioned questionnaire was approved in previous studies. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS (version 18. 0)، and presented with Chi-2. The results showed that the highest prevalence rate of problems caused by shift work were related to individual، family and social life disorders of shift workers، respectively (>85%). Prevalence of digestive disorders was 82%. According to our findings، persons who have selected the type of their shift work system had the higher level of job satisfaction than others (P <0/001). In addition، the regular shift rotation schedules caused the more job satisfaction than the irregular type (P <0/001). Choosing people voluntarily in shift work schedule and presence of regular shift rotation plans lead to the increased job satisfaction and decreased health problems. According to results، the social and health problems among the workers of the under study industry was too high، so it suggests that to make proper decisions such as lowering shift cycles (two-day change with respect to week)، training shift personnel about health effects of shift work and lowering the hours of night shift in order to decrease the presents problem as much as possible.