Toward the end of chapter 5, Agricola tells us something about miners' working hours in his society.
The day was split into 3 shifts, each being 7 hours long, with the extra hour needed to get people in and out of the mine shaft. The night shift was dangerous, and only used "when necessary." Also, he recommends against putting a miner on two consecutive day shifts: they get tired. Sometimes, miners working a double shift actually fell asleep, and if not that, their work suffered. In some places, a double shift was allowed because the pay wasn't enough to live on.
The miners didn't work on Sundays for religious reasons, and they had Saturdays off as well to take care of their shopping and such like.
No comments:
Post a Comment