Solving the Problem of Worker Fatigue: Blame the Worker?

by Jordan

Confined Space Blog

Sometimes you read stupid stuff and you just want to go back to bed and sleep, sleep, sleep.

And speaking of sleep, Business Insurance has an article this week about the "one of the most frequently overlooked but critical questions to answer in employer safety programs." The question: how much sleep are employees getting? The problem: serious safety problems caused by worker fatigue.

And fatigue is a serious problem, especially for those in safety-critical jobs, according to the National Safety Council (NSC) which found that 43% of 2,000 workers surveyed reported not getting enough sleep every day. Experts say that not getting enough sleep is the same as being drunk.

OK, so far so good. Fatigue is bad for safety. On that there is general agreement.

But why are workers so fatigued? The NSC points to nine risk factors, and I'll list them all:

1. Shift work
2. High-risk hours
3. Demanding jobs
4. Long shifts
5. Long weeks
6. Sleep loss
7. No rest breaks
8. Quick shift returns
9. Long commute

I would add a number 10, although that may be included in number 3 or 5: Having more than one job (usually due to low pay.)

Now most of those -- I'd say all except maybe number 6 (possibly due to medical problems like sleep apnea) are all related to working conditions imposed by management.

One could argue that number 9 is a matter of worker choice: a worker may choose to live in a nicer area in return for a longer commute. But the fact is that many workers don't have a choice about how far they commute; they can't afford to live near work, and the lack of adequate public transportation makes it worse. This Washington Post article about the deteriorating safety net in the South, accompanied by transportation difficulties for low income workers, has haunted me for years:

In the metropolitan areas of the Deep South, government policies and rising real estate prices have pushed the poor out of urban centers and farther from jobs. Low-income people have, in turn, grown more reliant on public transit networks that are among the weakest of quality in the country.

So, given that almost every cause of sleep deprivation cited by the National Safety Council is beyond the control of workers, what is the solution recommended in the article by safety expert Mike Harnett? "Train employees on the importance of sleep and to limit longer shifts."

Really? Tell me a single one of those nine factors that can be resolved with more employee training. And how does training employers result in shorter shifts? (Harnett is Vice President of Six Safety Systems, by the way, which helpfully offers fatigue management training, and "Fatigue Detection Technology ... to detect and measure the operator’s eye movements. The readings are immediately analyzed to determine levels of fatigue and distraction.")

She also recommends a "questionnaire for workers on sleep habits." OK, maybe that gets to number 6, but none of the others have anything to do with sleep "habits."

The bottom line is that questionnaires, more training and "fatigue detection technology" are just a subtle way of blaming workers for the sleep deprivation problem that -- from the risk factors listed by the NSC -- are mostly the responsibility of management to change.

So what have we learned?

First, it sounds more like employers need the questionnaires and training, not workers.

And second, journalists would be better off looking for "experts" who aren't also peddling their wares.

TWU Advance Team on the Ground in Puerto Rico

A TWU Local 100 advance relief team has been on the ground in San Juan, Puerto Rico since Saturday, Oct. 14, 2017. The three-person crew is meeting with local government officials and representatives of the AFL-CIO to make arrangements for the arrival of the first team of 15 TWU Local 100 volunteers to help in the hurricane recovery effort. Local 100 President Tony Utano dispatched Administrative Vice President Nelson Rivera, TAS Division Chair Willie Rivera and Vice Chair Armando Serrano to handle this important assignment. "We didn't want to just blindly send our members down there without knowing where they are most needed and what the living conditions would be," said Utano. 

The new Local 100 President said that a team of member/volunteers will be sent as soon as possible to help in the recovery for a two-week period. 

 
The union and the MTA have agreed to share the costs associated with the effort. Early reports back from the advance team paint a devastating picture of destruction and need.
"All power in San Juan is being provided by generators," reports Willie Rivera. "There is no electricity. There are no street lights and all of the traffic signals are down. The food markets have major waiting lines, the ATM lines are huge and water bottles are scarce. Lanterns are in major demand among those we have met. However, the people are pretty much in good spirits and energetic, and pass their time helping each other."

The TWU team has met with the Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz,

 as well as officials from the AFL-CIO and other local unions to discuss logistics and to determine where the Local 100 volunteers can be most helpful. They have also met with a few TWU Local 501 members, who are employed by American Airlines at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan. 

Rivera reports that local union members are providing a major assist in the recovery. "They have been working almost nonstop with their communities feeding them and clothing them. They told us of their experiences during the storm and what they have been doing to normalize their lives," said Rivera. 

Rivera said that the team was able to locate the grandmother of a Local 100 member in New York who hadn't been able to contact her since the storm. The news was good. "One of our members called us worried about his grandmother who he hadn't heard from. He was concerned that she would run out of her insulin. We were able to drive to Santurce, found her and her son and made sure she was fine."

Rivera said that he, Nelson Rivera and Armando Serrano will try to get to more remote parts of the Island to see if TWU volunteers would be helpful there.

Jesse Hagopian

Guest Writer Jesse Hagopian

My name is Jesse Hagopian and I teach ethnic studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School. I hope you didn’t just stop reading this letter after you heard the subject I am teaching—I urge you to keep reading.

I am writing in regards to the Washington Policy Center’s $350-a-person fundraising dinner you will be addressing on October 13 at the Hyatt Regency in the nearby city of Bellevue. Thousands of my colleagues and I will surround the building to make sure the world knows your message of division is not welcome here.

Given the recent protests of your speeches at Harvard, at historically black Bethune-Cookman University, and many other places, you must be getting used to this by now. But just so there are no surprises, let me tell you what to expect.

There will be bull horns, signs, speeches, and I bet some of the more creative teachers—perhaps the few art teachers your proposed budget hasn’t cut yet—will show up in grizzly bear costumes, referencing the asinine comment you made defending the use of guns in schools to “protect from potential grizzlies.”

There will be students there questioning your qualifications to serve as Secretary of Education, given that they have more experience with the public schools than you. They might point out that you never attended public schools and neither did any of your four children.There will be black people and civil rights organizations because you refused to say if the federal government would bar funding for private schools that discriminate. These anti-racist activists will protest your claim that Historically Black Colleges and Universities are “pioneers of school choice” as a way to promote privatizing public education—as if the segregation that forced African Americans to start their own colleges was a magnificent choice.
There will be feminists protesting your outrageous dismantling of Title IX protections aimed at reducing sexual assault on campuses. Your decision to meet with sexist so-called “men’s rights” groups to decide on your approach to Title IX policy shows just how little regard you have for protecting victims of sexual assault. As Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said recently, “She’s meeting with groups and individuals today who believe that sexual assault is some sort of feminist plot to hurt men.”
There will be transgender people and others in the LGBTQ community protesting your decision, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to pull back public school guidelines allowing transgender students to use bathrooms for the gender they identify with. And while you have stated you don’t support gay conversation therapy, according to the Washington Post, you served from 2001 to 2013 as vice president of the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation (founded by your mother) which donated to anti-LGBTQ groups that do.

College students will join us because of your attempt to stop debt collection regulations meant to protect students from predatory colleges. The “borrower defense to repayment” rules implemented under President Obama make it easier for defrauded student loan borrowers to obtain debt forgiveness.

In addition, union educators and members will join the rally because of your unrelenting attack on organized labor. As Mother Jones magazine wrote of your plan to push the anti-union “right-to-work” legislation, “These laws outlaw contracts that require all employees in unionized workplaces to pay dues for union representation. Back in 2007, such a proposal in the union-heavy state of Michigan was considered a ‘right-wing fantasy,’ but thanks to the DeVoses’ aggressive strategy and funding, the bill became law by 2012.”

To be fair, I want to acknowledge that the destruction of public education didn’t begin with you. When your predecessor Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came to town, we protested him as well. Like you, he was also committed to privatizing education; he just didn’t have your zeal for the voucher approach. But Duncan was even more motivated than you to reduce an individual student’s intellectual and emotional learning to a single number on a test that could be used to punish a child, a teacher, or a school.

To truly transform our public education system so it empowers students to be critical thinkers and changemakers, we must go far beyond removing you from office. To achieve the schools our children deserve it will require a mass grassroots uprising of educators, students, parents, unions, working people, the poor, LGBTQ folks, women, people of color, and human rights organizations who are ultimately empowered to democratically run their own school systems. Thankfully, all these constituents will be at the rally. And hopefully, we can start talking about our vision for remaking schools without billionaires and corporate reformers who see dollar signs where they should see children.

See you in a few days.

Sincerely,

Jesse Hagopian

Jesse Hagopian is a teacher and advisor to the Black Student Union at Seattle’s Garfield High School. Jesse is the editor of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing and an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine. He blogs at: www.IAmAnEducator.com. This article currently appears in the latest edition of  The Progressive Magazine.

TO: All National and International Trade Unions Organizations

Workers Party of Korea (WPK) has been leading the Korean revolution to   victory and glory throughout its glorious 72-year history (1945.10.10). In the gloomy period of the colonial rule of Japanese imperialism, the President Kim Il Sung founded the Down-with-Imperialism Union that would be root for founding the WPK afterwards, on October 17, 1926 in Jilin.

In a meeting convened from June 30 to July 2, 1930 in Kalun, the line was put forward that the party should be founded independently by the Korean revolutionaries themselves on the basis of lesson of the revolutionary struggle of Korea and by method of extension of the party ranks after formation at grassroots level of party organizations deep-rooted in workers and farmers. In accordance with this line, the organizational and ideological basis for founding party was laid in the period of anti-Japanese armed struggle.

The President gave an energetic guidance to preparations for the foundation of party after liberation of the country without delay. At last a founding congress of Central Organizational Committee of Communist Party of North Korea                     (a predecessor of the WPK) was convened on 10^th October, 1945. Afterwards, he put forward a unique organizational line on building of a mass party in accordance with the prevailing situation and lawful requirement of party development. Thanks to his wise guidance, Workers Party of North Korea, a unified party for popular masses, was founded by merging the communist party with other workers party in the inaugural congress held on 28^th August to 30^th August, 1946.

During the 72-year-long period, the WPK has demonstrated its dignity and power as a revolutionary experienced party toughened through the struggle, an invincible party with unreserved support and belief of the people.

Today, the Workers﹊ Party of Korea, a revolutionary party of the working class and a mass party of the working people, has been strengthened and developed further more as a everlasting party of leader and a motherly party becoming one with the popular masses, by supreme leader Kim Jong Un who adds luster to idea and exploits on founding party of the Generalissimos Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

The supreme leader Kim Jong Un gives wise leadership to  strengthen and develop the WPK as a party of Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il upholding the Generalissimos as eternal leaders.

To love and serve the people are the nature and fundamental characteristics of the WPK. The WPK displays its ever-victorious power with the history of respect on people, importance on people and love to people, becoming one with the popular masses.

                                                                                    

Central Committee

General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea

The affiliates of WFTU are celebrating the WFTU International Action Day around the world

03 Oct 2017 ACTION DAY

The WFTU Secretariat, during its first meeting day held on 19 July 2017, unanimously decided to organize the International Action Day for the refugees and Immigrants on October 3rd, 2017.

The WFTU affiliated organizations around the world responded to the call of the Secretariat by organizing militant activities to celebrate the WFTU International Action Day.

http://www.wftucentral.org/the-affiliates-of-wftu-are-celebrating-the-wftu-international-action-day-around-the-world/