News and Discussions > Nuke News
NRC limits workers to 48 hrs/wk
Already Gone:
I asked you to draw a picture and you threw paint at the wall.
Yeah, working a lot of ovetrime makes people tired. We don't need NIOSH to tell us that.
The full text of the article you posted can be found here:
www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/workschedules/abstracts/dawson.html
Fatigue can be managed during long work hours. Even at extended-hours operations (like a nuke plant during an outage) the frequency of breaks actually has a much greater effect on worker fatigue and risk levels than the length of the shifts.
So anyway, when and where are you going to Google a statistic that proves your contentions that :
1) "and after 60 or so hours you are at risk with higher error rates and lost time accidents. "
and
2) "the rate of accidents will increase at the 72 hour level.. its a proven statistic.. "
There is no such thing as a "proven statistic". Statistics are used to prove or disprove theories. Still you haven't come up with one that matches the statements attributed to you above.
Nobody, including me, is contending that overtime is harmless. We are just calling it for what it is - a necessary reality in the current state of the commercial nuclear industry. Asserting that long work hours have no effect on safety would be just as irresponsible as ... say... extracting bogus statistics from a posterior orifice ... perhaps?
alphadude:
this is a dead horse...
True enuff Marssim, its been an ongoing condition here with the technicians. Roadtechs aka roadw**** suffered from the same situation and had to rein in the surley crew they had, so they migrated here.
Point being.. you can't live by overtime.. its a loss for industry, presents risks that are not fully evaluated or ignored by industry and in a high risk situation such as nuclear power inappropriate. Increases stress in workers manifests itself around 60 hours of work and productivity drops drastically around the 72 hour level with noted loss of attention to detail in the work process. Increased exposure, fatigue, manifested stress- precursors to the "proven statistic" that workers comp does increase with longer hours worked.
Simple "fatigue management" by taking extra breaks does not remove the employee from the stressfull enviroment that will eventually take its toll.
Already Gone:
--- Quote from: Marssim on Apr 25, 2006, 08:28 ---the point was made - "In the meantime we will continue to "improvise, adapt and overcome",..."
you need to read the entire post before you ridicule,...
additionally, there is no entry in my service jacket granting me an exemption for "experimental" use of marijuana, the answer was no and still is to this day, I've never been "high",...don't insinuate it,
if you feel compelled to sling insults at people there is a "No Holds Barred" section on these forums, why should I pay $36.50 for another year of gold membership when I can get insulted in this thread for free?
--- End quote ---
I apologize if you took insult. The comment was not directed at you so much as at your style of writing. The lack of punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure (considered by most people to be laziness and a lack of respect toward the reader) made it ... well, quite frankly ... barely coherent and tedious to read. The combination of that style and your opening line ( which should be viewed as pretentious if not outright arrogant) made it too hard for me not to take a shot. You made the target so big nobody could miss it.
I do actually agree with your premise, at least the summary. We must improvise, adapt, and overcome. The challenge is real because it exists in the real world. We cannot improve the situation by following the unrealistic dictates of people who decide (because they took some business courses and accepted salaried positions) that overtime is a no-no. To them, and to alphadude I say, "thanks for the input, but can you tell me something that is useful to me in the actual situation I'm facing?"
The reality won't change just because the latest flavor-of-the-month Business School fad says that it should.
So alphadude, if you had read in depth the report you cut and pasted above, you would have read the part where it says that workers comp costs rise where there is overtime AND high levels of fatigue. Given that overtime WILL NOT GO AWAY, the only alternative is to manage the fatigue. You give the impression that you have some sort of management position. That puts the ball in your hands. You can make the change that is needed (managing workload and fatigue) or you can just rant about how bad overtime is. Somehow I feel that your position on OT might have been different if you were getting paid for it and only got the opportunity to work 20 -25 weeks per year.
alphadude:
I make changes daily thats part of process improvement. There is no ranting, planned overtime for non-emergent, non-emergency work is a process failure. plain and simple.
and if frogs had wings...
beercourt you have been in the trenches too long..
M1Ark:
--- Quote from: alphadude on Apr 25, 2006, 12:59 ---snip.. There is no ranting, planned overtime for non-emergent, non-emergency work is a process failure. plain and simple.
...snip...
--- End quote ---
Is a refuel outage a process failure?
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