What did air traffic controllers just start sleeping on the job lately?

[Logical]

What caused all of these to happen in the last two months? Were they sleeping before and the news never broke?

Or has the job got more boring lately?

Seems weird this is just happening now.

[gateley]

1. I'm guessing it's been occurring since they began scheduling these

poor guys in shifts of 8 hours on, 8 hours off. That's gotta take its toll. They're being hyper vigilant now which is good, and will implement a change in the scheduling policies, which never should have been allowed to happen anyway. While they're at it, they should have a 2nd person on shift always, too. As a DUer pointed out, what if the guy has a heart attack or stroke or something? What then?

In the name of money, we've put everybody's safety at risk. Unconscionable.

[Logical]

4. So that just started? n-t

[gateley]

21. No, I think it's been the policy for a long time, just now one happened

to get caught and they're being extra watchful to see how widespread it is. That's just my guess.

[eShirl]

11. ugh! That's brutal!

[Brickbat]

2. Cuts are becoming more obvious. There is no reason for these people to be on a shift alone

overnight, and no reason for the turnarounds many in the transportation industry have to go through. Except larger profit and greed, of course. Those are valid reasons to some.

[malaise]

3. Ding ding we have a winner

We need folks to make the connection with deregulation, the weakening lack of unions and the concomitant ridiculous working conditions.

[Logical]

5. So the hours changed just recently? n-t

[Brickbat]

7. No, I'm guessing that it's been a process over the past 30 years, since PATCO was busted and the

ATCs have had to try and get their shit together again. Some people retired after the strike, some new people came on...IIRC, there's a labor shortage when it comes to ATCs, and they may be hiring people and putting them on without sufficient training, and it's hit a critical mass. Media attention helps, too.

Fatigue is poorly understood and poorly managed in many industries, including the transportation industry. A different schedule every week is difficult to adjust to. 7 a.m.-7 p.m. one week and then 7 p.m.-7 a.m. the next week is killer. You never catch up; and that's even knowing your schedule.

[izquierdista]

9. Scabs gotta sleep sometime.....

For management, safety is a cost to be minimized. For labor, it gets personal.

[gateley]

23. They're not scabs, they've actually re-unionized (if that's a word) -

but the union, obviously, isn't strong. That's my understanding anyway.

[Brickbat]

25. I'm guessing there are still some around who crossed the line from back in the day, though, and that

is what makes a scab.

[gateley]

37. Yeah, I'm sure you're right. I don't know how many of the original

controllers got their jobs back. :(

[Liberal_in_LA]

17. agreed. In the past, probaby 2 on shift, at least one remained awake

[Brickbat]

26. Being able to say, "I really, really need to rest my eyes for 10 minutes, are you OK to watch?" can

make all the difference in a long shift.

[Drale]

6. Its the Media flavor of the month

they will soon move onto some other thing they believe is destroying America.

[Brickbat]

8. Nurses are always a favorite target, and fit right in to stories like these.

[BillyJack]

10. How many ppl do you know who actually FALL ASLEEP at their

8 hour job? Seriously? WTF?

ATF has to be right-on and sharper-than-sharp.

PATCO members had 15 min. backed-up shifts, if I remember correctly.....

but, come on.....actually literally FALLING ASLEEP?

I find this almost impossible to believe.

[TheCowsCameHome]

12. What world do you live in?

8 hours in a dark room, middle of the night 10 to 6 shift, no noise present, just staring out the window..............

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[BillyJack]

13. Uhm, I live in a real world and if I were responsible for planes coming in landing/taking off I

would be mighty alert - all there. Hell, even if I was in charge of a broom closet, I could go to work w/o falling asleep for 8 hours!!!!

What world do YOU live in?

[TheCowsCameHome]

14. A world where workers routinely fall asleep on overnight shifts.

You say you'd be alert, you'd want to be alert but the laws of nature may have other plans...........

Been there, done that.

[BillyJack]

15. Really. Please tell us your overnight shift experiences.

Please tell your story/experience. It may be very different from mine and perhaps I'll change my mind/feeling about it all.

[Brickbat]

19. Overnight is not the problem.

The lack of a schedule is.

[TheCowsCameHome]

20. That graveyard shift is a killer, especially between 3-6am,

plus lack of steady work schedule and/or short rest while off duty.

35 years of doing it in the transportation industry lets me speak from experience.

[Brickbat]

18. I think a lot of people aren't aware of what kind of shifts these can be.

Transportation has a lot of rules that are meant to give enough rest, but actually don't.

I've given these examples a lot, but I'll do it again.

Mr. Brickbat is a locomotive engineer. FRA rules say that for every 12 hours on duty you get 10 hours off. The 10 hours starts the second you clock out on your shift, and they are required to call you two hours before your next shift starts. He also has no schedule; he is constantly on call. So during the busy season, his schedule can look like this:

Monday, 4 a.m. -- phone rings, call for 6 a.m. start.

6 a.m.-6 p.m. -- drive train.

6:30 p.m. -- get home, have supper, see family.

10:30 p.m. -- bed.

Tuesday, 2 a.m. -- phone rings, call for 4 a.m. start.

4 a.m.-4 p.m. drive train

4:30 p.m. -- get home, have supper, see family. But kid has a hockey game, and Mr. Brickbat has missed the past four games, and he really wants to see this one, so he goes, and we don't get back home until 9:30.

10 p.m. -- bed.

Midnight -- phone rings, call for 2 a.m. start.

Can this schedule be done? Sure. But it's Wednesday morning now, and he's lost 4 hours of sleep each night. He has no scheduled days off, no weekly schedule (because of his seniority), and no way to tell when he'll be working on any given day. He has a very powerful union and is well compensated, so this is one of the good transportation jobs available. Ever since PATCO was demolished, I don't think ATCs have the kind of pull they used to, and I can only imagine what kind of schedules they're trying to work with only one person on.

Everyone talks about how they've worked 10- and 12- and 14-hour shifts. Sometimes they've even done it for years. That's fine. But when you have a schedule, and days off, and compensation, that makes all the difference in the world. I'm guessing the ATCs don't have much of anything.

[TheCowsCameHome]

22. Amen. +1,000,000

If you haven't experienced it, it's hard to understand.

[Brickbat]

27. Our life turned upside-down when Mr. Brickbat got on the railroad.

We knew it would be a huge change, but goddamn is that work.

[TheCowsCameHome]

29. Retirement is the only known cure.

It's a tough gig while you're doin' it - and tough on everyone in the family.

I had nights runnin' when I couldn't remember passing various locations along the way...scary...very scary.

[Brickbat]

30. Every time Mr. Brickbat gets up, we go through what day and date it is.

Were you on the RR, or OTR trucking?

[TheCowsCameHome]

31. RR,

36 years of it running.

Even with "whiskers" later on, the scheduling/irregularity was terrible - poor train lineups, etc.

All they (carriers) want is fresh meat on board and then the 12 hour clock starts.

[Brickbat]

32. Some of the stories Mr. Brickbat heard from the old-timers were amazing -- the huge staffing, the

local callers and schedules that could give a guy a break, all while keeping the RR pulling in money hand over fist.

36 years! I salute you. :patriot:

[TheCowsCameHome]

34. All the stories were probably true,

and it's the Mrs. Brickbats that are the unsung heroines. The glue that keeps everything together.

It's a totally different game now. I couldn't do it again.

:hi:

[Brickbat]

36. Aw, you make me blush.

Thanks. I actually resigned my full-time job so I could keep house and be the chauffeur for the kids when Mr. Brickbat got this job. Never thought I would do something like that, but when I saw what the schedule could do for a family, we decided that this would be the best way to handle it.

[Populist_Prole]

33. True. It can be worse than that even.

I remember some time ago where one locomotive engineer said they were so busy he worked 12 hours on / 8 ( or 10 ) hours off for 40-something days in a row! You can't even be well rested, let alone have any kind of life.

[Brickbat]

35. Yup. Mr. Brickbat's RR just started the 10 hours off; it used to be 8 just a couple years ago.

And that 8 hours includes travel time two and from the terminal, which sometimes can be 1.5 hours away, on Mr. Brickbat's line.

[BlackHoleSon]

28. You don't know jack about sleep

and I would guess you have never worked nights or a rotating schedule.
Sleep is a physiological process often beyond your conscious control. The mechanisms that bring on sleep are rooted deep in the brain, controlled by the release of hormones that affect your body temperature. And guess what - those mechanisms are closely related to WHAT TIME IT IS!!! Our ancestors were not nocturnal animals. Human beings are meant to be asleep when it is dark.
What is irresponsible is any employer who puts a human being in that type of position with no backup in order to save money.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

38. Yeah, and if I was coach of the team I root for, they'd be champions every year.

It's quite easy to be an armchair _________. (fill in the blank)

Coulda woulda shoulda.

[Whisp]

39. I'm not sure what wages these people make but

I was horrified at the paltry amounts pilots and attendents and co's make from watching MayDay (it's a tv show about plane crashes and discoveries of causes), lots of these people have to have a second job to make ends meet, and they get tired and sometimes make mistakes because of this. Long gone are the days when being a pilot was prestigious. It's like driving a bus now, how they are treated.

It's scarey. I sure wouldn't want to fly with people at the wheel that Can't have a decent rest because of second jobs.

[onethatcares]

16. all I know is

I don't want to be on one of those 757s that collides with a fuel truck on the tarmac because the airport I was landing at

was too damn cheap to have 2 or 3 personnel on the shift and in the control tower.

reagan had no idea what the hell he did in his rolf as president of the u.s.. The senile asshole read lines that others

told him were gonna be a hit. It's too bad he had to fly on his own taxpayer funded jet airliner.

[gateley]

24. Did they determine what the cause of that was? Thanks. nt