36-hour shifts, 80-hour weeks: Workers are being burnt out by overtime
36-hour shifts, 80-hour weeks: Workers are being burnt out by overtime
Americans say they are being required to work an exorbitant amount of overtime to compensate for staffing shortages that have plagued the economy.
Of particular note:
The Association of American Railroads, which represents freight railway operators, said its members have been hiring in recent years to address staffing needs and recognize employees' desire for better scheduling. The group said the number of overtime hours worked by BMWE union members increased to 4.7 hours per week in 2022, compared to 4 hours in 2016.
Cory Ludwig, who works as a machine operator repairing railway tracks in Iowa, said he’s been working Saturdays and some Sundays along with 10- to 12-hour shifts since September. Recently, he worked 13 days without a day off. With the mandatory Saturday work, he’s had to rely on friends and relatives to take care of his five-year-old and nine-year-old kids. He said the overtime demands have increased as he’s seen the number of workers assigned to his crew go down.
“You fall asleep and then you wake up in the morning and you go right back to work. It can really break a person down, it gets really wearing on a person after a while,” Ludwig said. “With less people trying to do the same amount of work, working long hours, working multiple weeks in a row without one day off, you get irritated and you get burnt out.”
Recently one of the union’s members had been working 22 hours straight when he fell asleep on the job, an error that could have put his colleagues’ lives at risk but also could have been avoided had the employee had a rest period, said Ballew. Another member was recently disciplined for refusing to work through his scheduled days off on short notice so he could care for a family member having health issues, Ballew said.
“The stress it puts on marriages and parenting and the things you leave behind for your spouse to deal with or the things you miss, that kind of stress builds up,” said Ballew. “In the rail industry, we have noticed recently a spat of suicides and I can’t help but think there is a correlation there.”
Thank God Biden stopped the railroad strike!
I swear if I hear another fucker say that the railroad workers got everything they wanted because Biden helped them negotiate I'll lose it.
Good thing I voted for the lesser evil in 2020! Gosh if I had stuck to principles we'd have had a genocide or something 😒
While they mention the number of people who retired during the pandemic, they failed to mention the million or so who died, the tens of millions with long covid, and the family and friends who are now helping out those who are disabled and can't pick up shifts they might have covered before.
51Well of course they don't mention the actual health consequences of the pandemic (that never actually ended) - that would make the money line sad!
24Are cheeky responses like this hindering progress? It's nothing about you, I just want to speak about this trend that is everywhere and I guess here is where I start.
Read comically, yea, it is funny to laugh about how terrible something is. But it sucks the serious nature of the topic away and now it's a joke.
Considering a significant amount of people browse just headlines and top comments, everything is a joke. No one is actually talking about anything.
Again, not you in any way. Yours is one of the millions of normalized joke-respones the internet has conditioned us to.
We are beholden to the system, so at least laugh about it. But then take it down too.
11
80 hour weeks? Damn, you guys over the pond are crazy 😬
2436 hours is 1 more than the standard work week in France lol.
3I'm on 37,5 hours per week, and that includes lunch breaks. During the summer months, the hours per week is shorter: 32
3And yet I've got a boss for a French company that tells us we have to work 45...
I'm jealous of my French colleagues, shorter work weeks, more vacation time, etc.
2
"WhY aRe WoRkErS qUiEt QuItTiNg!"
Because capitalism punishes success, that's why. Many people have learned that work isn't school. There's no A+s for a job well done, it's "can you come in today?" on a weekend.
24I work in a rolling mill and our normal 18 turn schedules have 90-100 open shifts. On top of that, there will be a Sunday with 60 jobs to fill. We have a 3 day rule, where you can’t get forced to work double shifts 3 days in a row, but there are guys who get forced over every day they’re eligible. 88 hour weeks are not uncommon.
21Pretty standard in manufacturing sector. There are so few people with the skillset and reliability to operate a factory, that they perpetually pay out overtime because they really have no other option.
5
I take an extra 7 hour partial shift every week to make ends meet and I’m borderline suicidal. I can’t imagine a 36 hour shift or an 80 hour week.
15Yeah at my old job I was working 6-12s for months.
I had a mental breakdown at work and got myself fired. 😅
8Genuine questions- what is borderline suicidal? My mum was suicidal (as in...put on suicide watch) and there was no borderline, just one day it happened.
If you feel its getting that way- please do whatever is necessary to protect yourself. Death is a very final solution to a temporary problem.
3
Great article, stupid OP.
13Why?
1
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Long shifts with little rest and last-minute schedule changes have become a routine occurrence for Gonano and his colleagues, who have worked six times the amount of mandatory overtime hours this year that they did before the pandemic.
Staffing shortages have plagued the economy since the start of the pandemic, with many leaving the workforce to retire or take over child care needs, while others have switched professions, often to careers with better work-life balance or higher salaries.
But several labor unions say employers should be doing more to fill the persistent vacancies, like raising wages or improving working conditions to attract new workers, rather than placing the burden on their existing employees.
New York recently strengthened a law that prohibits employers from making nurses work past their regularly scheduled hours outside of an emergency or an ongoing surgical procedure.
Still, Jen Burke, a nurse at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, said it has become routine for her and her colleagues working in the cardiac catheterization lab to have their 12-hour shifts extended because of a lack of staff or beds in other parts of the hospital.
Recently, one of the union’s members had been working 22 hours straight when he fell asleep on the job, an error that could have put his colleagues’ lives at risk but also could have been avoided had the employee had a rest period, said Ballew.
The original article contains 1,914 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 88%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
6This is a pretty common story with anyone working in trades. Construction guys are usually putting in similar hours and you can see the exhaustion in them every time they weakly hobble to the bus stop. The benefits are better than what most local jobs are offering but it's hard on the body and that results in a high turnover rate.
5I worked for the railroad years ago and it was brutal then. i still have nightmares about how terrible that job was. Most stress I've ever experienced
436 hour shift in a 36 hour week actually sounds kind of cool. Kill yourself for 2 days and have 5 days off. Would definitely not want to do 36hrs in 2 days and then proceed to have 15 hour days for the rest of the week too.
4If you've worked even 12 hour shifts multiple days in a row you'd know how asinine this is.
17I worked a few 18 hour days... It is not sustainable
8There was a point where I worked 12hr days ONCE a week and that in itself was asinine.
4Probably depends on the work and your endurance level. I used to do 12 hour warehouse work Saturday/Sunday over summer vacation in college while I played video games and hung out with friends the rest of the week. It felt freaking amazing. Three days in a row might've been pushing it, especially in my later 30s.
But considering I've done intense development work for 12 hour sessions over 3-5 days, having had 4 days off instead of 2 would have certainly delayed or prevented my inevitable crash of burnout.
2
Listen man, I’ve worked a 36 hour shift pouring concrete before. It is NOT something you, or anyone, should be doing once a week. You feel like you’re drunk after staying up that long and working. Like hammered. It is absolutely not good for your brain, and certainly not a sustainable way to live.
13
Does anybody know of any studies relating to hours/injury?
3Not sure about that but there was a study during WWII – in Britain, I believe – that showed a negative correlation between hours/productivity. Essentially, once you push workers past 40hrs week, they don't really produce any more than they would if their hours were capped. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst, physical accidents, mistakes, all adds up across a workforce so the returns diminish quite quickly.
2