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 😒
If you’ve worked even 12 hour shifts multiple days in a row you’d know how asinine this is.
I worked a few 18 hour days… It is not sustainable
There was a point where I worked 12hr days ONCE a week and that in itself was asinine.
Probably 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.