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Ops Room Blog
17 avril 2011

USA : Rage against the human ...naps

siesteAlors que l'affaire des contrôleurs assoupis fait le buzz outre-atlantique, qu'elle permet aux républicains et à quelques "pères-la-vertu" de s'offusquer et de s'indigner, qu'elle a déjà fait tomber la tête du Directeur des Opérations de l'ATO, un post sur le blog de la Praxis Fondation dresse un état des lieux qui me semble empreint d'une juste raison.

Il est reproduit ci-dessous et visible en direct sur : http://praxisfound.wordpress.com/ ...

Que n'avons nous le courage de procéder à la même réflexion sur le dossier des CLR/VRO ?

The Foundation’s raison d’être is the future of the profession, and we prefer to conserve our energies for issues that meet that standard. We have a workforce of aging veterans and inexperienced new hires, with very few in the middle. Errors are up, and we’re having trouble on the midnights.

We recently saw events at two locations. Political leadership focused on overnight shifts. Anybody familiar with the Hawthorne Effect or the Heisenberg Uncertainty will accept that when you choose to emphasize things, you cause unintended changes.

After the new emphasis, problems arose in at least three locations. We may be seeing what the experts said all along: you cannot put one person alone in a dark, humming room overnight, on a schedule that makes things worse, give them very little to do for prolonged periods, banish the FM radio, and then expect high-level cognitive performance in matters of life and death.

We have been running the midnights on the cheap, minimizing the complexity for mutual convenience, and expecting machine performance from human beings. We were getting away with it for a long time.

The common practices in the field result in schedules that by design introduce fatigue, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and a decreased life expectancy. The IARC, the World Health Organization cancer experts, lists overnight work as a probable carcinogen. It’s called the graveyard shift for a reason. If you wanted to kill somebody slowly, you’d put them on a controller schedule.

Here’s a comment from the AvWeb forum: Thirty years an airline pulot, 10 years a military pilot, 5 years a corporate pilot, 18 years in the air since that and anyone that says he/she has never nodded off between midnight and sun-up is lying, including all the desk jockeys in DC. It happens.

There are (at least) three forms of hypocrisy in the midnight controversy: internal/organizational, internal/labor, and external/predator.

It is hypocritical for a safety organization to ignore the last 40 years of research. They should design schedules within the existing body of human factors knowledge, rather than mindlessly adhering to the forty-hour per week concept. The third shift is not just another dayshift. People may need to call off if they aren’t rested. There are budgetary and staffing costs associated with doing it right. Doing it on the cheap doesn’t seem to be working.

You can learn a lot about people by observing them under stress. Look at the political Leadership’s response; is it rational or affective? Randy Babbitt said that “as a former airline pilot, I am personally outraged”.

Although Babbitt is enraged at the controllers, it is his ATO that sets the schedule and staffing levels. Ray LaHood says that controllers asleep in airport towers [is] very disturbing and vows the problem “will not stand on my watch.”

They are shocked, shocked and enraged to find gambling in the casino, and these angry people are leading the just culture movement.

An honorable response would be, “This is my own fault. We schedule the people this way; experts tell us not to; the union asks us not too; a few years ago we told them they can’t even play the radio. We told them they’re can’t call off if they’re fatigued. We’re going to fix this.” Instead they offer up Hank as a fall guy and back themselves into a corner; now they’re on record saying it’s unacceptable for anybody to ever doze on a midnight, when in fact that is exactly what the experts recommend.

If it is wrong for the organization to schedule people without regard for circadian best practices, it is also hypocritical for people who live in the schedule to annually negotiate more of the same because we like the way the weekends work.

It is short-sighted for people to swap their shifts and create conditions that are unhealthy and inconsistent with best practices. It is a foolish machismo that looks at an abusive schedule and says, “I can do that, and I can take even more” and then self-inflicts more abuse in order to make tee times.

An AWS controller works a 1200-2200; has eight hours off to go home, rest, and return; and reports for a 0600 to 1600. Who wants to wager on their performance at 1500 on the second day, working with 8 hours rest in 28 hours? Does it matter if it’s assigned or swapped?

Finally, the external/predator hypocrisy. Midnight snafus have been happening since forever. Why are they getting persistent media focus now? Who profits? Who provides the shocked experts that provide media quotes and insider insights? The people who sell NextGen Towers, where nothing can go wrong, are profiting from this dialogue.

Our problem is not unique and solutions have been developed by other professions dealing with similar situations. Consider the reserve airline pilot or the on-call radar technician; there are ways to do this.

The resolution will require wisdom and discipline from both sides. The future of the profession demands no less."

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M
That's for the VRO side of the story ... the CLR (Clearance) side is just workforce deciding on its own whether or not they need to come at work.<br /> <br /> Listening to them they are never enough to perforn the missions but when you ask them to effectively come at work they reply it's no use because they are too much !
O
Well, it's just french home made cuisine so that the tasks you do out of your normal shift ( ie: in addition to) are paid back in days off (as extra hours are not possible here).
P
Thank you for the link, it's very good of you.<br /> <br /> May I ask, what is the story of CLR/VRO ?<br /> <br /> With great respect,<br /> <br /> Praxis Foundation
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