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points by paimapi 1 day ago | 0 comments
How do you even speak to the ineffable idea of 'incompetence'? How do you remediate it? More draconian, individualized worker surveillance?

This feeds into the idea that the problem with safety these days are lazy workers, not the fact that companies are increasingly extending work hours beyond what's reasonable, firing keystone employees and shoveling more work onto the remaining individuals, and operating with a general disregard of regulatory safety guidelines around training and rest.

The reality is very different: https://www.railway.supply/renfe-rejects-drivers-union-claim...

> On rolling stock, the union wants lasting technical fixes for reliability. It further calls for correct application of breaks in driving time under article 36 of Royal Decree 929/2020 and an end to the block on early-retirement reduction coefficients under Royal Decree 2621/1986. Two further demands concern a May 7 agreement on hiring new entrants as trainee drivers and a 1990 agreement on support for drivers involved in incidents where a person is hit by a train.

>On new drivers, Renfe called the claim that recruits are being kept on training scholarships false. It said none of the 402 drivers who have joined are on a scholarship.

[–] nullocator 1 day ago
The incompetence isn't necessarily with the workers, it can be coming from those at the top.
[–] panarky 1 day ago
Yes. Modern levels of reliability and safety don't come from workers trying harder or caring more, it requires systems, procedures, controls, redundancy, fail-safes.
[–] snikeris 1 day ago
We could return to basing hiring decisions on merit.
[–] paimapi 1 day ago
Help me understand a historical period when this was ever the case.

Social historians have been debunking the thought-terminating cliche that we ever had a trend of merit-based hiring since time immemorial:

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-myth-of-meritocracy-r...

https://archive.org/details/meritocracymyth0000mcna_n6g9

https://historicalstudiesineducation.ca/index.php/edu_hse-rh...

[–] blks 1 day ago
What’s it based on now?
[–] freejazz 1 day ago
Huge assumptions there
[–] ImHereToVote 1 day ago
Whoa. Let's not go crazy here.
[–] superxpro12 1 day ago
without a doubt someone made a lot of money by arguing against the regulations required to prevent this.

we need to eliminate profit-based motives for safety critical areas.

[–] avereveard 1 day ago
Why do worker accept to work in such conditions? Its like driving tired every day. Eventually you fuck up. Where was the union?
[–] pstuart 1 day ago
> How do you even speak to the ineffable idea of 'incompetence'?

I think it has to start with daylight: all of the relevant info accessible to the public.

Adversaries can/will counter with fake data, narratives, etc, but if there's a trustable source of that daylight data that is a huge start.

[–] AdrianB1 1 day ago
Incompetence and laziness are very different things. You can have very hard working, engaged, active people that are still incompetent for the job they are supposed to do.
[–] ericmay 1 day ago
> This feeds into the idea that the problem with safety these days are lazy workers, not the fact that companies are increasingly extending work hours beyond what's reasonable, firing keystone employees and shoveling more work onto the remaining individuals, and operating with a general disregard of regulatory safety guidelines around training and rest.

It's both. The nihilism (see France riots for ex) and general incompetence that many of us see in the workplace or in our dealings with, for example, government agencies, and in our dealings with others is obviously there too and needs to be rooted out.

How do you deal with incompetence? In Europe I have no idea because of labor laws. In America we should probably be aggressively firing bad workers and grifters, and at the same time increasing wages and benefits and providing for items like safety and proper rest for those who actually want to show up and get things done.

[–] leesec 1 day ago
lol this is spain dude. these people are not working long hours
[–] pvaldes 1 day ago
Let me fix this for you. People in Spain work exactly the same than in other European countries.
[–] baobabKoodaa 1 day ago
You think all people in all European countries work exactly the same amount of hours?
[–] tchalla 1 day ago
You think that people in Spain work a lot less than other European countries?
[–] nradov 1 day ago
Well people in Spain have a lot less working hours than in other European countries such as Greece, Poland, and Malta. Whether work hours means doing actual work or just loafing around is harder to measure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

[–] paimapi 1 day ago
From your own link, of all the EU nation states Spain is pretty much middle-of-the-pack for per-worker hours.

Another counterpoint: higher work hour countries have higher rates of death per kilometer of active track [0]

Greece (highest in the EU for work hours) = 22.3 rail deaths per 1k kilometer of track followed by Portugal (another high work hour ranking) with 6.2, Portugal (about 200 more hours than Spain annual) at 6.2, and Hungary (at about 100 more hours) at 5.8.

The only two countries with less deaths per 1K KM of track and more work hours are Ireland and Estonia. All the rest (Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Finland, Slovenia, Luxembourg) have less annual work hours than Spain.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

[–] baobabKoodaa 1 day ago
No, I don't think all people in Spain work the same number of hours. Also, I think "other European countries" are not a homogenous group, average number of hours worked differs per country.
[–] avereveard 1 day ago
List european countries with summer provision for friday half off
[–] pvaldes 1 day ago
Probably none, as those are exclusive decisions of each company and vary wildly between different activities.

Workers that toke half of the Friday agreed with their companies to start Monday-Friday one hour earlier, so what's the problem exactly?