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Southern Swing Decks Michelin

© Stephen Weistling

Assume for a moment that you were on Workers’ Compensation Board and you had to resolve the following case. How would you decide the outcome?

A worker is filing for disability compensation because he says that the shift work he is involved with is leaving him so sleepy all the time, that he fears for his safety on the job. He claims that he is a victim of “shift work maladaption syndrome” or “shift work sleep disorder.” (SWSD is a recognized sleep disorder by the American Psychiatric Association.)

What do you think you would need to know?

Well, first, you would like to hear more about this fellow’s symptoms.

Mr. Adams (not his real name) claims that he only gets one to three hours of sleep between his shifts. He claims that he has tried sleep medications, but in the process, has become so chronically ill that he worries about his safety.

We know that fatigue is one of the major causal forces in industrial accidents. The most momentous calamities of our generation have often been linked to fatigue, inattention, or overwork. We also know that when an employee reports to work fatigued, it may be due to his or her own natural inabilities or inclinations to cope with changing shifts. Sometimes an employee simply lacks the discipline to employ responsible coping mechanisms. There is a big difference between the employee who cannot adjust their body clocks and circadian mechanisms and the employee who doesn’t even try.

So what do we do with poor Mr. Adams?

Well, Mr. Adams’ name is actually Mr. Richard Ross, a shiftworker at the Michelin North America tire plant in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. When I first read about Mr. Ross’s case, I feared for what this might mean for employers. Would employees now see an opportunity to claim compensation benefits because they happen to report for work in an overly tired or sleepy state? What about the folks who simply dislike shiftwork and see here an opportunity to be switched to straight day shifts?

According to published reports, Mr. Ross was subjected to rotating shifts. By now you know my opinion and repulsion of rotating shifts. The only way that they can be made to work is if they can be accomplished over long periods of transition and in a forward direction,(Day, to Evening, to Night shifts).

In Mr. Ross’ case, his shifts were usually constructed of three days of night shifts followed by two days off. Then, he would work two days of evening shifts, have two days off, and then would then work day shifts.