A gonna miss Raquel Welch GOOD MORNING!!! to you all! Yup, the sex symbol from of the 60s, cave woman from One Million Years BC passed away at the grand age of 82. Ranked by Playboy as the #3 sexiest celebrity of the 20th century. Never a Bond Girl but would have won an Oscar if she was.
Think About it Thursday Ed-vise today. Cause it’s THURSDAY! Time to THINK!
Lately, I have started to kind of cringe when I hear about companies wanting to become efficient.
When I hear that word, my mind goes to cost cutting. Which, contrary to what ANY company will tell you, THAT is the first place they go.
Efficiency today does not mean making employees better at their jobs. It means becoming more profitable at the expense of the employees.
Take the example of today’s disaster with the train derailment in East Palestine Ohio.
Norfolk Southern is the rail line that has all those tanks of highly poisonous chemicals leaking all over the place. In their 2021 Annual Report, they proudly boast about how they implemented their own version of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). Then, further down the report they have a section “Ensuring a safe, inclusive, and accountable employee experience.”
PSR is a scheduling system thought up in the 70s. The basic principal was to make longer trains operated by fewer people. This made sure that train cars didn’t sit and that shipments were more reliable. Efficient.
The hope was technology would replace the need for humans on the trains. It hasn’t and that was why here just a few months ago, the railroad workers were about to shut the whole thing down. Fortunately, throw money at the right people and PSR gets to stay.
Now, the “efficiency” that gets created with PSR has to do with trains being able to move. It does NOT deal with service and maintenance of the cars and engines. In fact, more efficiency is GAINED when you CUT that out of the program. Which train companies do.
The “efficiency” gained with implementing PSR results in a CUT to operators and a CUT to maintenance. Which means a CUT in safety.
The little section about safety in the annual report…yeah…that just talked about diversity efforts ONLY. Nothing about the health and safety of employees. Nothing about consideration of the public.
Fast forward to 3 FEB 2023.
Norfolk Southern shipping highly toxic chemicals on cars with little to no maintenance through a town of 4300 people. BAM! Train axle breaks and the thing derails. 120 cars laying on their side. 20 with various toxic chemicals.
How “efficiently” are you operating now Norfolk Southern? Hope that PSR has made you enough profit to clean up YOUR mess AND to deal with ALL the lawsuits you will face. And I hope it’s a BUNCH. That way all the other rail companies can have an example of what happens when they decide to make cuts under the disguise of efficiency.
I’m just saying
That’s it for today. Be the person a stranger would do CPR on. Check in on each other and remember when robots eat salsa they use…MICROCHIPS! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA…
Peace
Ed-vise 