MBTA’s Acting General Manager Jonathan Davis told the T board last night at a meeting that T workers underwent 17 “fatigue awareness” courses to enlighten employees about the importance of getting enough sleep, as well as the short and long term effects that fatigue can have on the body, and ultimately, their job.
As part of the training, the workers were given assessment forms to track their sleep habits for seven days in a row, he said.
The idea of the sleep tracking is to give employees a good idea of patterns and behaviors associated with snoozing habits so they will know if adjustments need to be made.
Once the employee self assessment is complete, further guidance will be provided through MassDOT University’s Wellness Institute, he said.
Spokesman Joshua Robin said today that the courses were not spawned by three recent incident in which employees were caught sleeping on the job.
A Blue Line worker was disciplined this week after he was photographed sleeping on the job at the Revere Beach station late Saturday night.
Last month, a worker was caught sleeping at Park Street station around
11 a.m. That photograph was posted by an anonymous Twitter user, and
tweeted to the MBTA’s Twitter account. In May, a veteran MBTA Transit
Police officer was caught sleeping on the job. Both of those men faced
disciplinary action.
