小弟第一次写 Arg11 求大家指点 感激不尽

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第一次写 压在半小时内写完的 希望大家指导 感激不尽

Argument 11
The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Alta Manufacturing.
"During the past year, Alta Manufacturing had thirty percent more on-the-job accidents than
nearby Panoply Industries, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. Experts
believe that a significant contributing factor in many on-the-job accidents is fatigue and sleep
deprivation among workers. Therefore, to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Alta
and thereby increase productivity, we should shorten each of our three work shifts by one hour
so that our employees will get adequate amounts of sleep."

In this memo, the vice president of Alta Manufacturing has pointed out that the company should shorten their worker’s working hours in order to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Alta and thereby increase productivity. Although the vice president’s kind suggestion would be favoured and appreciated by the workers but under close scrutiny, his assertion reveals unconvincing in several aspects.

First and foremost, the president links the number of on-the-job accidents with working hours merely by the comparison with nearby Panoply industries. This however is far from enough to prove a strong causal relationship between them. The lower percentage of on-the-job accidents at Panoply Industries may only because of the types of work in these two factories are totally different, and Alta Manufacturing has more dangerous job carrying on. Therefore, it’s totally possible that workers in Alta has already working under their best condition with enough sleep and rest, but the nature of the work they’re doing still lead to a higher accidents rate. Hence, without ruling out all other possibilities which might responsible for worker’s on-the-job accidents, the relationship between working hours and accidents rate cannot be accepted.

Secondly, even if the above relationship holds, and worker’s have better sleep would lower their accidents rate during their job. It’s still unclear that by reducing their working hours would effectively increase sleeping time. It’s highly possible that the workers would just spend the extra free time in pubs and other recreational activities, which would actually make their sleeping time even more squeezed. Therefore, whether shorten working hours is a good method to get worker’s the more sleep they need remains in doubt, and further survey and evidence should be provided in order to reach a firm conclusion regarding it.


Finally, the vice president argues that this innovative move could also increase productivity. However, this deduction amount to scant evidence. As we all now, productivity is a multiple of efficiency and time, even if we assume all the assertion the president suggested are true such that the efficiency of workers will go up, it’s still unclear what will happen to the productivity, as the other dominating factor working hours has been reduced. It’s quite possible that the faint increase in efficiency will not be able to fill the gap left by the reduced working hours. Before the president could provide some more evidence, I’d have to suspend my judgement regarding the increase in the productivity.

In sum, the suggestion reached in this memo is lacking necessary support and therefore cannot be executed. To make this proposal acceptable, further evidence need to be provided regarding the relationship between working hours and efficiency and the effect on productivity need to be substantiated.