Argument12

Francis07UID: 2185659

12.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."

Begin:
In this argument, the Alta Manufacturing attempts to shorten its working hours in order to reduce the on-the-job accidents and in hope of increasing its productivity.  However, decision is based on such a weakened ground that it is very hard to convince me.

First of all, it is very clear that the decision made is aiming to increase the productivity of the factory.  And the author easily assumes that the lesser the on-the-job accidents, the higher productivity it will be.  However, it is usually not the case because productivity can be decided by several factors such as the machines, the mechanism of the factory, and the quality of the workers, or even the products of the factory, etc.  If the machines are old, or the organization of the factory is in a mass, or the workers are not dedicated to their works, how could a factory be productive even it does not have any on-the-job accidents?

Furthermore, if the on-the-job accidents are really the main obstacle in the road of increasing the factory's productivity, reducing the working hours will not surely solve the problem.  Because the author is too hasty to charge the fatigue and sleep deprivation as the main causes for these accidents.  Although experts proved that fatigue would cause serious accidents during one's work, we are still lacking of evidence to prove that the former accidents are really caused by tiredness.  Maybe the Alta Manufacturing's accidents are cause by the new workers who are not acquiented acquainted with the processes and manuals of the machines. Therefore, training instead of shortening the working hours will be the priority at the moment.

Even when we have collected enough evidences that the accidents are really caused by sleep deprivation, we should not be that certain that reducing our working hours would help the workers gain more sleep.  The author is too hasty to assume that the Panoply Industries workers have more time to sleep because they have less working hours.  He failed to consider that if the Panoply's technique is less advanced than Alta have got, the workers of Panoply will have to burden much more tiredness than the workers here.  One hour's rest will definitely not be that enough.  Otherwise, it would be unnecessary for us to reduce all of our all our work shift hours because workers are much relaxed than those in Panoply with our advanced technologies.  Maybe reducing one working shift would be enough.

In conclusion, with these logical fallacies, the vice president’s advise should be pended until he could collect enough evidence to prove that: 1. it is really fatigue that caused these accidents; 2. it is really these accidents that blogged bogged down the increasing of the manufacturing; 3. reducing each work shift hour will really work.  Otherwise, Alta should search for other factors that stopped the increasing productivity of the manufacturer.

[ 本帖最后由 Francis07 于 2007-8-2 16:02 编辑 ]