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Aug. 24, 2013
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has announced it will review working conditions
for junior employees after the death of a 21-year-old intern last week.
Moritz Erhardt, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern, was found dead in his
dorm in London. A spokesperson for the London Metropolitan police said the
death had been ruled "unsuspicious," and that the medical examiner was expected
to release its findings later this week.
However, unconfirmed reports stated that Erhardt had been working through the
night in the days before his death.
"We have also convened a formal senior working group to consider the facts as
they become known," a spokesman for the Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a
statement. "To review all aspects of this tragedy, to listen to employees at
all levels and to help us learn from them."
The company will particularly be looking at the working conditions faced by
junior employees and interns.
Erhardt, a German student, was finishing his summer internship at Bank of
America Merrill Lynch, a competitive seven-week program in which interns often
work overtime during their placement, the bank confirmed.
According to the U.K's Independent, an unidentified intern, who lived in the
same building as Erhardt, said the German intern had been staying up for days
during the last few weeks of the internship.
"He apparently pulled eight all-nighters in two weeks. They get you working
crazy hours, and maybe it was just too much for him in the end," the intern
told The Independent.
On the financial blog Wallstreetoasis.com one commenter wrote that Erhardt had
pulled three all-nighters in a row before he was found unconscious.
A spokesman for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said the company was "shocked
and saddened" by Erhardt's death.
"He was popular amongst his peers and was a highly diligent intern at our
company with a promising future," McIvor said in a statement. "Our first
thoughts are with his family, and we send our condolences to them at this
difficult time."
The company had no comment on the unsubstantiated reports that Erhardt had been
working multiple nights before he died.
Sleep Deprivation and Weight Loss
"The thing to reiterate right now, nobody knows what happened and until that is
established, I think any conclusion is premature," said Bank of America
spokesman John McIvor.
According to experts, working high-pressure jobs with extraordinarily long
hours can produce immediate and worrisome health problems.
In the past decade the medical profession, another field in which interns or
newly minted doctors face long hours, has started to regulate work schedules.
In 2003, medical residents were no longer allowed to work more than 80 hours
per week, and in 2011, first-year medical residents could not work shifts that
exceeded 16 hours.
"There's research that if someone stays up for 20 to 24 hours, they can be as
[impaired] as someone with .01 blood alcohol level," said Dr. Charles Bae at
the Cleveland Clinic Sleep Disorders Center.
Sleep Deprivation Studies 21 Volunteers
Without enough sleep people can start to immediately suffer physiological
effects, including changes to their insulin levels, testosterone and immune
systems.
Dr. Charles Czeisler, the director of the Division of Sleep Medicine at the
Harvard Medical School, said sleep is a "basic biological need.
"Ultimately sleep is necessary for life," said Czeisler. "Animals that are
deprived of sleep die within about three weeks."
While the cause of Erhardt's death has yet to be determined, Czeisler said
certain industries, such as finance or medicine that put pressure on junior
members to work long nights, risk putting their workers' health in jeopardy.
"If it's true that he was pressured to work for 72 hours straight, it's high
time the financial service industry develops a plan to avoid this [kind of]
tragedy," said Czeisler.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/
bank-america-review-working-conditions-intern-death/story?id=20055735