Many employees have stories of being called into work at all hours, even on holidays, to deal with unexpected issues such as earthquakes, blackouts or any other disruption to production.
Such a worker culture would be anathema to many American workers.
I do not know who said that, nor do I know the context of it, however, that is not what I see from where I live.
When Rita came, AT&T told its union employees to evacuate, and do not shelter at the central offices. (The central offices were built during the early cold war and are fairly resilient.
When the storm came and wiped out power and communications to 10,000 square miles, there were many union craftsmen in the disaster area that improvised and overcame. They provided their own food, their own tools (chain saws, chains, cants and survival gear including snake bite kits. They were not directed, in fact, they went several days with ad hoc supervision and with no way to actually insure they were paid.
In hurricane Micheal, communications techs fought rising water and heavy rain in Panama City as the top floor wall toppled under the pressure of high winds and the sump pumps failed in the basement.
No one directed then to do this. Further, in my group, most people keep their company cell phones on at all times, even though they are only granted standby pay in the weekends if at all. In fact, as the Departmental Rep for the union I find myself cautioning the craftsmen and the managers that working in excess of 16 hours without a decent break is against company, government and union rules and can get the craftsman, the manager and the company in a lot of trouble when someone finally gets hurt or killed.
It has been my experience that the craftsman is very reluctant to pull off a job when there is an outage, even though the contract says they can get the same or more money by going home and getting some sleep.
From where I sit, the piece I quoted looks like bull hockey.
Cheers
Qazulight