I want more people to think though
“If this tool makes me produce double, and I get paid the same, who’s keeping all that new value?”
If your productivity doubles, they will lay off half the people, and all gains disappear upwards. It’s already happening.
Maintenance workers, the engineers who designed the machine, everyone above who keeps it running.
Plants get shut down yearly for maintenance, stuff need to be lubed, replaced, upgraded etc.
Those contractors are gonna be making 3x what you do. Sure they’re keeping some extra profit, but their expenses also go up proportionally too. Millwrites here make over $50 an hour, the company charges out at $100+ per man hour. Maintenance is friggen expensive on machines.
All you need is 2-4 weeks off a year, and they save money while you’re off. Machines always cost money.
If that was true, if it was a wash to get the new tool for the owner, they wouldn’t do it. That’d be silly.
Upgrading someone from pen and paper to a laptop with LibreOffice is probably going to dramatically (let’s say 4x) increase their productivity, without a corresponding 4x increase in maintenance cost.
You know companies have whole branches deticated to computer support and cyper security, right?
Or do you think that before laptops businesses had their own divisions of Quill-Certified Problem Solvers and Paper-Based Troubleshooting Engineers?
And you think that costs more than the productivity gains from having the computer?
No. I think the computer industry is more expensive and creates more jobs than all the paper and pen industries have trough the history.
What does that have to do with the ownership class extracting value from labor?
Hmm. What could industry producing millions of jobs world wide offer for working class. What a tough nut. You got me stumped. Maybe we should have just stayed using pen and paper.
Jokes on you, I get paid for my five weeks of holidays.
Which is likely less than your full time rate, or it’s accounted for in total yearly “salary”. You’re paying for it somehow, even if it’s making a dollar less instead.
And think more the lowly workers, the ones that only get 2 weeks, and that’s because they’re forced to by laws.
Lowly workers? I had five weeks paid as a dishwasher. Make unions strong and reap the benefits.
They have their own issues, as described in my story in another comment.
They made a company waste millions of dollars replacing a job, than forced them to remove the machine and reinstate the worker.
They create problems where they are none, than celebrate when they win.
You are also fooling yourself if you don’t think you’re not paying for that time off another way. Most people would rather have the higher hourly rate.
I like the time off. I like having the ability to plan a trip every year (near or far), and not having to worry about how my bills are going to get paid.
Much better for my mental health than to work those weeks and not have anything to look forward to.
Most people are morons who trade their entire lives for a slightly nicer bed to die in
the contractor getting over double is a bad deal for the worker unless they are providing significant infrastructure like complex expensive tools and vehicles and such.
in the civilised world we just vote for people that support 4 day work weeks
do catch up neo-commies
Does your region have laws that mandate no more than four days? If it was in my industry it’d just end up being four fifteen hour days. I worked 18 this last Sunday.
Didn’t France throw an absolute shit fit over raising their retirement age. In then end, guess what, the retirement age was raised.
Do catch up neo-liberals.
This reminds me of this old productivity / salary chart that shows how fucked we are.Literally been flat lined for 50 years
Weird that the divergence is also the same point in time where (a) modern conservatism is born, (b) Fox News is conceived, and © the middle class died.
Total coincidence, I’m sure.
“Class now observe this is called a K shaped economy.” The students now start to grind their teeth.
What amazes me is how many people believe they will get universal basic income from the pedophile tech bro overlords who don’t pay taxes are actively gutting the meager safety net and worker protections we have. The cognitive dissonance is staggering
I would worry more about what conditions come with that UBI. They can make you agree to anything.
They all seem to just be lies dangled over everyone’s heads to keep them working into the grave.
There’s an argument that ubi will make you reliant on the state (which will be owned by private interest via the network state…)
Basically. The elites recreate society through who gets meaningful work and who gets an ubi and has to dance on TikTok selling products to the other group who has the money to buy.
Who gets meaningful work = the producers. Those who ship. The rest get to be beggars.
I guess I should say, those who own the means of production. Since it might seem like I believe the elites produce, which I don’t.
I guess that’s why they’re trying to buy up all the farms. We really all need to have a permaculture vegetable garden and backyard chickens, ducks or rabbits
Welfare is a system of control. UBI would be used similarly.
Every little luxury we have with working, from safety to days off, is paid for in blood.
Even things like the 15 minute break.
Companies will begrudgingly give you the bare minimum they’re mandated to, and pretend you’re only getting it out of their sheer appreciation and benevolence.
Maddening.
I’ve been salaried for just over 30 years consecutively. What are breaks? What is overtime? You’re speaking a foreign language to me.
Pshh. Yeah.
I have no idea how they passed and we accepted this concept of “Salary means we own you and your thoughts and ideas, labor laws basically don’t apply, and you never actually stop working.” Absolutely deranged.
It was probably pitched as such a great thing to employees, too, but I’ve always seen it as a scam.
(No judgment on you personally, of course, if somehow this affords you a good life balance!)
I’m also paycheck-to-paycheck with little in the way of advancement prospects unless one of my creative projects lands. So I’m not exactly writing as a sage of material success or anything 😂.
I do appreciate what little time I have to my own autonomy though. Anything trying to take that from me gets met with stiff resistance.
30 hour workweek should have been 40 or 50 years ago. 30 would be late. We should be moving down to 20 about now.
I think you mean “we should be fighting hard for a 20 hour work week now, as hard as our ancestors fought for an 8 hour work day, and we should be willing to die for the cause, the way they died for theirs.”
It should not even take that much. A big issue was unions somewhere in the 80’s or even in the 70’s stopped looking to shorten hours in favor of increased wages with overtime. The membership were easily swayed by time and a half. This lead to the reversal of the 40 hour week. More than 40 became more normal than 40. Of course then over time they have gotten rid of access to time and a half and more defining of roles as exempt.
Despite having full industrial machines, some workers here in a milk factory work for 24h in a row and rest for 48h, mathematically it’s the same as working 8h a day but who tf does that to their workers? another tomato factory I worked at kicked most of their workers and increased work time to 12h a day, everyday, even weekends, no shitty breaks, only 30min for lunch; bosses really don’t care, whether they have machines or not, they just don’t care for us.
Worse, there’s actual practical evidence that a 4-day workweek for the same pay as the 5-day one still makes the company more money and the workers happier and healthier, but adoption is still glacial.
It’s something of a joke that office workers do maybe 2-3 hours of work a day.
Or, at least, they did. And now offices are playing the “how many people can we lay off before the system collapses” game
It’s not a joke, there’s been studies done that prove it. Its closer to 50/50 iirc though. So 4 hours of an 8 hour shift is wasted.
But that also includes stuff like meetings and water cooler talk. Socializing has its benefits, but hard to quantify.
It’s not a joke, there’s been studies done that prove it.
I mean, more that it’s a joke that we have to sit in an office for 8+ hours to do 3 hours of work.
So 4 hours of an 8 hour shift is wasted.
I think it’s unreasonable to call it “wasted”. Like telling a pro-athlete “if you’re not running the ball continuously for every minute of the game you’re wasting your potential”.
Some of it is socializing (which has knock on benefits). Some of it is simply resting/recovery (because intellectual labor takes real energy and people get exhausted). Some of it is bureaucracy.
The real gains of IT are in the speed of data transfer and processing. That saves human labor to a degree, but it also proliferates the labor. Excel allows every Mom & Pop accounting firm to do what required an army of NASA “computers” 60 years ago. But because everyone is doing this level of rigorous, high speed accounting, it actually requires more overall work, not less.
The individuals in question are no more or less efficient today. They were taking coffee breaks, long lunches, and clocking out early to play golf at NASA, too.
I think it’s unreasonable to call it “wasted”. Like telling a pro-athlete “if you’re not running the ball continuously for every minute of the game you’re wasting your potential”.
Marathon runners take no breaks. If you’re requireing constant breaks due to mental fatigue, like any other muscle training and work it.
How do you think tradesman handle working 8 hour shifts with only a 30 minute break? They’re constantly on their feet, being physical, they are also doing calculations, looking around at their surroundings in case something is wrong or going to happen. It’s a physically and mentally straining job, and they do it for a full shift. It’s hilarious when office workers bring up the mental part, like craftsmen don’t have to use their brain. Nice one.
So yes, it is in fact wasted, and objectively so.
Marathon runners take no breaks.
Marathon runners take breaks between every marathon. Runners can require nearly a month of downtime between races in order to perform optimally.
How do you think tradesman handle working 8 hour shifts with only a 30 minute break?
So yes, it is in fact wasted.
Resting isn’t wasted time any more than sleeping is.
Right, but they handle the full shift of their duties in that time, and get their REST after. They get no breaks.
Thank you, that’s a union job, makes my point quite well, other tradesman would be canned for doing that. They can go a full shift without breaks.
Resting and breaks are wholefully different things. Everyone needs rest between shifts, but if you can’t perform your shift without breaks, why are you there?
Thank you, that’s a union job
That’s just a job. If you think people are working harder without a union, you’d be surprised. More often they’re being paid less to do less work, because the workers aren’t trained by their veteran peers to manage themselves.
The suffocating bureaucratization of the corporate world tends to make work sites more difficult and dangerous to navigate, tires people out more quickly, and ends up with exactly this kind of “six guys staring at a hole in the ground while one guy works” dynamic - because corporate only delegated one shovel for six people, to save money.
ends up with exactly this kind of “six guys staring at a hole in the ground while one guy works” dynamic - because corporate only delegated one shovel for six people, to save money.
Nope.
Each one has their role, and can’t start till the one before is done. But it’s too difficult to coordinate and people don’t like sitting around at home not being paid. So they just pay everyone to stand around. Or the job would take 2 weeks instead of a week, but things have to get done “fast”.
It’s why union jobs cost 10x as much as private, and do the exact same job.
On a normal jobsite, the plumber could dig his own hole, and sweep up after, but now that’s 3 different jobs done by 3 different people and different rates as well.
Just because people are standing around, does not mean that they are all “lazy” construction workers fyi. Any number of them could be engineers or municipal employees.
It’s not just that technology doesn’t shorten labour time on it’s own. It’s that technology disrupts the status quo.
A union uses strikes, sabotage, work stoppages, and everything they can to get an agreement that only a master weaver is allowed to sell woven products, and that anybody who wants to become a master weaver must first serve a 7 year apprenticeship. Then weaving machines are invented. The disruption isn’t merely that a master weaver can make a woven product in a much shorter time and the additional profit goes to the owner of the machine. It’s that now the owner of the machine is hiring orphan children to run, clean and fix the machines and the master weavers are unemployed. And, the government, rather than enforcing the laws about 7 years apprenticeships pass new laws to make the destruction of machines punishable by the death penalty.
New technology doesn’t just mean that workers have to fight to get better treatment than they currently have. It means an uphill fight just to get the same level of treatment they had before the introduction of that new technology. Just to give a simple example of something that happened within the last few decades: from 5pm to 9am people were off work, and weekends were free. Then phones, cell phones smart phones, etc. meant that it was much easier to get in touch with an employee during those hours. Now many people’s time off isn’t truly free time because they can be forced into working (even if it’s just replying to a message) during their time off.
There is no war but class war.
also the increase 30-40+hrs is design to exhaust people so they are to tired to protest for reforms socially, financially and to keep people disengaged from politics/ and information.
I suggest an alternative. All war is class war. Start fighting like it.
The bosses are much more likely to shorten the work week while shortening pay even more and then using the “not full time” to reduce any benefits. Be wary.
Benefits should not be a job thing. Start there.
They do this anyways… albeit through wage stagflation, reducing benefits, layoffs, increased contract work forces, etc. Workers have always had to fight for their livelihood.
deleted by creator
My union had been fighting for 32 hours for years. Right when I retired, the college agreed to 36.
I’m “lucky” to have the option of a compressed 4x10 work week
the Friday off is beautiful. if I had a commute, doing that 20% less often that would be a big plus too. but the fact that this is presented as a perk and not a standard option, as well as the requirement to often work on my “weekend” (Friday aka unscheduled day) kind of makes it less of a perk
They pay overtime for that “weekend” work. Right?
yes, I am hourly and get paid for my OT. unfortunately not above base hours at 1.5x rate though, that’s only at the legal requirement of over 44 hours. bit of a mistake on the company’s end, there, as it doesn’t encourage OT since if I’m only going to work 46ish hours this week, why even bother since I’m only making 1.5x on two of those extra six hours
I am always a bit surprised when people ask me that tho lol because like fuck no I would not work for free
Wth 44? Time and a half? Jesus, when did it stop being 40 and double?
it hasn’t been doubled my whole working career. though to be fair I’m only in my 30s. I am aware of a couple companies that did double time on Sundays, which predictably resulted in employees gaming the system to sit in the office on Sundays and watch Netflix.
“good” companies around here will pay overtime over your base hours, which is typically 40 hours. the legal minimum is to pay 1.5x regular rate after 44 hours. pretty much every company does the legal minimum of 1.5 times regular rate for overtime
I’m used to it being morethat overtime was not allowed unless explicitly requested of you. Unapproved overtime was verboten! How times changed.
Different companies have different policies based on their needs. I worked at a factory that couldn’t get enough skilled labor in the door, so they instituted mandatory overtime for two years: everyone had the option of 5 days at 10 hours or 6 days at 8.5 hours. Everything beyond 40 was time-and-a-half, but if you didn’t work at least 50 hours in a week, you got written up.
Some people absolutely loved it because it was “extra” money, but a lot more left for other factories, only exacerbating the problem.
automation industry is a bit different when not in a recession. over time is almost always available. every project could get done sooner, especially with automotive customers
Out of curiosity, assuming a lot of this discussion is US-based, which I’m not, do you have the work from home options there very much? I know managers in my organization often work 4-4.5 days but a day or half a day is at home.
Others that can work most of their job from their home! Not sure what this is looking like in other countries these days (I’m in Australia). Obviously depends on the job!
I’m in Ontario, but a lot of our customers are plants in the US or Mexico and some of our suppliers are in the US.
WFH seems quite common. all of our meetings are done over MS Teams anyways (which is a very effective format for technical reviews with multiple people presenting and sharing info). a lot of our suppliers clearly have salespeople or technical experts that are working from home (or in the case of sales people, probably travelling). it’s actually maybe slightly more rare than not that somebody turns their camera on and it’s of a meeting room with multiple people. we have customer meetings weekly for active projects and there’s anywhere from 4-20 people from the customer’s end in the call. some of them are clearly in the plant or office judging from background noise, but the office staff are sometimes WFH. it’s less common for staff at manufacturing plants though, given the nature of the job, including the office staff.
within my role (automated machine design), WFH is not super common. older managers are reluctant to hire staff who ask about remote work options, in my experience, despite themselves making use of that flexibility as appropriate (i.e. “not feeling great today and will be working from home”).
within my circle of friends family and acquaintances, I’d say maybe 25% are work from home? and the majority of those are in tech (software, IT, etc) or “boring office jobs” like non-customer facing bank staff. most of the people in a similar role to me actually work in the office, I’m the exception among my friends. obvs everyone in trades or customer service is on site, call that 60% of my circle. and then maybe the last 15% is hybrid
They didn’t just hand us the forty hour workweek. You can thank the early unions for that. Organizations like this.
If anything we’re back sliding in the other direction and I think one of the most troubling things I’ve noticed is that workers don’t see unions as workers fighting together but another organization they can complain to.
Is there any way to build a 100% decentralized union?
Class consciousness
I’ve seen unions in plants reinstate workers and remove machines because it reduced labor.
Instead of a machine sorting bagels down two different conveyers, there’s now someone standing there all shift with a yard ruler.
I can’t imagine anyone actually wanting a job like that.
If your other option is to starve and die, you want the yard ruler.
There’s other roles in the plant, but requires training and people don’t like change. Another thing unions create issues with, bakers can’t use a broom, that’s someone else’s job. So you’re taking someone else’s job away to give them their instead? There’s seniority as well.
The other thing is, plenty of other jobs are available as well, not every place is having unemployment issues.
Also, employment benefits, they’ll be paid while they find another job, it also provides money for training in certain scenarios too.
Real life is complicated, and not as simple as you’re making it.
For what it’s worth, the union suggested that role be originally replaced by a machine, than they suffered the consequences, and the company just wasted a bunch of money. The role sucked and no one wanted it so they went up the chain, but it literally is replacing a job. That person isn’t needed anymore, so they grieved that their job was lost…
We need to reframe this discussion. Instead of being concerned that someone is taking our jobs, we should be upset that we live in a society that requires you to work or be homeless.
We literally live in a post-scarcity society, and yet we have a handful of billionaires hoarding all the resources.
In the Ape world, they’d beat another member of the group to death if they were trying to hoard all the resources and food.
Just sayin, we decided to put these sociopaths in charge of everything instead.
this reminds me of a story … the american foreign politics minister visits china in 1950. he sees the workers are building a new railway using shovels instead of machine baggers. he asks the construction leader “why don’t they use engines for that?” the construction leader replies “sothat it creates more jobs”. american minister replies “they should use spoons the next time!”
factory jobs have alway been abusive and exploitative, they wouldve done it either way if it saves them money. look at Lays union protest that happened a few years ago. they were working 60+hrs/week.
