from the please-don't-stick-me-on-the-late-shift dept.
Variable schedules harm workers and businesses:
Variable work schedules—which employers increasingly use to maximize profits amid unpredictable market conditions—can actually undermine organizational performance, especially in crisis periods such as the pandemic, according to Cornell research.
[...] For decades, employers have altered the number and timing of employees' work hours on a daily or weekly basis in order to respond quickly to changing conditions. Chung studied the impact of this practice by integrating insights from literature on flexible staffing, turnover and organizational resilience, with data from 1,678 stores of a U.S.-based fast-food restaurant chain
"Research in the last decade has built a convincing theoretical and empirical record that workers in units with variable work schedules suffer from unstable earnings, negative mental and physical health outcomes, and work-life conflicts," wrote Chung, a student in the field of human resources.
[...] Human resources theory suggests that flexible staffing can hedge against volume and demand uncertainty, but through this study, Chung found that its value can expire if overused because variable work schedules can beget another source of uncertainty: loss of human capital due to high turnover.
[...] "The findings suggest that managers need to rethink the implication of the environmental disruption (COVID-19 in this study) with respect to the use of certain HR practices," she said. "In particular, the loss of human capital resulting from the use of flexible staffing practices may be a roadblock for firms seeking to bounce back from adversity."
Journal Reference:
Chung, H. (2022). Variable work schedules, unit-level turnover, and performance before and during the COVID-19 pandemic [open]. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(4), 515-532.
DOI: 10.1037/apl0001006
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:14PM (13 children)
This will be ignored in favor of social dominance hierarchies.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 20 2022, @02:31PM (12 children)
In particular, the giant advantage to employers who do this is that it successfully prevents somebody from having more than 1 part-time job, thus making it easier for the boss to control employees by being able to threaten to cut their hours whenever they want.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:36PM (10 children)
When you act like a fungible cog, you are inviting employers to treat you like one.
I took two part-time jobs one summer (1988) the first had a predictable schedule, so a condition of employment in the 2nd was that they not interfere with my M-F 9-5 obligations, simple enough to understand. I also expressed preferences for the remaining days which were simple enough to understand: Prefer not to work Saturdays, prefer to work Sundays... now, I also negotiated a starting wage 50% higher than the average wage they were paying part-timers (basically matching the other job I already had), and this put me top-center of the asst. manager's shit list, because within days of me starting all of his other employees also demanded and received raises from 4-ish to 6-ish dollars per hour, which no doubt put a kink in his bonus. So, of course he screwed with me basically the only way he could: by never scheduling me Sunday, almost always scheduling me Saturdays, and switching up my schedule unpredictably. This all came to a head one day in a heated discussion which ended with him: "Well, maybe you don't need this job?" my response: "Well, maybe I don't." To which, he walked away straight to the General Manager, presumably to fire me. After this, I never saw the asst. Manager again, the GM came to me and asked about my schedule preferences, and from that point forward I had a regular, predictable schedule with no Saturdays and every Sunday on it.
First job was for a temp agency, they put me in a bad part of town which I told them I was not happy with, please find me something somewhere else, to which they responded: "absolutely, we understand, we will get you something else as soon as possible." Well, 10 weeks later, I'm still in that job in the worst part of town. The boss is a hothead who periodically fires anybody who upsets her in any way, but usually ends up accepting them back a few days later. I don't get fired until around week 11 on a Friday. Monday, I call in and my boss isn't there, but her peer manager says "oh, absolutely, come in, we need you..." so, I come in and work Monday through Wednesday - during which time I'm getting messages (1988 - no cell phones) from the Temp agency frantically trying to tell me they have other work for me. See, while I'm pulling down the big $6 per hour, the agency is getting $11 per hour from the company while I'm working there, so they really want me working - anywhere - so they get that $5 per hour for my labor. Summer was almost over and I was pretty well done with both the agency who let me rot in a dangerous part of town for three months until the minute I wasn't making money for them anymore, so when my boss came back and re-fired me for defying her previous firing, I was more than ready to pick up the additional hours offered by the GM at the night job (which was literally less than 100 yards from my home.)
Act like a cog, get treated like a cog - you won't be serviced until you stop functioning.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 20 2022, @06:48PM (6 children)
Seems to me that we have a lot of people following JoeMerchant's advice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 20 2022, @07:04PM (5 children)
This is what happens when a lot of people are no longer fearing starvation and homelessness, no longer living paycheck to paycheck.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @08:49PM (4 children)
With a number of the late-millennials and early-Gen-Z I've talked to, it isn't really the paycheck-to-paycheck aspect. Many have taken the position that they are never going to accomplish the "American Dream." If they are going to starve and be on the edge of homelessness no matter what they do, they might as well do something they enjoy. Or at least live life now instead of hoping for a working for a retirement they will never see, as many of their parents haven't or won't either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @02:36AM (3 children)
This sounds a lot more like trying to rationalize that round-the-world year off work trip than anything else. People living well past their means and credit 20 years ago would say similar things as well. My experience, like yours, is anecdotal, but the ones I've talked to who complained about the system stacked against them and starving on the edge of homelessness had unrealistic expectations that they refused to budge off. It isn't that they couldn't afford a house, it was that they couldn't afford the house that would also allow them to have all the other things they wanted, like being able to walk to work and be in the middle of a city and so forth. Yes, THOSE houses are $1M+, but the ones they could afford, they didn't want them because they were in the 'burbs. And I respect that, but to me that also means you can't complain about not being able to live the American dream. You can't live YOUR dream where you get everything you want very affordably.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 21 2022, @04:16PM
1992 Miami, I was looking for a house, any house (freestanding) anywhere in town that I wasn't at risk of getting mugged in my front yard... I considered one built in 1945, 800 square feet one bedroom, nice neighborhood - hell commute to work. Price: 4.3x annual salary ($125K vs $30K - later in the search $37K), non-starter out of range of mortgage approval, even if I was demonstrably capable of making the payments.
Other candidates included a 1925 1000sq 2 bed 1 bath near-ish work on a tiny lot, good neighborhood, also $125K. Then there was a cool 2 bedroom townhome in a tiny Anglo enclave on the Miami River, including 30' of dock on the river: also $125K, and the lack of garage would have made my convertible car a regular target of the transients who regularly walked through the neighborhood at all hours. Finally, I found a 1200 square foot 1935 2-1 in a decent neighborhood of 400 houses between Biscayne Blvd (where I later walked through the middle of a pistol brandishing contest on the way home from KFC, it was between some guy on the street and another in a van threatening him through the open side door, apparently ready to shoot and run if necessary...) and Biscayne Bay, where Colonel Sanders himself had a mansion on the bay and TV personalities had homes on the little river... the thin strip in-between turned out to be relatively affordable at $80K and safe-ish, the one car garage effectively kept my convertible safe.
All this to say: starting pay with a BS in engineering was a standard $30K around the country, I found a job on Miami Beach and within 45 minutes or less commute those were the "home ownership" options available at the time. It has only gotten worse since then, by a factor of 2 between starting pay and pre-bubble real-estate prices, probably a factor of 3 at the current moment. The bank wouldn't consider loaning me the money for the house until I got the 23% raise (mentioned the situation to boss-man, amazing what is possible when you communicate your problems...) Basically, there's absolutely no way a starting engineer can afford a free standing home anywhere in South Florida, unless they have a 50%+ down payment saved up. A co-worker took the condo option, he got a similar 800ish square feet in a hive of an old building from the 30s, only "paid" (via 20% down + mortgage) $45K for the unit - that's his equity - but his monthly payment was higher than mine due to the condo's monthly maintenance - which has a nasty habit of spiking up unpredictably in those older buildings.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @11:40PM (1 child)
You're full of shit, and you know it.
The cheapest properties are condos, and I'm looking at ones in the city center too. It's an extra $50k for a detached structure still in mass transport range. So I figured maybe I'll look out in the boonies, because some macho AC on Soystain News assured me that those would be cheaper. Nope, that's where the $1M+ houses are.
Mytho-macho economics based on mytho-macho bullshit. No wonder you dumbfucks always vote against your own interests. You have no fucking clue what those actually are. You just herp and derp your way through your privileged life without the first fucking clue how you're keeping your head above water, and then when you start to sink, then you blame the jooooooooooooos instead of your idiot self.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @11:47PM
In b4 mytho stupid reply. I'll be paying extra to get one of thos detached structures, because I like vaping, especially the dry herb vape. Tincture is nice but it's just not the same. Should just take me an extra half a year to pull down that $50k difference. It'll be worth it.
I also don't think the neighbors in this high-rise apartment building like my buckling spring keyboard....
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:47PM
LOL your story. Managers 0, worker 2.
One of the best things workers can do for themselves is save some money, so that their lives don't fall apart and wither if that paycheck tap is ever shut off for even a moment. I've had more than one manager who got all sore that I was too smart to fall for their exhortations to spend every last dime and then some, going into debt bigly. For engineers, seems they want idiot savants-- people who are geniuses with tech, while simultaneously too stupid to budget.
The Great Resignation has been a long time in the making. Serves 'em right. We needed something to put the brakes on management madness in treating workers so horribly.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday April 21 2022, @12:36PM (1 child)
The reason that many workers allow themselves to be treated as fungible cogs is that the alternative is unemployment, which sooner-or-later becomes homelessness and starvation. I agree with sibling posters that if you can save up money, that helps, but right now a majority of Americans have less than $500 to their name, and I don't think it's because the people getting up at 4:30 AM to get to McDonald's to make and sell coffee and McMuffins are lazy or irresponsible.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 21 2022, @01:31PM
To an extent, I was raised to believe that the people getting up at 4:30AM to get to McDonald's to make and sell coffee and McMuffins "brought it on themselves" by not setting themselves up for a better future, getting a good education while they could, etc. They were held out as a "bad example" to encourage children to try harder in school, avoid getting arrested, etc. And, that works, to an extent. The problem is, it's not some tiny example slice of society that's living this bad example life, it's far too big a slice and the magnitude of that suffering is minimized in most people's perception. Meanwhile, the infinitesimal slice of lottery winners, sports stars, entertainers, successful entrepreneurs, etc. are constantly in everybody's face as role models to emulate - but you can emulate them all you like for 10 lifetimes and never replicate even a fraction of their success.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday April 21 2022, @03:43AM
Yeah, it's a feature, not a bug. A friend worked for a 24-hour grocery chain that offered good retirement benefits... IF you could stick it out for however-many years. But company policy was to variable-schedule everyone around so you never had two consecutive days on the same shift (and sometimes not at the same store). Since this blew up sleep schedules and was therefore exhausting, very few people managed to hang on long enough to be eligible for those benefits. My friend did, because she said by damn they were not going to rook her out of her retirement (given by the time she realized what was going on, it was too late to change course and still accumulate enough years anywhere she could work).
Now, given the CA proposal to cut hours to 32/week... what's mostly going to happen is people will end up with two part-time jobs and no benefits. But that can be further scuttled by "variable schedules" that ensure you can only work one job. It's almost like the more ways they find to legislate "better conditions for workers" the worse it gets, which makes you wonder who really backs such proposals.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:15PM (1 child)
They are trying to fit a theory to what they have been observing viz. the mass resignation ... Is that it ? And, a request for more grants ?
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:18PM
Jeff Bezos, is that you?
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sonamchauhan on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:20PM (10 children)
Companies use variable work schedules to hedge against uncertainty.
People use predictable work schedules to hedge against uncertainty.
There are opposing forces here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:24PM (6 children)
Companies have the money. They win.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:57PM (5 children)
The company doesn't win if the good workers leave for a better job.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 20 2022, @02:29PM (2 children)
The 'goodness' of workers isn't measured. Only a count of warm or semi-warm bodies is measured. As long as they have the required count of warm bodies to fill the positions, there is no concern for how "good" those workers might actually be.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:57PM (1 child)
I worked in the print industry for a loooong time. Many different companies. I can tell you, when the management starts screwing the workers it is time to start looking for a new job. Not just because of the management arseholes, but because all the good employees would leave and the company would be bankrupt within two years. One year for smaller companies, but the bigger ones had more reserves to burn through.
This was usually due to one new 'super' manager. Had a wonderful record (on paper) of turning companies around and massively increasing their profits. I called them "serial managers". They would be brought in either because the company was going through a tough stretch, or because the owners got greedy. They strongly imply that anyone who doesn't turn up 20 minute early and leave 15 minutes late is slacking off, taking your full breaks is robbing the company, terrorize the staff, (sack one a week* (usually on Friday for some reason)), cut 6-month maintenance to yearly, and yearly to two-years (or never). The books look great. Productivity is up, costs are down.
It looks like things are turning around for the company. Not really. They are robbing the future. The short term result is that everyone works at an unsustainable pace to keep their jobs and avoid the manager. Then all the good workers get sick of the bullshit and leave for better jobs. The maintenance backlog starts to bite with machine breakdowns. About then, the "serial manager" leaves for "new challenges", having on his CV how he turned the company around. Six months later, the company is liquidated.
...
*Never seems to be the useless suckups, it's always someone who spoke up or pointed out stuff like the maintenance schedules. Kiss the wankers arse enough and you were safe. Point out a problem and Friday was your last day.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:00PM
When we hire managers, we ask them for data on what happened after they left. Rats may leave a sinking ship, but they can't get that sort of data. If it turns out they did well, they usually have projections and data showing that things kept improving or didn't get worse after they left. Our two biggest red flags are multiple bankruptcies/reorgs after their tenure and those that have moved to multiple metros. They seem very predictive of future failure or a managerial pump-and-dump.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 20 2022, @10:23PM (1 child)
Depends on the company and the job. The best franchises run off of warm bodies that work for minimum wage, require little or no training, and thus can be replaced virtually instantly with employees of equivalent value.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @10:08PM
Heat up the prepared frozen ingredients and put them in a bag, give to customer. That skill level surely demands a large paycheck. SOCIETY should pay them that. Alternative: society stops eating there for health and savings, thus depriving workers of their "exploitative" jobs. C'mon Leftists: do we hate fast food or love it?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday April 20 2022, @02:33PM (1 child)
So a worker might not be able to schedule a doctor appointment next week because she is uncertain whether her mangler will schedule her to work afternoons, mornings or evenings.
(clue for managers: best to schedule someone to work 4 hours morning and 3.5 hours evening for optimal life disruption while never quite being "full time" or having any overtime.)
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Monday April 25 2022, @09:27AM
To make things fair, employment laws should mandate symmetrical notice periods for events of similar importance to either party.
Say, a boss schedules someone with 24 hours notice to keep 'the business running optimally'. Fair enough, as long as the employee too can also give 24 hours notice for a medical appointment to keep their 'body running optimally'.
If the boss does not like that, he can give more notice and get more notice.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 23 2022, @01:00AM
In service industries, they use it to increase manager bonuses. Holding down payroll is a key factor in this. A key trick is to force a low salaried first level manager to send hourly people home and cover shifts themselves (of course still doing all the managerial work), no extra labor costs that way. That is one reason such industries screamed when Obama tightened the rules on who companies can screw over this way (Trump of course reversed that). Even though most employees didn't know about it (their own fault, it was in the news) and didn't take advantage, companies eventually knew employees would find out.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Ingar on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:45PM (4 children)
Twice a year DST changes my schedule. I hate it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @02:05PM
If it's so earth shattering, you could just wake up in the morning at the same DST time all year long. You'd have one hour in the cold months to catch up or prepare for the day ahead.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:29PM (2 children)
In all seriousness, that could change [congress.gov].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @09:01PM (1 child)
It won't. The Senate accidentally passed it. It will just be held at the desk, just as it has been for over a month.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 23 2022, @01:04AM
Hopefully they hold it forever. I hate Daylight Savings Time. For whatever reason, my body never adjusts to it, so from March to October I always feel as if I have lost an hour's sleep. I guess I like the extra hour of daylight in the morning way more than I do at night.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @02:09PM
"human capital"? wats dat? is that like newspeak for "amount of slaves owned"?
or is it just " capital" owned by a human versus "turtle dollars" ... owned by turtles?
people living before "automation" (maybe pre-steam-engine) must have totally fit into this study, considering it was mostly the variable weather and time of year that commanded them around...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday April 20 2022, @02:52PM (29 children)
But "Human Capital" is a hellspawned term for human beings. "Labor" or "workers" or "employees" are all perfectly okay terms. People aren't just another resource to exploit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 20 2022, @02:56PM (4 children)
"Human Resources" is no better, IMO. You are a resource to be used, abused, expended, and thrown away at the company's convenience.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:41PM
Sounds very Republican.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:48PM (1 child)
It used to be called "personnel", but I'm given to understand that personnel departments of the 1970s had no better reputation than HR departments of the modern day. The name change was to distance themselves from the dreaded Personnel Department. It might be an example of politically correct speech, or some other category of attempting to use language to change the way we think. It definitely had all the effectiveness of calling shit a "rose by any other name", and it seems like enough people make this very complaint that it might be due for another name change--but not back to personnel. There are too many people still alive who remember that.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @04:00AM
Maybe, but it wouldn't be any better if they called them "beloved team members" or "change makers" if their actions didn't match.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 23 2022, @01:07AM
It all went bad when we were changed from "personnel" to "human resources".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @06:45PM (15 children)
Wall Street, founded on the North Atlantic slave trade, says, yes, that is precisely what they are, to this day, and into the foreseeable future
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 20 2022, @07:02PM (14 children)
So what? That friend or coworker who only shows up when they need something from you sees you the same way. We learn to deal with it.
As to the employer: unlike real slavery (which in case you haven't noticed hasn't been traded on Wall Street for a long time, probably over two centuries), we get good value for that exploitation. It works and you don't have to care about the morals/depravity of the employer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:52PM (13 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @02:05AM (12 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @04:10AM (11 children)
But of course! From your comfy chair it's so easy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @04:27AM (10 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @06:24AM (9 children)
Wage Slave khallow, punching the clock, sucking up to the richies, gigging on the Side, with Uber, and
Unter! Big bucks in taking the lower position!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @02:34PM (8 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @05:33PM (7 children)
Wage or not, when the factory owners lock the doors so they can't leave, I'd call it slavery.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @06:18PM (6 children)
This goes on where again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 22 2022, @04:54AM (5 children)
North Carolina...
https://apnews.com/article/eb67ab236eaead43cbea826774778044 [apnews.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 22 2022, @02:41PM (4 children)
For example, there were no further cases like the above Hamlet fire in subsequent years in the US. OSHA continues to fine companies for blocking fire exits. This narrative needs some work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23 2022, @11:56AM (3 children)
The GP example is nasty, but I was referring more to China and India where locking workers in is much more common. Probably Pakistan and other asian countries too.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 23 2022, @04:13PM (2 children)
I wasn't nor was the original poster who was complaining about "Wall Street" rather than the Chinese or Indian counterparts.
That's the whole point of my question "This goes on where again?" What's missed here is that institutions like Wall Street actually reduce this appearance of slavery in the long run by generating more wealth for everyone, making those safety practices more affordable and likely to be implemented.
It's a typical failing in the "capitalism bad" narrative. My take is that in the long run, sadly after a number of locked exit disasters, regulation in China and India will emerge to successfully make the practice of chaining fire exits (and similar enormous workplace hazards) illegal and rare. Won't it be an interesting day when the capitalism bad people can only point to a thirty year old Indian disaster for support of their wage slavery claims?
This is a key transition point here in our world. I think we can attain almost complete developed world status for everyone in the world, including Africa. But there are several risks that need to be overcome first. Russia's invasion of Ukraine illustrates one - that existing countries may use their power to oppress others via destructive acts of war. Another is ideological groups applying their ideas without regard to the effects. I've seen many loony proposals, like: ending money, deporting non-whites from "white countries", put everyone on a UBI (without regard to whether shit gets done), transitioning the entire energy infrastructure, including transportation, to renewable, non-nuclear sources only right now, getting rid of the people with bad thoughts who are holding us back, and so on.
So when I see someone whine cluelessly about Wall Street, I don't just see another clueless person on the internet, I see yet another tendril of bad ideology that some day could wreck the Earth and cause enormous suffering for many generations. We can't fix what's wrong, if we can't ideologically accept what we're doing right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2022, @05:39AM (1 child)
Where do you think those companies traded on Wall Street have their factories?
Foxconn was notorious for abusing its workers, but Wall St still loves Apple.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 27 2022, @02:45AM
And people work in those factories because it's better than the local alternatives. I'm not aiming for perfect, I'm aiming for better.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 20 2022, @10:28PM (7 children)
In philosophical discussion, of course not. In business plans there is really no other way to look at it: people are a resource, whatever nice term you replace exploit with, the business will not prosper without the employees it needs.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday April 21 2022, @02:44PM (2 children)
Even in that framing, it's bizarrely possessive.
You don't call customers "purchaser capital", you don't call suppliers "upstream capital", you don't call utility services "electric capital" because none of those are fungible, investable assets you own, even if they're crucial to your business and you need to maintain relationships with them. And exploit them for your profit.
The tendency to view people as fungible or owned is a poisonous one. I get the corporate realpolitik you're putting down, but even in that context it rings sickeningly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 21 2022, @03:26PM
It does, but the ironic part of the world we have today is: the system sets you up to want nothing more than to be the "owned" full time employee with benefits and better pay, the option is a "contractor" with no job security, limited if any benefits, and usually poor pay (this varies, depending on whether the contractor is filling a temporary need - those might be well paid, or if the contractor is being "groomed" for full time employment). Where I work now, most people start as contractors for a couple of years, maybe furloughed or put on reduced hours during a lean quarter or two, then finally granted a full time position and a virtual doubling of their compensation package after two to sometimes as much as five years. I was "acquired" with another company's IP, so they started me at full time plus a 6 months' pay bonus if I stuck around for at least a year.
Before that, I did about 25 years with various smaller companies, mostly startups, for periods of 8 months to 10 years... pay was almost as good, benefits were usually sketchy, job security varied dramatically but never seemed as good as being a "human resource" in the big machine. Honestly, quality of life is much better now as a cog in the big machine - but that may be mostly down to the shift to work-from-home. I was also WFH in the company that got acquired 8 months after I joined and the quality of life was nearly as good, but since it was a 3 hour flight plus 2 hours driving each way from home I'd end up doing that once every 6 weeks or so - this job is in town so the occasional face-to-face is only a 20 minute drive, and since COVID my entire department has shifted to 100% WFH, meaning I've only had to do 3 site visits in the past 2+ years.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @06:43PM
What's bizarrely possessive about it? You wouldn't blink an eye if they were speaking of "our workers", "our customers", "our suppliers", or "our utility services".
Capital usually isn't fungible. You can't just swap factories or have your factory make something different at the drop of a hat, for example.
They're at best tangential concepts.
What's missing here is the insight into what makes labor a form of capital. It is indeed investable. And the employer has a great deal of control over labor (not just hire/fire choices, but training, the work environment, work procedures, etc) which is a feature implied by ownership in your stated definition.
Ownership isn't really part of the definition of capital. There's several companies out there selling lunar and martian property. You get a nice looking certificate from them attesting to ownership of said property. But nobody will honor that ownership claim once anyone actually does stuff on the Moon or Mars that requires property law.
The key is your level of control over the investable asset. You don't control it even if you technically own it, then it's not your capital.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday April 21 2022, @06:02PM (3 children)
You already have the correct word: employees.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 21 2022, @07:00PM (2 children)
Aka (commonly) human resources, all too easy to coin the term: exploitees.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 23 2022, @04:18PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 23 2022, @05:38PM
It's all a matter of how it's done.
I have been fortunate enough to have been exploited by relatively fair minded people most of the time.
Example: my first employer paid me more or less competitive market rates for what I did for him, kept benefits more or less in-line or gave pay raises to compensate when, for instance, the small company dropped healthcare coverage for all employees.
Same more or less fair-minded company owner shared the opportunity to invest in the company's publicly traded stock from time to time, something he didn't need to do. But, even this guy, he hired consultants to tell him what was "fair" and they told him things like: "When you offer restricted shares in the company, the little people get the opportunity to invest in a smaller number of shares (1/20), which are restricted for twice as long, and priced double of the shares that you, the qualified investor, will be receiving. And this information should not be disclosed for at least one year past the end of the program, and even then only disclosed in a very obscure manner to meet the the obligations of disclosure for a publicly traded company." Being a good father, looking out for the financial well being of his already independently successful children, he followed that advice and enriched his estate by over a million dollars when "the little people" who took substantially more risk against their disposable income only benefited a maximum of 2% as much.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:12PM
Employment uncertainty and chaotic life schedules mandated by employers who only care about profits and not one jot about their workforce's well being is bad for said workforce's health?
Why, this is the discovery of the century. Whodathunk it eh? It's almost as if stricter labor laws and unions were a good thing after all...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday April 20 2022, @04:30PM (21 children)
Its all about the pay.
When you pay a plumber $200/hr at midnight to fix your leaking pipes nobody cries for the plumber, not even the plumber himself.
When you pay a burger flipper minimum wage to flip a burger on a random schedule, all the bleeding hearts come out to bleed and get ignored as usual.
I was charging something like $60/hr for sysadmin work a couple years back; go ahead call me in for minimum three hour callout at 2am, I'll find a way to spend my $200 after resetting your password or whatever nonsense they wanted at that time of night. I didn't mind that schedule at all, as long as they pay their invoices on time.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @05:36PM (19 children)
Now that was one instructive post.
"Its all about the pay."
True
"When you pay a burger flipper minimum wage to flip a burger on a random schedule, all the bleeding hearts come out to bleed and get ignored as usual."
Typical rightwing nonsense with an ad-hom, very normal.
"I'll find a way to spend my $200 after resetting your password or whatever nonsense they wanted at that time of night. I didn't mind that schedule at all, as long as they pay their invoices on time."
So someone flipping burgers wanting just a regular schedule makes them whiners, and they aren't even talking about minimum wage here. But you get to charge a ridiculous amount to unplug and plug something back in, or whatever nonsense you deem unworthy of your attention but fuck it $200 is $200!
I'd lecture you further if I thought it would do any good, I'll settle for pointing out your entitlement and hypocrisy. Everyone deserves a living wage, and not poverty level living just to allow a few thousand humans to live like literal kings.
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @09:22PM (18 children)
Parent said:
"Everyone deserves a living wage..."
A living wage? Like a Chinese shared micro apartment and rice and beans for every meal? Oh, you don't mean a LIVING wage, you mean a GOOD STYLE OF LIVING. Like what? Spacious apartment? Yearly vacations? What is your exact definition of this minimum living standard that should be given to everyone, no matter how little they actually do? You think flipping burgers entitles a person to some great lifestyle? Everyone should be paid the same as a computer programmer, even for just stuffing a sandwich in a paper bag or mopping? It doesn't work that way anywhere.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:14PM (17 children)
From FDR himself:
"...By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."
Does that answer your question, you bootlicking little "temporarily-embarrassed millionaire?"
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @01:58AM (8 children)
No. Put a yearly dollar amount to it. What should be the minimum yearly cost for labor in your fantasy world? How much do I have to pay someone to mop the floor and stuff sandwiches in bags?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @08:46AM (6 children)
The US is big enough that amount depends on where you live and local conditions. But you probably already knew that part of the game and were trying to set it up so you could play your "that is a shit wage for people inexpensive places" card or "you really expect person in cheap place to make that kind of money" card. My real bet was on that "or" being inclusive instead of exclusive.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @02:36PM (5 children)
Somehow the one-size-fits-all minimum wage people never acknowledge that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @09:01PM (4 children)
They understand that. The problem is that current minimum wage floor is too low everywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @09:55PM
If you jack up minimum wage everywhere by a lot, what is the result? Reduced employment in low skill
jobs as automation and self-service become financial feasible. Inflation goes up and erodes a large portion of the wage increase. Costs go up for the businesses and they pass it on to the customer, possibly resulting in the customer using less of the service or product or finding a substitute to purchase. It's not as simple as "fixing" the low-quality jobs issue by sayjng, I will force you by law to pay them more. Economics, what is it?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 22 2022, @03:29AM (2 children)
What is "the current minimum wage floor" for "everywhere"? All I can say is that there are examples of excessive minimum wage in the US - Puerto Rico for the national level minimum wage and the poorer parts of California (such as Fresno) for a state level minimum wage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23 2022, @05:35AM (1 child)
Your response to pointing out that the floor is too low is to claim that two places that set a higher minimum wage set it too high? I guess that is one approach.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 23 2022, @07:31AM
Yes, because minimum and floor mean the same thing here. Whatever you set the floor at is what the minimum wage is for that region. For the US as a region and California as a region, the floor on the minimum wage is the minimum wage. And I note two regions where that floor turns out to be too high.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 21 2022, @08:10PM
Fantasy world? I don't need to make something up; just look at places like Denmark. If they can do it, why can't we?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @08:03PM (3 children)
I have to agree. It does not answer the question. And we see once again the "temporarily-embarrassed millionaire". Surely, there's another discussion forum out there where you can flaunt your ignorance and stupidity more effectively?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 21 2022, @08:09PM (2 children)
And here's exhibit B, right on schedule!
Listen and listen good, cupcake: if you aren't wealthy and making passive income off investments, you are NOT a capitalist; you're a laborer who's trying to proclaim solidarity with the kind of people who'd as soon see you dead and don't even know you exist. A white collar job does not make you one of the investor class.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @08:30PM (1 child)
Or being employed by someone who uses private capital. That works too.
I guess we're up to exhibit C now. Nobody is proclaiming solidarity with the rich and venal. It's just not happening. That's your narrative talking.
Investor class != capitalist.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @10:03PM
Don't argue with her. Words mean whatever she says they mean, just like Humpty Dumpty said in "Alice in Wonderland." Her own personal redefinitions, and nobody else but her is allowed to pull that trick. Redefining words to suit your purposes and arguing from there is a cliche Leftist "argumentation" technique.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 23 2022, @01:29AM (3 children)
Azumi comes across perhaps unnecessarily caustically, but the ideas are solid. A living wage is simply one in which you could support yourself in a middle class manner, even if "only" lower middle class. Buying a house should not be a pipe dream, let alone buying a car. The term "middle class' is itself a misnomer, perhaps it should be renamed "living class", or some such name. Since the 1980's especially, less and less has been given to the front line workers that actually produce any product, and more and more goes to those at the very top, who often do nothing more than call their brokers each day to find out how many more millions they have made. Unless that reverses to a more reasonable level on each side, eventually society will break, with bad consequences for every side.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 23 2022, @03:48PM (2 children)
I disagree. I think there are several issues that need addressing. First, it remains ill-defined particularly given that you want to redefine "middle class" as "living class" even though it is well above that in the vast majority of the US. Similarly, there is this nebulous assertion that we should be able to buy houses and cars (presumably earn enough in that "living class" lifestyle). A glaring fault here is a lack of attribution to whom should be providing that lifestyle. So no, these ideas are very poorly formed.
Second, we should first show that there is a problem and that any proposed solutions actually solve the problem. And frankly, I think you and Azuma are completely missing the real problems here.
For example, let's just consider your statement fragment: "Buying a house should not be a pipe dream" in isolation. From what, we should conclude that home ownership is declining, right? Because that being a pipe dream should mean that less and less people are able to afford homes. Well, statistics [stlouisfed.org] say otherwise. The link is to a chart maintained by the Saint Louis branch of the Federal Reserve. It charts the percentage of households that are "owner occupied" and starts with 63% in 1965 after a few ups and downs, peaks with home ownership at 69% in 2005 and presently is at 65%. It never gets lower than 62.9% or higher than 69.2% in that entire span of time. Is that consistent with your assertion above?
I'll note also that wages and compensation have gone up [heritage.org] over this time period when adjusted for inflation (keeping track with productivity gains I might add). So while it might not be keeping up with that executive compensation, it's not shabby either. One warning sign shows up here, most of those productivity gains are eaten up by employer-paid health care/insurance benefits.
I have of course glossed over big details - cost of housing and health care. That's the other side of the living wage problem that people routinely ignore. Living wage is not just dependent on what you're paid, but on how expensive your living expenses are. So let's take a look at those two because they seem very relevant to the costs we're seeing here.
Median home price [stlouisfed.org] for the US as tracked by the St. Louis Fed again, has gone from $17.8k in 1963 to $408.1k (not adjusted for inflation) in the last quarter of 2021. That's a ratio of almost 23. In comparison, CPI inflation [rateinflation.com] (US Consumer Price Index) has gone from 30.4 in 1963 to 281.14 at the beginning of 2022, a ratio of roughly 9. One sees a similar pattern with health care spending, going from $146 in 1960 to $12,530 in 2020, a ratio of 86! No wonder it has eaten most of the productivity gains over the past 50 years!
For sake of completeness, let's look at the cost of cars (since that was the other item you mentioned) over that 1963-2022 period. This car inflation calculator estimates that car prices only went up by roughly 3.3 over that period, meaning that cars increased at a much lower rate than CPI inflation over this period.
So right away, we have two huge and growing living costs intrude into your model of the living class - housing and health care costs - both which increase at a much faster rate than the CPI inflation (which doesn't include these two costs BTW). Sorry, but it seems pretty dishonest to frame this as problem of not getting paid enough, when you have costs of living growing so fast that it messes up the calculations.
So right here, we should be asking "Why are housing and health care growing so fast?" The answer sure isn't that employers aren't paying enough or that executives of such companies are getting too much compensation. Instead, the corporate influence is much more focused - developers and insurers/cartel hospitals (both private and public) seem the corporate offenders. But they are far from the only causes. In housing, there are consistent forces at work from the local to nation-wide level inflating real estate prices: zoning to protect property values up to tax incentives to borrow to own.
Similarly, health insurance is mandated to cover a variety of nonessential health care costs and separate the consumer of health care from the costs of their health care. If I pay the same no matter if I use a little health care or a lot, then I'll tend to use a lot.
I consider both of similar degree because while real estate isn't growing as fast, it adds on costs to everything. Any business has to cover those real estate costs even if they don't employ many people (and thus, have relatively low health insurance costs).
My take is that if this mess could be resolved, it would render the living wage argument obsolete by greatly reducing the cost of living. Meanwhile, if we ignore these growing costs and just try to force employers to pay more (via such solutions as minimum wage, employer health insurance, etc) we end up in the situation where wages and benefits will need to track these faster than general inflation costs. What if health care costs goes up by another factor of 86 in the next 60 years and housing costs another factor of 23? What will happen to employers then? How will they cover that when most of their products don't go up that fast?
Employees would rapidly lose their appeal to employers as their costs greatly exceed their value to the employer. This grows a new underclass - people whose labor simply isn't worth legal employment and who would thus be earning all their wages under the table with all the problems that black market labor brings.
I can already see the thrashing - add UBI and single payer systems. The problem is that the same parties that fubared the original systems would be fubaring these as well (we actually already have working examples of these in the US and they have deep problems). I have no confidence in them at all.
It's not sustainable. What we have now should be working in the first place as it has for centuries. Let's fix what's actually broke, not descend through a series of poorly thought out, enormous fixes that transform society to the worse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday April 27 2022, @02:02AM (1 child)
So offer some sort of solution instead of steadfastly supporting the status quo, which is only making things worse.
A realistic UBI would eliminate the need for any minimum wage.
Housing costs are ridiculous, despite your assertion that owner occupied housing remains steadfast. The main cause of that is speculation. Flipping a house in constantly rising housing markets is a sure way to make money, for the few that can afford to do it, but it's also a sure way to push housing costs beyond that of normal entry level home buyers. Regulate that, and have a tax system that takes more from short term investment than long term investment.
There are a lot of ways to reduce health care costs to more manageable levels, but we will never adopt them because it takes income from too many leeches that profit without providing any benefit. We have examples from many other nations to adapt to our needs. There's no reason to go all in on one method or another. Japan is at least as capitalist as we are, but they made health insurance non-profit. England and Canada and most of the EU have health care systems that are far more encompassing and cost a lot less. Even Cuba provides more for their citizens than the US does. A sincere effort to devise a health care system that benefits all at the lowest cost should certainly not be beyond our capabilities.
This is perhaps your most ridiculous statement and the biggest flaw in all your arguments. No, it hasn't worked for centuries. It has rarely ever worked for the majority, who could only manage because we hadn't yet reached the point where resources were becoming limited in access and availability. It has only worked in the US since the advent of the New Deal, up until Reagan and his descendants started eliminating the benefits of the New Deal and its follow up, the "Great Society". US poverty had reached its lowest point in the years before Reagan, but has been climbing at a high rate since. The biggest problem is that financial deregulation has allowed the vast majority of increased GDP since then to go to the wealthiest instead of the actual producers. Indeed, most GDP is being reckoned by more and more ephemeral "products" such as uncollected debt, unproductive middle man charges, and the Ponzi scheme of the never ending stock market rise instead of actual production of salable goods. Others with more time could add a far longer list to this.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 27 2022, @03:37AM
Sure:
1) Greatly reduce the power of local and state governments to zone and license businesses. Zoning is a key driving force for the gentrification of so much of the US. Licensing is a considerable barrier to entry for people moving across state lines.
2) End minimum wage and other social programs that just make the problems worse. I proposing ending minimum wage rather than merely make it low because that eliminates the overhead of the law altogether - no paperwork to vex employers and no need for bureaucracy to make sure the forms get signed right.
3) Enforce sensible regulation and laws on things like theft, negligence, fraud, and immigration control - all relevant to the employer/employee relationship.
4) End the obsession to interfere with economic innovations like "speculation", gig economy, cryptocurrency, HFT, etc.
5) Pay attention to what actually is going on and what works. Regan didn't make more poor people, competition with the developing world which has labor costs several times lower than US labor (as did the growing bite from health care). Business creation is IMHO what saved the US (and the rest of the developed world) from a serious decline in labor pricing power.
6) You need a good economy before you can get the fruits of a good economy. No point to wanting UBI when your country can't afford it due to ballooning costs of social programs (including that UBI).
A good economy can do more for people than social programs can. It's time to think about how to make that happen and stay happening.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @06:30AM
My heart bleeds for VLM! How could anyone suffer so much from being stupid, conservative, racist, and Republican? Oh, the poor dear! Soon, he may find himself flipping the burgers, or living under the bridge, or sharing a cell with a formerly billionaire New York real estate tycoon. Maybe.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Wednesday April 20 2022, @04:54PM (8 children)
As a former 2nd shifter (a bit less than a year) I can only imagine how bad rotating or random shifts would be. Working from afternoon to midnight was bad enough, but at least we got to know everybody and had a routine. Even then, it wasn't something I wanted to do for the rest of my life, although there were people there who had been doing it for 20 years. I've heard that working shifts other than day has some health impact, but it seems like they've been saying that "rotating" shift work is bad for your health and lifespan for a while now, so this is not news to me. Seems like I read about the impacts of rotating shifts 20 years ago and just nodded my head. I'm surprised they still do it when it can be avoided. There are always going to be "on call" situations for health care, military, disaster response, police, etc.; but deliberately planning to screw up somebody's rhythms just for the bottom line ought to be illegal.
The day shift is usually coveted because it's the most "normal" shift. IMHO, it ought to be a rule that you can promote people to day but not demote them back, ever.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 20 2022, @08:26PM (5 children)
I'm that weirdo who *likes* 2nd and third shift. I'm lucky enough to have a fairly consistent schedule in terms of what time each day I'm working, though that actual days on the job tend to get moved around a fair amount. Honestly, the best part of the shift is the 7-11 PM bracket when traffic slows down and I can get down to ripping through the massive prescription queue that's built up because apparently I fill faster than any two other technicians you care to name...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:03PM
Your 7-11 PM is slow? I've been working in the wrong hospitals in the wrong cities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2022, @09:29AM (3 children)
I hate to say it but it sounds like the rest of the technicians are working smarter instead of harder and getting rewarded for their laziness. What are you getting out of that deal?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 27 2022, @04:12AM (2 children)
What I'm getting is less dealing with customers and more of what I actually enjoy doing: filling, inventory, placing orders, etc.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 27 2022, @04:28AM (1 child)
Customers? I thought you worked at a hospital. Doesn't really matter. Same with what sounded like rewarding their laziness. Not my circus, not my monkeys and you seem to be making your decision eyes open.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 27 2022, @05:25PM
I got the hell out of that hospital late last summer after 5 techs dropped in 3 months. I'm riding out this pandemic in retail, which is aggravating and mind-numbing but still less insane. Sometime in 2023 I'll see about a position in either a long-term care or a hospice facility, but right now I'm just laying low waiting for this pandemic stupidity to blow over.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 20 2022, @10:52PM (1 child)
The impact of multiple / rotating shifts is that a factory building can output over 2x the product compared with an equivalent cost factory building running a single shift, this making the investment in the facility produce over twice the return on investment. From a shareholders point of view, of course they should run multiple shifts as often as possible.
A rational use of multiple shifts is to quickly respond to surges in demand. Unfortunately (for the health of the workers and quality of life of their families) many factories run in "surge handling" three shift mode most of the time and only drop to single shift for rare dips in demand.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @02:50PM
Conversely, this much more efficient use of huge capital investments like factories means more money is available to pay people (such as employing people for three shifts above rather than just one). As to the "unfortunately", nothing is forcing those workers to be there. We have to acknowledge at some point that people want to work there rather than all the more normal, more healthy, and lower paying work they could be doing instead.
Like all things there are trade offs both to odd shifts and to normal waking hour shifts. The health consequences mentioned in the article certainly do not justify downtime in a factory or other industrial infrastructure. It might better inform workers and employers as to the costs to late night or variable time workers, but the work is valuable and the tradeoff to the worker reasonable in that light.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fliptop on Wednesday April 20 2022, @05:01PM (4 children)
Where I live a lot of my buddies have jobs in the coal mines. They pay is quite good (~$100k/year) and they enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, but I never could figure out how they do it. Six-10 days on say, 7-3, then a couple days off, then 6-10 days on 3-11, then a couple days off, then midnight shift. I can't even imagine what that's doing to their circadian rhythm and overall health. Along w/ the hazardous working conditions, it's probably the main reason the pay is so good. Not for me though! The occasional call at 2am to check a malfunctioning server is enough.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:05PM (3 children)
The fact that they are working such crappy hours with those drastic swings probably has more than a little to do with the hazardous working conditions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @04:06AM (2 children)
No, man, the fact that they're deep underground in something that can collapse on them or kill them with gas pockets or combust is. Try going into a coal mine sometime and maybe you'll be a little less flippant. Coal mines are brutal by nature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21 2022, @08:58AM
And it is even worse when you are constantly physically exhausted. Most accidents are caused by mistakes by people not the mine conditions. Disasters may get the news, but they aren't the most dangerous part. It's not flippant; it's fact. Not my fault they make conditions even more dangerous for their workers to earn a bit more money.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 23 2022, @01:18AM
I had a friend that was hired to work in an underground gold mine. He lasted one day. Had to ride down packed with others in a mostly dark elevator for an hour, creaking and clanking and stopping periodically stopping all the way, the temperature increasing all the time on the way down, then work in small tunnels for eight hours. The earth isn't static down there either, there are constant rumbles and groans of the rock. The horror of the elevator rides were enough for him, but he said there were people that had worked there for decades. The pay was good of course, which was what attracted him, but you have to have the proper mindset for it.