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 refrain 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.
In Europe its possible but never in America. Ok, I should never say never, but im pretty sure we wont see that in decades in America.
I’d love to have a 32 hour week.
It’s been a struggle lately to get even 16 hours of work a week lately.
Turns out, problems are more complex than just what goes on in the US
Of course not. It needs to be legislated, just like the 40 hour workweek and worker safety laws. Is there anybody who really thinks companies will voluntarily disadvantage themselves against their competitors?
leave your ai to cover for 8 hours. they’ll love it
This isn’t quite right.
A technological improvement in production efficiency does shorten labor time per output.
However, employers don’t respond to this new efficiency with shortened work hours.
They respond with fewer laborers.
Improved technological efficiency, leads to higher unemployment.So I used to work in industrial automation, and I did see a factory owner buy a robot to automate a task because it was a brain meltingly simple task that was unpopular with his workers. The robot was slower, and more expensive than a human.
It was taking a small piece of metal from a stack and putting it in a machine and pushing a button (not sure if he had a two-hand-no-tie-down set up) then taking the now bent price of metal out of the machine and putting it on a stack. I think they had about 8 hours production per week of demand for the part.
He didn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart but because he got tired of paying recruiters to find people willing to do it.
I’m so fucking done, it will take 4 years for us to get a 40 hour workweek and yeah that’s great but it’s a fucking joke
Gracias Sheimbaum
Here in Colombia it were like that and did it work. I think it’s because not terrorize the right hand
yeah they gave us the same reasons here and I get it to certain extend. the same companies that have exploited us for decades were scared of this reduction and asked for this compromise.
I’m still mad that the so called “left leaning” president bent to their claims but was not able to secure TWO free days a week
Exactly. Productivity gains don’t magically turn into free time for workers unless people organize and demand it.
Right and why would it? If you let people take advantage, they will. Doesnt matter what’s right. Doing what’s right gets you fucked in this world. Literally people distrust you if you try to do what’s right. It’s a lonely existence and that’s fucking sad.
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
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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
If your productivity doubles, they will lay off half the people, and all gains disappear upwards. It’s already happening.
in the civilised world we just vote for people that support 4 day work weeks
do catch up neo-commies
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They didn’t just hand us the forty hour workweek. You can thank the early unions for that. Organizations like this.
