I have personally benefited from rights that unions have fought for. I am grateful to them for this. What I see them fight for now is worker retention. The most common fight is for the worst union members, because you have to represent your worst member, otherwise what is a union worth?
The other common union fight is whether the members are going to be screwed by management or by the competition, where the competition may be in a different country or a state with fewer protections on workers' rights.
I think there are still marginal conflicts where the Union can secure benefits for their members, but I'm not sure how much more they can help society overall.
EDIT: it would also be remiss not to add that much of the power of unions has been stripped away by union busting and bad legislation
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-w...
You can have a career as a software engineer with a 40 hour week if you want. It just won't be at Amazon.
You can have a career as a lawyer, just not at big law.
Professionals get to opt in and get commensurate rewards. The factory workers didn't get anything extra for their extra efforts.
Rewards like burnout, lower quality of life, worsening relationships with friends and family...?
The problem is actually a vicious circle. People work more to be valued more, which causes others to work also more so that they can compete. The company benefits from this and takes it as the new normal: deadlines shorten, workload increases, and it stops being optional to become "optional", as in "you can opt out of more work, but get ready to find another job soon". Now you have a whole group of workers burning themselves out for marginally more money and status, while the company they work for makes more money.
And no, it doesn't just happen at Amazon. This happens to software engineers everywhere.
Of course, it's not by far the same situation as factory workers, but there's a serious problem with the work culture in software, specially in the US.
But what are those things worth to you? As they have different values to everyone.
A friend of mine is currently working on his software project at work (and this is for a massive non tech company, so it is not as if it is a startup). It is 6AM on a Sunday and that is what he is doing. And he is doing it out of boredom as he is in many ways the stereotypical software guy.
Another good friend is in Seattle. He logged in to work at midnight today while chatting with me. Why? He has nothing else to do.
I spend 100+ hours at my computer a week and have since high school. Spending a greater percentage of that time coding for work does not meaningfully impact my quality of life other than taking away from commenting on forums or my hobby of solving innovation challenges. Whether I am unemployed or facing a major deadline, I am going to be online anyway.
I get why long hours would be terrible for people with families requiring attention or girlfriends or those who like hiking, but a lot of software engineers (like me or the aforementioned friends) have none of those, making more work very cheap for us.
I don't know any software person who works at 6AM on a Sunday.
>He logged in to work at midnight today while chatting with me. Why? He has nothing else to do.
Does he have time to find anything else to do?
> Spending a greater percentage of that time coding for work does not meaningfully impact my quality of life other than taking away from commenting on forums or my hobby of solving innovation challenges.
Being online and working is not the same at all. Maybe for you, for not most people.
> but a lot of software engineers (like me or the aforementioned friends) have none of those
Several things:
1. Not having anything other than your job is bad. Full stop. Maybe a handful of persons can work in that situation, but having such a messed up work-life balance is bad for your health, there are plenty of studies on this.
2. Have you asked why this happens? Maybe it's not just people who like that, but people who have no other options due to companies "forcing" those hours.
3. Is this beneficial? How much productivity can someone get out of the last 2 hours of a 12-hour work day? How much is that extra work worth?
4. Are you and your friends ready to take on those workloads for your whole life? Because it's hard to get out of that dynamic.
5. Burnout is a serious issue. Burnout can lead to depression, can lead to losing your job, to having serious health problems... It's not a joke. It's a serious risk.
It's not for you to decide where anyone derives their meaning and happiness in life or how many hours they should work. You can only decide this for yourself.
>2. Have you asked why this happens? Maybe it's not just people who like that, but people who have no other options due to companies "forcing" those hours.
There are always options. It's up to you to find the niche that works for you.
>3. Is this beneficial? How much productivity can someone get out of the last 2 hours of a 12-hour work day? How much is that extra work worth?
Depends on the individual.
>4. Are you and your friends ready to take on those workloads for your whole life? Because it's hard to get out of that dynamic.
Their decision.
>5. Burnout is a serious issue. Burnout can lead to depression, can lead to losing your job, to having serious health problems... It's not a joke. It's a serious risk.
It's each individual's risk to take. If someone wants to work 12 hours a day, it is their decision. "Full stop"
Everyone decides these things for themselves indeed, but that shouldn't stop others from having opinions regarding those decisions, or giving unsolicited advice to help others stop hurting themselves. I for sure hope my friends will step in and try to stop me if I go down the path of self-destruction.
And also, anyone is free to ignore the advice given by others. Which is a good thing, for much of it is bad advice.
Most importantly, it’s not an isolated thing. It’s not just one or two persons doing it: if it were that it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s a generalized culture issue that should be taken seriously and not only viewed in terms of individuals.
> And if companies allow and encourage staying more hours, it creates an environment where people can’t choose to work sane hours.
Yes they can, they just have to accept that they will get compensated and rewarded less than people who generate additional high quality work. That should be fine and is fair; those people working 8 hours are deriving value from other activities. It's not reasonable to say "I demand everyone works 8 hours because I want to work 8 hours and I don't want any ramifications for making that decision".
I've seen research suggesting that workers can get increased productivity working over 40 hours a week for several weeks, but after that, productivity actually goes negative relative to a 40 hour week, because more mistakes are being made that will require rework.
For how much time? There is a clear association between more working hours and more burnout [1] and health problems [2] that can be delayed for decades.
> Yes they can, they just have to accept that they will get compensated and rewarded less than people who generate additional high quality work.
Sorry, but in most places this doesn't happen. I'm lucky to be out of those environments, but the expectation tends to be that everybody works those hours or they're out, even if they're producing the same high quality work (also, I highly doubt that more hours equals more high quality work: productivity decreases after a certain point, specially in software, that's why 6-hour work days are being discussed so much). I still remember a friend being glad that he convinced his manager to "only" work 10 hours a day, because he was literally losing hair due to the extra work. This guy liked what he was doing and at the beginning said "it doesn't matter, I'm happy working these hours.
> It's not reasonable to say "I demand everyone works 8 hours because I want to work 8 hours and I don't want any ramifications for making that decision".
Well, this is the law in most countries in Europe. Overtime is heavily regulated (enforcement is another matter, unfortunately) precisely because business pressure can be disguised as "individual decisions". When a lot of people start working more hours, it puts pressure on people who fulfill their contracted hours, and who might not want or be able to put those extra hours.
In the end, it's a balancing act between giving some people the freedom to work the hours they want and helping the company put pressure on others to do more hours than they were contracted for (in other words, changing their work conditions without negotiation) or give others the freedom to do the job they were hired and paid for without pressure to do more than what was negotiated. Me, I prefer to err on the side of caution and choose the action that doesn't harm the health and well-being of the employees.
1: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302591873_The_Assoc... 2: https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/24/3/422/477763
The quote you reply to says nothing about meaning and happiness, just health.
And no matter how much meaning and happiness you believe you are getting, when your body and mind give out, that choice will be taken away from you and you will be taking time off from working, just not in a very pleasant way.
By "not having anything", I assume the OP is referring to things that give meaning.
>And no matter how much meaning and happiness you believe you are getting
This is awfully presumptuous and condescending.
>when your body and mind give out, that choice will be taken away from you and you will be taking time off from working, just not in a very pleasant way.
You mean when I'm not able to sustain long hours anymore? I'll have enough money saved to simply cut back on work. No spiraling health crisis necessary.
That part is the key. Otherwise it is just self imposed indentured servant-hood.
Many studies have shown that extra work has negative value, particularly in intellectual disciplines.
You will pay a price. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but you don't stay young forever.
Please help yourself before it's too late.
More like professionals are forced in, but get commensurate rewards. Employment isn't flexible enough for people to really choose extra work for extra rewards. The "typical" (average, median, raced-to-the-bottom, whatever) amount people are willing to work and the typical amount they're willing to work for dictates what jobs are even out there. When you need roughly replaceable workers, you give them all roughly the same deal, so professionals aren't just competing on wages vs skill, but on the whole necessarily-mostly-homogeneous package.
I'm happy to have these extra benefits well above a living wage, but I'd take a fraction of my comp for a fraction of my hours in a heartbeat, but we're in a world where a FAANG wage/hour means basically FAANG hours.
Now I’m a software dev working in an office, the base pay is much better, but there is no overtime.
Even if you are a software engineer you can make top-tier, simply insane amounts of money at most big companies with a sub-40 hour workweek.
It is simply a matter of finding the right team and having a good manager. The former is something you can affect and the latter can be luck. But you can definitely make some of the best compensation in CS and have cushy working hours if you play your cards right.
Or at least guilds with 'base' contracts / conditions for employments.
Actors all get the same basic level of protection with regards to working conditions, pensions, health care (?), but that does not stop them from negotiating different salaries (with a floor?) for the "100x" performers.
If Marx was still alive today, I think that he would answer the question about how modern workers have such better conditions than those in early capitalism the exact same way as when people in his time said that proletarian had better conditions than the peasants before them, which was nominally true.
In any case, the prescriptions of how a 19th century proletarian could improve their life are essentially the same. The idea is that the interests of your employer will always he opposite yours, as a result you will only be able to improve your conditions by organizing with your fellow workers in order to tip the balance of power, and eventually it is in your interests to change the conditions that lead to this conflict to begin with.
To claim that Marx isn't relevant for worker conditions today is to either misunderstand him or misrepresent him. The contradictions arising from social conflict can't be solved by air condition because they are bound to our mode of production.
Marx was inspired by the world around him, which consisted of poor worker conditions [0]. We can say this confidently because recent evolution in the study of ideology tells us exactly this: We are a product of our social and material environment, something we can't escape [1].
Anyway, my point is that the way CamperBob2 discusses the topic of Marx's inspiration makes it sound like a fundamental axiom of Marxism is the poor conditions of the working class and specifically their conditions during working hours. If this was true, we'd be able to conclude that the predictions of Marx [2] would be disproved by the gradual removal of these (poor) worker conditions.
We can show this isn't true by appealing to our shared knowledge about the world, where global inequality is increasing and where worker conflict was at the center of an (almost) successful presidential campaign. We can also show this with empirical data, where our shared knowledge may fail us. For instance, Marx predicted that the global rate of profit would continue to fall, the reasons for which are beyond the scope of HN. This has been demonstrated to be true by many Marxists along the years, of whom the most prominent since the rise of the IT-worker is the economist Andrew Kliman [3].
[0]: See Marx's theory of alienation and the concept of reification, for instances of this.
[1]: In particular, see Anthoni Gramsci through Louis Althusser and Slavoj Zizek.
[2]: Ranging from social conflict theory to capital accumulation, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the value-form and social conflict theory.
[3]: “The Persistent Fall in Profitability Underlying the Current Crisis: New Temporalist Evidence” by Andrew Kliman
Marxism isn't a normative ideology. You could be a despotic monopoly leader and still be a Marxist. Whether worker conditions are good or bad at any instant in any place has no bearing on Marxist analysis.
And the 8 hour work day was supposedly introduced by Ford, not by Unions.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/03/how-the-8-hour-workday-chang...
I still think the whole demand is completely backwards.
Article also mentions the info workers who work 12 hours and more - well they do it because they make good money that way. They'll retire by 40 and have the last laugh.
As for factory workers, are you sure the issue is factories not paying enough? Or what exactly is going on in the US economy? What is so expensive? Why is there so much competition for jobs?
Unions are a way of making HR listen.
Retail clerk?
Pretty much anything that falls under "essential jobs" during the pandemic fits the "in demand" label, and the vast majority of those pay low wages.
And no matter how easy it is for a company to replace a given worker in their job, no job should ever pay so little that the person in it cannot live on what they make from it.
Any business that cannot survive while paying its employees a true living wage does not deserve to exist, because it is offloading its costs onto the rest of us through the various social programs its employees depend upon to survive.
That's not true. The rest of us would have to pay those costs anyway. It's not like the person wouldn't exist, if they didn't have a job.
Given the choices
a) Business pays employee a living wage; taxpayers pay nothing for that person's survival
b) Business pays employee a less-than-living wage; taxpayers pay partially for that person's survival
c) Person has no job; taxpayers pay fully for that person's survival
(Note, of course, that this leaves off choice d) Person has no job, or does not make enough from their job to survive; for whatever reason, they also cannot obtain welfare, and they die.)
...I think that most people would agree that the best of these three is (a). In that situation "the rest of us" most certainly do not have to pay those costs.
Furthermore, I think the more important point than "the person would still exist if they didn't have a job" is "other, better jobs would still exist if that company folded due to unprofitability, or was never created in the first place".
People have an inherent right to life, liberty, and property.
Businesses are not some sacred abstract; they exist purely to support people. Any privileges they have (down to and including their existence), we grant them, and we can revoke from them if they are not fulfilling their fundamental purposes.
Given that we're talking about such businesses, the choice is between b and c, and b is clearly preferable.
For example the government may say that to clean their facility, cleaning companies need to be able to do a, b, c and after that it all comes down to the price. Almost all of them can do a,b,c so they compete on price, on cleaning company is not paying taxes though so can offer lower prices and wins all deals, forcing all other companies to stop paying taxes to survive, and makes the whole trade in that area morally bankrupt.
See also: construction business & tipping.
It's pure fantasy to assume every employer could pay a living wage. For example, take house cleaning. What if some pensioner can spare 30$/week to have their house cleaned. How are they supposed to pay a living wage? If somebody steps forward and says OK, I'll clean the house for 30$, fine. If not, tough luck. But to demand the pensioner should pay a living wage (like what, 2000$ or more to have their house cleaned), or call them evil for not paying enough, is backwards and absurd.
I don't call them evil for not paying enough.
I say they don't make enough to employ a cleaner as that cleaner's full-time job.
And the full-time job is not a valid argument. So if some company were to split their jobs into part time jobs, it would make it OK for you? I rather doubt that.
You only exhibit the socialist magic thinking again As if there are infinite resources, and the only problem is to redistribute them. That's not how the real work works. If you want to eat, somebody (possibly you) has to hunt or farm, gather resources, and so on. It's not a given that any number of people can simply earn a "living wage" or even have a job. Somebody has to create such jobs, that are productive enough to feed somebody.
Instead of complain about stinginess of businesses, prove your theories by creating jobs that pay better.
However, yes, I would agree with previous commenters that if you can't afford to pay people enough to live on then you don't have a business that society should deem viable. If everyone in society was scrabbling around for resources then you might have a point, but in actual fact, the dominant situation is that there is a tiny group of people who are extraordinarily wealthy, a larger-but-still-not-massive group of people who are comfortable, and a great deal of people who get what's left, often not very much at all. Resources are so unfairly distributed I just don't find your argument at all persuasive.
Socialist thought doesn't assume infinite resources, it just says that democracy should be extended much further than it is right now, particularly to the workplace. We could "create" jobs collectively and not leave the decision of how much to pay to a small group of people who have all the power simply because they have the money to start with.
The talk about "businesses that society should consider viable" is nonsense, as the example of the pensioner wanting someone to clean their apartment shows. What should they do if society doesn't consider them "viable", commit suicide?
If society doesn't deem some business "viable", they can simply refuse to work for that business.
If you want to create jobs "collectively", sorry to say, you are in full blown socialist territory, and you will fail, for the same reasons that socialism always fail (because planning economies can't assign resources efficiently enough).
This is an old complaint going back to the early days of the Industrial Revolution at least. The US once had an 8-hour day and a 40-hour week. Now those are only memories.
Unions. The people who brought you the weekend.