and if you're enjoying your "weekend", remember to thank a union worker
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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I was on a meeting the other day and we were discussing continuing education credits for a work-mandated cert. One of the younger guys said something along the lines of the training being easily knocked out over a weekend.
I thought why would you occupy your own personal time like that? Maybe in my younger days it wouldn’t bother me so much, but never would I do that now.
I'm familiar with similar certs (mandatory with 16-40 hrs of CEUs). My work knocks it out by attending a conference which always begins on Sunday. The compensation is that it's always at the beach, we take company cars, we get paid per diem for meals, we get paid for our travel time, the gas and hotel are paid for, etc and most importantly.... it's only once per year.
Some people bring their families and turn it into a mini vacation. It does eat into the weekend, but we're more than fairly compensated and it's still optional, you just have to attend several smaller and more boring trainings. The conference generally has a nice mixer event at least once and a really nice dinner at least once.
If you want my weekend make it worth my time and I won't mind it.
Fuck the grindset. I worked 65 hour weeks for five years and will never go back. My new job is hard capped at 40 thanks to a union.
Their wife's boyfriend thinks it is.
Any work beyond the standard work week in your country should be working for yourself running your own business.
It should be ALL about hour hourly rate. If you are dragging that down by giving away your time then jokes on you.
You can finish before your contract, but yeah, you need to be contracted.
Replace "bastard" with "idiot". It fits much better.
Who doesn't love a little 996?
As someone that takes advantage of flextime, this was confusing.
Enthusiastically providing your own labor increases the total supply of labor, leading to wage depression for you and every other worker.
Make business owners pay more for your labor, by making your time valuable to you, for your own life and for improving the lives of others, in family and community, about whom you genuinely care.
That only works once everyone is on board. Until then, you're just refusing extra pay out of principle. Which, I mean, don't let me stop you. I have respect for people who stick to their convictions. But in my current situation, I can't afford not to take extra hours. A labor deficit would be nice, but I don't think we can achieve the results we want by artificially reducing labor supply.
I'm not being pessimistic either, I'm proud of the work laborers around the world have been doing to unionize more industries. If we keep going, we'll all have livable wages with reasonable work schedules.
Yeah, that's the point of it. Since I have nothing better to do on every weekday, I just work more. Then I can fuck off camping for four days while everyone else keeps working all week.
I'm sure there's people out there that enjoy the routine of 5/7 days of the week going to work, but I try to avoid as many days not doing what I want as possible, so I will work excessive hours where possible so they get out of the way and free up my week.
The post is not intending to criticize an irregular work schedule on its merits. Indeed, some occupations require an irregular schedule.
The criticism directs at platforms manipulating workers by obfuscating the structure of exploitation through participation in the gig economy.
Note the text, "Working excessive hours isn't... [just] flex..."
Yeah, I realised that.
My brain was like,
"Working excessive hours isn't the flex(time) you think it is you exploited." And then randomly the word "bastard".
But re-read with my brain set to bad grammar meme setting, I realised it's like,
"Working excessive hours isn't the brag you think it is, you exploited idiot "