this post was submitted on 06 Sep 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.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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Even 32 hours a week with a proportional decrease in pay would be a huge improvement.
You shouldn't have to take a cut in pay for this. Productivity has increased and the benefits of the productivity increase has only gone to the ultra wealthy.
But negotiating only for higher wages per hour and lower hours as a package deal could make it harder to get either. It probably depends employer to employer, but doing both at the same time would be hard to make them do.
Which is why we need to build class solidarity, unions, and strike. A hundred years ago, people fought for everything they could get. They didn't say "safe working conditions or a 40h work week." They said, "we want all we can get."
Yes that'd be good. But I still don't see the advantage of only talking about these as a package deal.
If you start from a compromised position you will only get less.
How does putting these as separate line items in negations compromise the position?
Because it's easier to pick them apart separately. Divide and conquer is the oldest trick in the book.
A lot of people are struggling with inflation already. A 20% pay cut is not an improvement.
Yeah not for everyone. I'm thinking higher paying areas like technology and programming where pay is high but people are getting really burned out.
I'm a programmer, and it's very different from hourly work. Realistically, any programmer is coding for like 1-2 hours a day. There are meetings so we understand the problem we have to solve, and a lot of time thinking through the problems and architecture solutions. We're not sitting there typing for 8 hours a day, or at least those are the ones getting burned out. Realistically I'm working like 30 hours a week already, with only 10 hours being real coding, the rest being talking, researching, learning, and pondering. Maybe I'm lucky I work somewhere that that stuff isn't seen as slacking.
Ugh. I once did some independent programming and the guy insisted I do it in front of him because it involved his proprietary data. So much griping about the time I spent looking at documentation or referring to coding assistance sites like Stack Overflow. I quit on day two.
Yeah, I can see in those specific situations. Cost of living tends to be high in areas with a lot of technology jobs though so I don't know.
I'm not those people so I can't speak for them.
Honestly as a mid-career IT person, I'd take a 30-40% cut for that extra day without a second of hesitation.
Uh no, speak for yourself and yourself only. I don't want less money, that wouldn't be an improvement