[HN Gopher] I'm a Frito-Lay Factory Worker. I Work 12-Hour Days,...
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I'm a Frito-Lay Factory Worker. I Work 12-Hour Days, 7 Days a Week
Author : elsewhen
Score : 172 points
Date : 2021-07-17 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| Beaver117 wrote:
| Everyone knows to work smart not hard. What's stopping them?
| otde wrote:
| This is the "have you tried yoga" of labor discourse --
| shallow, unhelpful, and really dismissive, especially when
| factory workers are not given the choice to work additional
| hours, working conditions are challenging at best, and
| management seems (putting it charitably) negligent.
| brianwawok wrote:
| That's a pretty demeaning way to look at people.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| They are being very smart, by striking and standing up for
| their rights.
|
| I think forcing people to work that many hours should be
| illegal, like in the EU
| mchusma wrote:
| They weren't forced to work though.
|
| Conflating optional decisions with force is dangerous.
|
| If they have better alternatives, they should do those. If
| they believe that by stopping work, they can get change from
| their employer, go for it. But nothing here is forced.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Depends what you mean by forced.
|
| If you can get fired for "underperforming" or even think
| you can then this is forced in the minds of the employee.
|
| There is a massive power imbalance.
|
| Sure the guy can resign and get another job, just like the
| tech industry right? Might even get $200k plus RSUs and
| free lunches?
|
| More like struggle to get another job, maybe get evicted,
| and oh surprise new job is shit too and they force you to
| do OT or an algorithm fires you.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| Layke1123 wrote:
| What a myopic view. Everyone knows to just be rich, whats
| stopping them from being so? /s
| [deleted]
| jjcm wrote:
| "In its latest contract offer, Frito-Lay has said it would raise
| wages by four percent over the next two years"
|
| Consumer price index has risen 4.5% since June of last year. With
| Biden planning similar amounts of printing, it's likely this
| trend will continue. What Frito-Lay is actually saying here is
| that they will cut employee's purchasing power by 5.2% over the
| next two years if that amount of inflation holds.
| baron816 wrote:
| > I stay here because in two years, I'll be 62 and I have a union
| pension acquired over 37 years. I've spent so much time here that
| I might as well take that pension and social security and call it
| quits.
|
| Had they not been locked in by the pension, I'd imagine most of
| them would've quit, and Frito-Lay would've been force to improve
| conditions.
|
| I wonder if unions prefer pensions pretty much for the same
| reason--it allows businesses to abuse workers, forcing them to
| turn to unions to bargain for better conditions while also
| keeping them locked in to the business and thus the union.
| vfclists wrote:
| Nope. He is just like a prisoner coming up for parole who
| doesn't want to get into any trouble that will affect his
| release.
|
| The risk isn't worth it.
| user-the-name wrote:
| You read this and your first instinct is to attack unions?
| baron816 wrote:
| Why is your first instinct to assume unions are wholesome,
| benevolent actors? Unions have a long history of corruption,
| racism, and being associated with organized crime.
| hogFeast wrote:
| I used to work as an equity analyst, so have come at this problem
| from totally the other end.
|
| The number one problem, that I have seen no-one talk about, are
| certain incentives from the market (not short-termism, if someone
| says that they don't understand what is happening).
|
| I buy PEP at 15x earnings...I don't need a lot of growth to make
| that price work. Even if they grow a 10-20% over five years, I
| will probably make a market return. Which is fair.
|
| If I buy PEP at 25x earnings plus (roughly where it is
| today)...that is different. I need earnings to double and then
| some within five years. Huge imperative for growth. If I don't
| see the growth, I will lose 50%+ on the position.
|
| So when the share price is that high, the incentives are out the
| window. The board is never going to hire the guy who says: well,
| share price could do with a reset, how about we take a year
| boys...no, at 25x earnings, they will take the guy who comes into
| the room ten minutes after his piece, rips his shirt off in the
| interview, and drinks blood for breakfast. The boys on the comp
| committee want growth, they will set the 20x salary bonus package
| accordingly, and the exec team is going to fight like rats in a
| bag to get the juice.
|
| This got very bad in FMCG too because 3G Capital exposed the
| amount of middle management waste at Heinz and, of course,
| consumers are consuming less of these unhealthy snacks. No top-
| line growth, so costs is the only way you can pay out.
|
| On the OP, it is deplorable. Investors do not want this. Most
| fund managers do not have money in their own funds, the PR is
| horrendous. Companies shouldn't treat their workers this way.
| But...the Fed has pumped up the market, every exec team is
| feeling joocy on that stimmy, multiples are through the
| roof...everyone knows it is going to blow but the music is still
| playing.
|
| I have no idea what the solution is, only that lots of people get
| the incentives totally wrong. Investors aren't short-term. Every
| investor wants the stock they can hold for five, ten, twenty
| years. But I have seen good companies run themselves into the
| ground because the comp committee wanted a "stretch" target that
| was literally impossible (particularly in retail, any company
| that can grow unprofitably but cheaply will be hung by the comp
| committee). Companies are even doing % of market cap growth by
| date X packages now, it is truly obscene (thank Elon). CEOs
| create these cultish atmospheres because of the incentives of pay
| (this is true of PEP: afaik, Nooyi was a terrible CEO, made
| terrible acquisitions to goose the share price, never got
| challenged, and walks away with $25-50m...if you lose the guys on
| the floor, you don't have a company tomorrow...if you don't hire
| Nooyi, you have saved billions in shareholder value...but it is
| the latter that is indispensable?).
| [deleted]
| gwright wrote:
| I feel like there is something interesting in here but the
| finance jargon and writing style is obscuring it for me.
| mjevans wrote:
| It was unclear for me too. Though the gist of what I
| understood around the jargon:
|
| Overvalued companies are driven by the stock market to have
| unsustainable growth, always more than before or at the very
| least always going up over time, even with complete market
| dominance.
|
| Therefore once a company caps out a market only cutting
| quality or civic duty corners are left and it becomes a
| knife-fight to the death for all involved; with more literal
| impacts to the workers and customers (quality of output).
| Even if a company COULD just allow the profit to stabilize at
| a long term sustainable level that would benefit everyone
| most overall; they won't and will instead be driven for short
| term results.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Yes. Almost.
|
| But the point is explicitly not that the issue is short-
| termism. I am not going to go over everything again, but
| the issue is not solved (as everyone today thinks) by
| bailing people in.
|
| Look at Tesla's exec package: Elon's package is
| what...$100bn? He will lose money if the stock goes to
| zero, but that is still a very one-sided risk for him. So
| doing long-term packages makes no difference because the
| reward is all one-sided, no risk, and the fundamentals
| usually aren't changed. It actually makes it worse because
| you dangle $100m in front of someone on a base package of
| $500k salary...they will believe anything to get that
| money. So timescale isn't relevant (again, the market isn't
| short-term...every investor wants a "one decision
| stock"...you buy, hold for the rest of your life).
|
| As an example, this is why you see so much M&A...it makes
| no sense but you buy revenues from another company, you get
| growth. Execs don't care about the price, you just need
| growth, you just need to hit your targets. Whether they are
| short or long, the issue is with the incentives and target
| (although are wrong for a few different reasons I have
| already mentioned, and I haven't yet seen a company that
| has managed to structure pay perfectly...most just wildly
| overpay for very mediocre execs who add nothing).
| vfclists wrote:
| Speak English
| JackFr wrote:
| Where is the union?
|
| That has got to be the single most ineffective union I've ever
| seen. If that's what a union shop looks like I can understand why
| people might not want to pay union dues.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| My brother-in-law works at the Target distribution center in
| Topeka, and is very confused why these workers don't just quit
| and work at either the Target or WalMart centers that are
| practically next-door and begging for workers.
|
| Definitely sounds like a rough gig here, but everyone is begging
| for entry-level labor, most at higher wages than this. The
| workers need to just protest with their feet and quit.
| underseacables wrote:
| What percentage of labor cost would a company like Frito lay have
| to reach before they consider moving the company to another
| country?
|
| I think about Oreos and how they are made in Mexico now, and I
| always wonder what was the calculus behind that. How much money
| are they saving?
|
| Is there a generally recognized point where labor is so expensive
| that outsourcing begins to make more sense?
|
| Edit: my bad grammar
| crackercrews wrote:
| The U.S. keeps sugar prices artificially high, and sugar is the
| first ingredient in Oreos. [1] That is why the candy companies
| fled Chicago for Canada. Probably also drove Oreo mfg out as
| well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreo
| JackFr wrote:
| Off topic tidbit from the article - note only corn based snacks
| are made in Topeka. One presumes there are factories in
| Washington and Idaho for the potato chips.
|
| Shipping vegetables is shipping water.
| akudha wrote:
| Jeez! 59 year old guy with the same salary for the last 10 years.
| People working in 100 degree temperatures with no air
| conditioning.
|
| This is depressing to read :(
| raffraffraff wrote:
| America needs an equivalent to the EU working time act.
| bserge wrote:
| People like that work the same hours in the EU.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Working 7 days a week all the time is not legal in the EU,
| see [0]. Also, many EU countries have even stricter local
| regulations in that regard.
|
| https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-
| resources/workin...
| Tarucho wrote:
| But are the regulations enforced?
| mrunkel wrote:
| Yes
| celticninja wrote:
| Yes, although workarounds exist, but not in a way that
| would make this sort of employment possible.
| hosenten wrote:
| You have even mandatory holiday as intern.
|
| You have health care either through your family or through
| any normal job including flipping burgers.
|
| You have min 20 days holiday as burger flipper as well.
|
| It's a shame how unfair humans get treated in the USA or
| let's say disgusting.
|
| And no federal maternity leave in the USA.
|
| Country of freedom for the rich and social shit hole for the
| rest.
| brundolf wrote:
| Wasn't this made illegal 100 years ago?
| knuthsat wrote:
| Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming
| work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no
| alternative?
|
| Whenever I see people working really hard in other parts of the
| world, especially when the country is filled with other
| opportunities, I always wonder is it just everyone else that is
| raising the bar and now the standard is very time consuming work.
|
| For example, there's year long tourism on Madeira. Everyone there
| is working hard all year long, charging for tourist services very
| cheaply. Yet there are many examples of places with year long
| tourism, but you can still find mass closures during siesta.
|
| Everyone, through culture, decided not to overwork and there's no
| one "hard-working" enough to have their business open during
| siesta. No employee will agree to work during siesta, similarly
| employers do not expect their business to be open.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Factories aren't generally in cities. In a rural town, your job
| choices may be work at Walmart, one of two factories, or on a
| farm. The "hard" factory job may be the "best" bet among the
| choices.
|
| The bigger question is usually why don't people move from a
| rural location? And the answer is usually "it's complicated ".
| Old parents to take care of. It's familiar. Friends. Maybe own
| your simple home. Maybe your church is there. Maybe quiet life
| is your thing.
| bena wrote:
| Maybe those jobs don't pay enough to save up to move.
|
| That and the logistics of moving. Not to mention, having a
| job beats not having a job. And moving often means not having
| a job to start. Especially when your only work experience is
| retail, factory floor, and farmhand.
|
| You can't really afford to take a week off of getting paid.
|
| And if you're constantly working to make ends meet, you don't
| really have time or energy to work on developing marketable
| skills.
| 8note wrote:
| Another answer to the bigger question: it costs money to move
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| The best thing about moving to remote work is that it will
| enable people to live in these smaller communities while
| having the increased income of the city. I hope this will
| bring more money back to local economies and revitalize rural
| areas.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If remote work really takes off, it won't be long until
| most employers adjust salaries down to each employee's
| local cost of labor. Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC
| salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay
| a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural
| Montana?
| nawitus wrote:
| Remote salaries might end up being somewhere between
| rural Montana and Bay Area. There's no reason to assume
| there's a huge supply of software engineers in the US
| which would make all remote salaries to be in the low-
| end.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work
| in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana
| salary to get someone who works in rural Montana?
|
| Because you can't get anyone in rural Montana who is
| capable of getting a job paying Bay Area or NYC salaroies
| to accept that offer. Adjustment will result in meeting
| somewhere in the middle but whether that's 25% or 95% of
| Bay Area salaries is an open question.
| vitaflo wrote:
| All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as remote
| workers compete for it, driving out the locals.
|
| Remote workers also don't fully contribute to the economy
| of the rural area because their place of employment is not
| in that area. If the company the remote worker works for
| does well and grows, that won't grow the rural community.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Right but the remote worker will spend money locally
| keeping the local economy going. And do you not pay local
| income tax? The only possible downside is if they're
| hooked on convenience and order everything online from
| amazon or whatever instead of patronising local shops.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The opposite is true. They pay the same taxes, use the
| same stores and go to the same bars and attend tbe same
| cultural events. A lot of rural home owners work in a
| nearby town as well.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as
| remote workers compete for it
|
| when you stop competing for the same strip of land, 10
| miles from the pacific ocean, it turns out there's a sort
| of stupendous amount of land.
|
| while, yes, there will technically be some competition,
| in the areas under discussion i don't think it will
| meaningfully effect housing prices.
|
| (i could divide the amount of land in rural america by
| the number of possible work-from-home employees and we
| could figure out what it'll do to the average population
| density. but, hell, i've lived in these areas, i don't
| need to.)
| jrockway wrote:
| > All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as
| remote workers compete for it, driving out the locals.
|
| Rural America is huge. If every single person in New York
| city got themselves a suburban house, they'd take up 0.1%
| of the United States (about the area of two counties).
|
| Housing is expensive in cities because 10 million people
| want to live in the same square mile. The US, however,
| has 4 million of those square miles. (Everyone in New
| York City could move to California and have 10 acres of
| their own. I did the calculation with the intent of
| showing that everyone in the country could have their own
| square mile, but that's not true -- I didn't realize how
| big a square mile actually is.)
|
| Remote workers probably aren't going to raise the cost of
| living that much. It is certainly possible that they
| could all move to the same place (i.e. turn Aspen,
| Colorado into New York City), and that would be a
| problem. But if people randomly move into rural areas,
| there just aren't enough people buying 1 million dollar
| apartments in the same place to "gentrify out" farmers.
|
| I'll also point out, that remote work doesn't necessarily
| imply that it's possible to move to the middle of
| nowhere. You still need a good Internet connection, and
| many people want to live closer than an hour's drive away
| from a grocery store or hospital. I work remotely but I'm
| happy to live 3 minutes away from Manhattan. There are
| factors other than commuting to work that account for
| where people live.
| petee wrote:
| Depending on your skill set or circumstances, you need a job
| quick; more hours means more money. What sucks is then you
| become reliant on that money, and changing careers is near
| impossible without risking your family's security.
|
| Personally Ive done the 12+ hr/7 day in the film industry, a
| notoriously abusive industry (tv shows shoot 14-18hr days) but
| the money is great. We call it blood money, and do it until we
| need a vacation. We also get health benefits
| walrus01 wrote:
| > Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time
| consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is
| no alternative?
|
| A lot of people who work paycheck-to-paycheck in "flyover
| state" parts of the USA do not have sufficient savings to
| relocate to a place where they could work a normal 40-hour week
| schedule and support themselves on a reasonable income. That,
| combined with family ties and obligations force them to remain
| in their local community.
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-struggle-to-save...
| anemoiac wrote:
| Why people "decide" to do this sort of work? Oh, I don't know,
| probably the same reasons people "decide" to be poor.
| mcculley wrote:
| In addition to the many insightful replies here add: Once you
| have a working class addicted to some combination of fast food,
| sugar, caffeine, alcohol, pot, opioids, and other drugs which
| cost money, they have a reduced capability to dig themselves
| out of a hole.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| You skipped rent which dwarfs all that.
|
| Fast food and sugar are cheap for what you get. Pot isn't
| addictive.
| samatman wrote:
| Man it is super weird that you put caffeine on that list.
|
| I assume, because you did it, that you're one of those
| mutants who doesn't use it nor like it much. Good for you and
| all, but _caffeine made the modern world_ , the majority of
| the population uses it every day, and industrial society
| wouldn't function without it.
|
| It's also super-cheap even on a modest salary, and most
| workplaces give it away for free because of how necessary it
| is to production.
| mcculley wrote:
| I am aware of Pollan's recently well-publicized assertion
| that caffeine made the modern world. I am unconvinced.
|
| I quit caffeine a few years ago. I'm not an unusual mutant.
| I have the genes on markers rs4410790 and rs2470893 that
| indicate a typical reaction to caffeine.
| (https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/)
|
| Most people experience a temporary increase in productivity
| until they build up a tolerance for caffeine. Thereafter,
| they are just paying and consuming to avoid headaches and
| reach the baseline.
| diordiderot wrote:
| What was your experience quitting like. I want to but am
| afraid
| ac29 wrote:
| According to the article, "Most people make between $16.50 and
| $20 an hour".
|
| So, at 84 hours a week (46 normal pay, 38 overtime at 1.5x),
| thats $1700/week on the low end, or $88k/year.
|
| I dont think that excuses the forced overtime and I would
| absolutely expect severe health and/or mental health issues to
| result from the overwork. But, these people can quit (and
| according to the article many do) - I expect the only reason
| folks do stay is because they cant make the same money anywhere
| else.
| robarr wrote:
| People with poor formal qualifications or habilities not
| longer marketable have little choice except double shifts to
| raise a family. Just imagine being 40 years old, no college
| or technical education, having only retail work experience.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| You still have many options. It is probably true that for a
| person in that situation, they may not be apparent or seem
| feasible.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| They are not making that much as it's unpaid overtime or
| "suicide" as they colloquially call it according to the
| article.
|
| Edit: sorry I'm wrong. I read "kills you over time" as "kills
| your overtime"
| ac29 wrote:
| The article doesnt say anything about it being unpaid. The
| "suicide" is a forced double shift, not a forced unpaid
| shift.
| sdfsadfjaslj wrote:
| The article does not claim that it is unpaid. If they were
| working unpaid hours that would be a serious legal issue
| and state and federal regulators would be getting involved.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Wage theft is the largest form of theft.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| This is not unpaid. That's extremely illegal.
| indymike wrote:
| Unpaid overtime is highly illegal un the US for hourly
| workers. That's why tech loves salaried workers so much.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| techie employees make far far more than hourly with
| overtime. ask your local conteactor/temp/vendor.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| The real problem is cost of living without a job. It is just
| too fking expensive to live with little or no income.
|
| As a result, people in less than abundant job markets are
| forced into taking up jobs to merely survive.
|
| If someone is trying to imagine an alternative world, they
| should visit non-tier 1 cities of SE Asia or India or China.
| People routinely survive with less than full time income. Sure,
| it's a life with less material pleasure but it is a
| surprisingly adequate survival life.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| People running factories have been exploiting and overworking
| the people working in their factories since there have been
| factories. There's nothing new here.
| kcplate wrote:
| I think there is always going to be a bit of a disconnect and
| lack of empathy about excessive work hours when an hourly
| worker gripes about forced overtime (where in the US they are
| legally required to be paid at least 1.5x their hourly rate
| for the overtime) is complaining to salaried management (that
| are generally working a similar number of hours...but unpaid
| beyond the 40).
|
| Kind of makes you wonder which side is being exploited.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Management gets paid a lot more, and half their "work" time
| is goofing off.
| Exmoor wrote:
| Besides some of the obvious reasons such as the previously
| mentioned location limitations and low education limiting
| possibilities, I'll throw out another one. Once you're in a job
| like this it kind of limits your ability to branch out into
| less physically demanding and better paying work. Your resume
| kind of pigeon holes you with respect to future employment and
| the fact that you're working long, exhausting days means its
| very hard to find the time and energy to build your skills
| outside of work.
| risedotmoe wrote:
| There is no job that won't work you for as much as they can.
| They pay you low enough to where you're dependent on them
| paycheck to paycheck. The turnover is high and if you don't
| like the conditions they get rid of you. There are a ton of
| people in line for your job who will put up with worse working
| conditions so you either lick boots or you aren't making ends
| meet this week. The culture at every job is that if you aren't
| sweating from 6AM to 6PM you're "lazy." Don't want to work
| overtime? You either won't make ends meet or you will be fired.
| If you don't make ends meet in America you will be homeless
| unless you are married with children or can live with your
| parents.
|
| The only way to remedy this is to go to college or trade school
| and hope your degree makes you valuable enough that you can
| bargain for a realistic work/life balance.
| XenophileJKO wrote:
| College or trade school is not the only way out. The core way
| out is skill attainment. College and trade school are one way
| to do this.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| No choices. This is in the Midwest in the middle of no-where.
|
| No you can't realistically move - every other location is far
| more expensive and would require significant relocation
| expense, and you'd have to leave your community, likely where
| you were born and raise(d) your family.
| nradov wrote:
| And yet during the Great Depression poor people moved by the
| thousands to find work in other states. Sure it was hard but
| they did what they had to in order to survive.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Except the large numbers that didn't survive.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Mobility doesn't work like that anymore. Moving states in
| 1929 meant, for the most part, a completely fresh start -
| your landlord wasn't going to chase you for the rest of the
| rent on your lease, you didn't have a car payment or health
| insurance to worry about (using social security nets like
| medical or housing assistance is even harder when you
| haven't yet established residency in a new state), and if
| you had any debts or even reputation issues they were very
| unlikely to "follow" you. Now we have credit reporting,
| background checks, and a system that makes it all but
| impossible to "start over" when you have no other options.
| jollybean wrote:
| "Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time
| consuming work?"
|
| About 50% of people have very little choice in the types of
| jobs and conditions they work in.
| vasco wrote:
| There's no "siesta" (a spanish word and custom) anywhere in
| Portugal, including Madeira. Businesses may close for an hour
| or so for lunch, but "siesta" is not a thing. Not sure why you
| picked that as an example out of any other work expectation in
| any country.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Time consuming?
|
| I worked in a factory for years when I was younger, not too
| different than what he is describing.
|
| There are some jobs, like the one I have now writing code where
| you think about them even when you aren't doing them, they
| invade your dreams. I feel like I am writing code all the time,
| even when I'm not logged in to the work laptop actually doing
| it.
|
| There are other jobs where you don't think about them when you
| aren't doing them, you go home after work and then you stop
| thinking about work.
|
| The factory job I had was not like either of those, I did not
| think about work even while I was doing it. My mind was free
| while my body was getting paid to do work. I could be thinking
| about anything else other than the physical work I was doing.
|
| I'm getting old, won't be able to write code much longer. The
| factory job that I used to do doesn't exist now, it's been
| automated. Save your money, kids.
| [deleted]
| bko wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > After 37 years, I still get forced to work 12 hours a day,
| seven days a week... I make $20.50 [an hour] after 37 years
| here.
|
| Assuming they obey overtime laws, he's' making $112,996 a year
| ((40 * 20.5) + (44 * 1.5 * 20.5) * 52).
|
| I think that has something to do with it. There likely aren't
| any alternatives where someone with that skill set can make
| nearly double the median income for Topeka, Kansas. But there
| are probably alternatives where they can make maybe a half that
| at more reasonable hours.
| nabilhat wrote:
| If you don't have an easy option close at hand it ends up being
| a choice between continuing, taking a massive hit to your
| income, or choosing unemployment.
|
| The pay is exactly high enough to maintain minimal staffing.
| That's normal, but in working conditions like this sometime it
| ends up a tiny bit higher than the local rate for similar jobs
| if there's competition for employees. Not everyone can maintain
| the working conditions. They leave, get kicked out, or they're
| useful (or connected) enough to keep around working humane
| hours.
|
| The rest have bills, or legal requirements to maintain
| employment, or burned a bridge at the other factory in town, or
| they're inexperienced enough to not know better. They establish
| a reputation as an employee who can be pushed into working
| inhumane hours. Managers are often rewarded for keeping up with
| production with a small team.
|
| A few years go by before you know it, and working hours like
| this is expensive. You don't have time to maintain your stuff
| and house, you pay someone else to. Kids need to be watched.
| Spouses leave. Drugs or alcohol offer to fill the holes in
| Maslow's Hierarchy you've sacrificed. Savings don't pile up
| like one might assume.
|
| Interviewing is treacherous. If you're lucky you work a night
| shift so you can do an interview instead of sleeping. They'll
| ask you how much you make per hour and offer you a lower
| "starting rate" hourly wage with fewer hours, which would cut
| your income drastically, and suggest there might be a
| review/small raise in 6 months. They'll call your employer
| before offering you a job at that rate, putting you at risk of
| retaliation whether you take the offer or not.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time
| consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is
| no alternative?
|
| As someone who had to do similar work for years the answer is
| that there were no alternatives.
|
| No one takes a shitty job on purpose.
| treis wrote:
| That then raises the question of why they're paying time and
| a half to work their employees to death.
| phreack wrote:
| I thought so as well, but then I started offering jobs to
| people I knew hated their jobs and also worked unpaid
| overtime constantly, with the smallest salaries. But for some
| reason, when offered a 6x salary freelancing, for less hours,
| with guidance, and the road paved as much as possible,
| everyone refuses.
|
| Turns out there are people who take shitty jobs on purpose,
| out of a sense of... I don't know, fear, embarrassment,
| impostor syndrome, or a combination of them.
|
| *This is not in the US.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They want something stable. Freelancing is not.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Kids, car, rent, healthcare = Need something stable
| mertd wrote:
| Maybe they think the offer is too good to be true. In some
| countries it is default to assume everyone is out to scam
| you until proven otherwise.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| It's a self-feeding cycle.
|
| First you need work two 10 hour shifts a day, 7 days a week
| to survive. Then you can't even study, because you can't
| afford it.
|
| This is why proper unemployment and free schools (evil
| SOCIALISM) comes in to play. People don't need to work
| themselves to death just to survive, there are safety nets
| you can fall back on. (Yes there are holes in said nets, but
| it's better than the gaping black hole the US has).
| justlern2code wrote:
| You are free to offer them $100k / yr for 40hr weeks at your
| company.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Its a very good question. I think in general it is important to
| realize that a significant amount of "design" work goes in to
| creating economies. Local, state, and national decisions will
| lead to certain conditions. How were those decisions made, and
| under what conditions? For any given place the answer will be
| different. How does one place compare to another?
|
| It is my view that it is perfectly feasible to design economies
| (in a voluntary way) where people can work 20 hours a week and
| have two months off a year every year. Or closer to our current
| world, there is no question in my mind that we could keep
| things as good or better they are now materially, while making
| sure no person has to work more than 40 hours a week to
| survive.
|
| I do love to talk about specific strategies [1] but that
| quickly activates our tribal instincts and can cause violent
| arguments even when our underlying goals are in near complete
| agreement. So it can be useful to just ponder on the above. How
| did things get the way they became? Is it due to iron wrought
| natural laws, or historical decisions we could freely agree to
| change?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27860696
| clairity wrote:
| as nice as that utopia would be, the fundamental flaw with
| trying to limit working days/hours is that some people will
| still pour their whole lives into work, which creates an
| iterated game that pushes the equilibrium for everyone toward
| working more. there's no practical way to mitigate this
| powerful, arguably inate, incentive.
|
| the other option is actively coercing a daily/weekly work
| limit, and that not only severely infringes personal
| liberties, but eventually makes whole economies less
| competitive as the hardest working & most ambitious workers
| migrate away.
|
| the better approach is to try to ensure everyone has dignity
| and fair pay for the amount of work that they do. that's a
| function of the distribution of pay and wealth, which is
| something we can legislate via sticks and carrots.
| distributedsean wrote:
| I can't believe people are even having this conversation.
| As a civilization we solved this problem about a century
| ago. We know the solution. In the US labour law has been
| subverted and undermined. Thats the problem. It's not that
| nothing can be done about it. Lots can be done and has been
| done around the globe (but predominately in advanced
| economies, of which the US is one).
| Frost1x wrote:
| >some people will still pour their whole lives into work,
| which creates an iterated game that pushes the equilibrium
| for everyone toward working more. there's no practical way
| to mitigate this powerful, arguably inate, incentive.
|
| The trick here is to make sure those who don't push for the
| incentives are taken care of. You need to make sure
| everyone participating at the sane rates are taken care of
| in their needs and some wants. After that, you allow for
| those obsessed with incentives and wants to work as much as
| they want to get extravagant things. It's easier said than
| done but I believe its attainable. If you can create an
| economy where that sort of effort at work is used to buy
| luxuries and not necessities, then you have a good model
| that still has a balance of incentives without dragging the
| rest of society into a work obsessed life.
|
| People who put for this amount of effort shouldn't be doing
| it because they have to, they should be doing it because
| they want to. Unfortunately many people are doing it
| because they really have to, that or their standard of
| living drops significantly, their overall longevity.
| Unfortunately that's the world we have. People are forced
| to work at these sorts of rates to survive and it's only
| getting worse. It's not that they're slaving away their
| lives because they want to get a new luxury car or exotic
| vacation, it's that the alternatives to not doing it means
| they may be homeless next month or looking for somewhere
| new to live.
| clairity wrote:
| yah, that's why ultimately the better focus is on a more
| equitable (but not equal) distribution of pay and wealth.
| worrying about the number of hours in a work week (or
| even minimum wage, in the long run) is a distraction in
| this regard (popular distractions on hn and elsewhere, by
| how well received such misguided ideas seem to be). we
| should be making labor markets radically transparent for
| workers, and legislatively shifting power to humans over
| amoral corporate entities. companies should be working
| for the people at large, not the other way around. once
| you accumulate about $2-10MM in assets, you've won the
| economy and we should make it steeply, progressively
| harder (but not impossible) to accumulate more. this also
| has the nice side effect of making the economy more
| dynamic and resilient, while also fostering more
| innovation all around.
| rantwasp wrote:
| if people want to work more that's fine but the others
| should not be punished for it.
|
| you see: some people push very hard because their life is
| their work. They don't have time for something else because
| they work a lot, and they work a lot effectively consuming
| what should be their free time because they don't have the
| mental energy to so something else.
|
| Once you create a bit of space and disentangle yourself
| from your work not a lot of people want to work extra time.
| ideally life should be split between work and creative
| pursuits and the percentage of work should decrease until
| it eventually hits 0. People will still do stuff, but your
| livelihood should not be tied to your job. You should
| pursue your "hobbies" because they are fun and/or
| fulfilling.
|
| Automation is good enough today that we should not have to
| work more than 15-20 hours per week. Knowledge workers
| already do this but "butt in seat" mentality still says 40
| hours per week. It's a tragedy really. We took all the
| productivity gains our technological advances brought and
| use them to create more bs work instead of reducing the
| amount of work we have to do.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| > the fundamental flaw with trying to limit working
| days/hours is that some people will still pour their whole
| lives into work,
|
| To be clear, I am talking about a voluntary system. No one
| would be prevented from working more, it just wouldn't be
| necessary to survive. I love to work pretty much all the
| time, though only some of that is hours I am billing to my
| employer.
|
| EDIT: I quickly rewrote my original comment after posting,
| but I do see one quoted reply got in before the change.
| Just wanted to add this note about the change.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _I see no contradiction or flaw. What I desire is a
| world where it is possible for any person to survive
| working 20 hours a week with a couple months off._
|
| What GP is arguing is that is achieved by fixing the pay
| distribution, _not_ by limiting hours. If you only limit
| hours but don 't fix the pay problem you create perverse
| incentives where people _have_ to work undocumented
| "overtime" or face the threat that they will be replaced
| by someone who will or where people who want to work
| overtime face punitive punishments if they do so.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| These are NOT "design" jobs. They aren't "knowledge/service"
| jobs either.
|
| And fun fact: retraining absolutely does not work. Less than
| 10% can be retrained and usually they are the segment that
| could have retrained themselves without specific retraining.
| iamjackg wrote:
| I think you might have misunderstood the comment you're
| replying to: they're saying that economies (and related
| policies) are often built through some form of design
| process, not that factory jobs are design jobs.
| jbay808 wrote:
| > How did things get the way they became? Is it due to iron
| wrought natural laws, or historical decisions we could freely
| agree to change?
|
| Reminds me of Scott Alexander's _Meditations on Moloch_ ,
| which also ponders this question. I can't do it justice with
| just one excerpt, but here's one passage that always stays
| with me:
|
| _The reason our current system isn't a utopia is that it_
| wasn't designed by humans _. Just as you can look at an arid
| terrain and determine what shape a river will one day take by
| assuming water will obey gravity, so you can look at a
| civilization and determine what shape its institutions will
| one day take by assuming people will obey incentives._
|
| ... _Just as the course of a river is latent in a terrain
| even before the first rain falls on it - so the existence of
| Caesar's Palace was latent in neurobiology, economics, and
| regulatory regimes even before it existed. The entrepreneur
| who built it was just filling in the ghostly lines with real
| concrete._
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Sorry, but this is BS. The course of a river is a direct
| result of several close-to-deterministic forces and
| influences. Caesar's Palace, along with "neurobiology,
| economics, and regulatory regimes" are manifestations of
| many different forces, a large number of which are subject
| to individual and social choice-making. The pretense that
| "neurobiology is destiny", "economics is as immutable as
| physics" and "regulatory regimes are natural law" is just
| completely bogus, and the argument is one entirely in favor
| of the status quo, by the status quo.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Are you arguing against me, the essay, or the excerpt? I
| don't think your rebuttal really hits at the main body of
| the essay, which is about how competitive pressure can
| trap groups into miserable situations that no individual
| wants, but which are stable enough to be hard to break
| out of. It's not that you can _really_ predict the form
| of societal institutions, but just that they perhaps aren
| 't shaped by free choice as much as they seem, because of
| how much the incentive landscape restricts our choices.
|
| I don't think the point is that the exact detailed form
| of Las Vegas was inevitable, but rather that it
| exemplifies the collective madness that these forces can
| produce.
|
| Although perhaps more relevant to this thread would be
| how a society might, under pressure, lose its traditional
| siesta and never get it back. He mentions examples like
| this too.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Going on strike is deciding not to do it, and the article
| suggests they can't hire anyone:
|
| > Frito-Lay has been told they need to fix this but
| unfortunately, when they bring in new people, they force the
| same schedule on them and they quit. Frito-Lay has waited so
| long to replace workers, and now Frito Lay has a horrible
| reputation in town so a lot of people won't work here.
|
| It seems like the existing workers mostly put up with it for a
| while, and then it eventually fell apart like you'd expect.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| I think it is also interesting why people agree to work for the
| fraction of value they create for the company. Somehow this
| kind of suffering and exploitation is socially acceptable.
| Companies make billions and workers struggle to put food on the
| table. I think governments should focus on companies avoiding
| tax rather than taxing them though workers (as workers suffer
| and yield is fraction of what companies should be paying) and
| we should look at tying minimum wage to company revenue (with a
| nationwide minimum, so that worker always gets paid a wage they
| can live off).
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| I'm generally a libertarian but I think current corporate law
| is insane. This seems like a reasonable starting point, maybe
| along with a policy requiring giving each employee a stake in
| the company.
| opinion-is-bad wrote:
| Does the employee have to buy into that stake? Do they
| surrender it, or sell it, or keep it when they leave? Do
| they get more over time? Why should minimum wage field
| hands that will work for a month own part of my farm?
|
| We have had negative cash flow for the last decade, should
| our employees have made under minimum wage due to capital
| calls that were made by the business?
|
| How does a bank do proper due diligence on a loan for a
| business with 47,000 owners, but isn't publicly traded?
| What about the administrative overhead around decision
| making needing a timely signature from every owner?
|
| It's really simple to say employees should have equity, but
| get into the details and the idea falls apart.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > raise wages by four percent over the next two years
|
| Matching inflation is not much of a raise.
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