There are no federal requirements that an employer provide breaks for employees. Currently, only 20 states have laws regarding meal breaks and only nine states require other breaks. The vast majority of employers throughout the states give their employees breaks and we’re so used to it that we think it must be the law. But in most states it really isn’t.
…its the fucking pit. You haven’t upset me. The problem was you didn’t understand my post and added meaning to my post that I never intended nor implied.
They should be, perhaps, but without the consent of the owners, or laws requiring stakeholder issues be considered, the CEO will do what the Board wants him to do, and the Board will tell him to do what they think is best for the owners.
Anyway, my view is less that companies can’t be moral, than it is simply unrealistic to expect them to be moral. We collectively can force them to be moral, but it won’t be their freely chosen course of action, and whatever freedom we leave to them, they won’t choose morality over money.
No. You’re wrong: that isn’t why those are still laws. Those are still laws because real people overwhelmingly favor them, despite corporate people and their lackeys trying to convince them otherwise.
Imposed morality isn’t necessarily bad for companies. As I noted above, companies benefit when potential customers have more money to spend. So they can benefit from higher wages.
The problem for any company considering unilaterally giving its own employees a wage increase is that other companies might benefit from the increased sales that result from those higher wages. The employees of Company A might take the extra money Company A is paying them and go buy products being sold by Company B, which is able to offer lower prices by paying its employees less.
An outside agency, like the government or a union, can level the playing field and force Company B to raise its wages to the level of Company A’s. Or force both companies to raise their wages if neither is willing to do so voluntarily. But after being forced to raise wages, both companies will benefit when their employees who have received more money turn around and become customers who have more money to spend.
Unions didn’t start the use of force or intimidation here.
Yeah, anyone who is curious about this should Google the Pinkertons. And they aren’t just ancient history from the railroad days; Amazon is literally hiring them as spies against their employees right now. It never went away. The Pinkertons are now a subsidiary of Securitas AB of Sweden, but they still exist, and they’re literally involved in the very subject this thread is about.
Holy crap is there some skilled worker elitism going on in this thread. If you have about 20 minutes, please watch the video from John Oliver below. It is about the meat packing industry and how it treats workers.
I get it, I am a “knowledge worker”. I work in biotech, and used to work in semi conductors. In both fields, unions were a total non-starter because the pay and benefits are usually good and there is usually a shortage of skilled workers doing what I do. That is not the case for many workers. Most hourly workers are cogs to the company. As soon as it would be cheaper to train someone to replace you, you are gone. Get injured? Go the the nurse or quit. Make sure you sign this waiver with your teeth so we can go ahead and bandage those crushed hands. For those citing OSHA as reason we don’t need unions, explain how an organization so neutered that inspectors are forced to walk through a factory with a box on their head in order to do an accident inspection.
Neither the mistreatment of the workers nor the disdain of the better off is new. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in 1906 to shed light on the awful conditions of workers in meat packing plants. What the wealthy and middle class got out of it was that we needed laws to make food safer. And we did, but the whole people being maimed and abused thing didn’t really register as a problem.
Union dues: the avocado toast of blue-collar mobility.
I work in HR, and it’s true that I’m on the side of the company because that’s my job. But historically speaking, unions have done a lot of good for American workers over the years and we have them to thank for many things we take for granted. Years ago, a friend of mine worked at a Thom Thumb grocery store and his manager asked him if he could work 15 minutes late one day. Sure, that’s 15 minutes of overtime. When he arrived the next day, his manager asked him to clock in 15 minutes late so there wouldn’t be any overtime on his check. Granted, at least in this case he wasn’t asking his employee work off the clock just wanted him to sit around for 15 minutes. A union can protect against petty bullshit like that.
In union-strong Nevada, we passed a law that mandates 1.5x pay for any time on the clock past 8 hours in a single shift. Unions are good for all workers, not just for members.
Never mind.
You never started a business with $720? Pff probably blew all the money on avocado toast.
My particular store isn’t union, but thanks to the unions stores in other states we get a 15 minute break every two hours (smoking optional) and a half an hour for lunch. Which I have zero intention of giving up, because there is a physical dimension to the work I do and having that 15 minute break makes a huge difference in my physical and mental health.
There 's a lot to complain about in the work world, but seriously, you have an issue with breaks and lunch during an 8 hour shift?
Treating humans like humans is too much to ask sometimes.
The problem is, you’re against the one thing that has ever actually had an appreciable effect on increasing workers’ rights. You’re telling us to fight while taking away the biggest weapons. And you’re doing so at the time they’re being pushed back the most.
You act as if unions should only exist if they are perfect. But then, rather than trying to make them better, you want to just get rid of them. The problem you cite, of union leaders getting rich while not helping their members, is not a problem with the concept of the union itself. If you think that’s a problem, then let’s try to fix that problem, not disband unions altogether. That’s like saying “murders still happen, so we should get rid of anti-murder laws.”
We live in a capitalist system. All parties in the system try to get the most bang for their buck. The employer has every incentive to try and get the most work out of the worker for the least amount of money. The employee, on the other hand, has the opposite incentive, to try and get the most money they can for the least amount of work. And this would be fine if they were at equilibrium. But, in fact, the employer has much more power. The only thing that even approaches leveling the playing field are unions, both with their negotiations and the laws they can get passed.
It would be one thing if you had something ready to replace the union. But you’re more like the Republicans trying to topple the ACA for its flaws. Doing so without something better in place would just make everything much worse.
Yup, those wonderful union workers who make up 15% of the Nevada workforce did it totally on their own. Totally unions doing the work
That’s right, because governments employ clerical staff, IT guys, knowledge workers, carpenters and repair guys, liquor store employees, highway construction workers, and so on. You know, jobs that have no counterpart in the private sector.
The national rate of union employment across the US is just over 10%. So having half again as much in Nevada seems to be “strong” to me. My own state (Washington) has just under 19% and unions are pretty influential here (just listen to local RW talk radio and they’ll lament how much of a stranglehold they supposedly have). I think your sarcasm is badly misplaced and based on ignorance. (Much of your argument in this thread can be summed up that way as well.)
I didn’t realize in a thread about Amazon trying to stop its employees from unionizing I had to propose my better system as well. Fair enough.
My system would allow employers to fire employees for trying to unionize and prevent closed shops. Then I would institute UBI at $1,100 for adults and some lesser payment for children after the first 2. I would separately institute single payer health care nationwide. The ubi/Healthcare pairing would allow people to leave their jobs as necessary and minimize a lot of the inequality in the relationship.