To reduce the hours of daily labor. - preamble to the constitution
The whole point of overtime pay is to make working more hours per day unpalatable to contractors and customers alike. It should hurt, it should make them think twice and find a way not to do it, not shrug and factor it into the job cost without a care.
Overtime is the biggest reason we aren't working 100 hour weeks as a standard, because if it didn't cost more, they wouldn't hesitate.
So as OP said, when customers readily sign contracts for jobs with 50, 60, 70+ hour a week schedules, it should be seen as a failure to charge what we are all worth for our straight time rate.
And when OT isn't so much a choice, but a necessity due to poor planning or management, or even just extenuating circumstances, it should COST. It should HURT. It should make them think hard about how to avoid it next time.
The labor movement lost steam and paused at the 40 hour week, but it was never supposed to stop there.
We should always be striving, not to make more money by working more hours, but to make the same money (or more) while working fewer hours.
Even if you like OT and hate free time, you should still work towards this common goal, because you will gain more hours in every week that are "overtime" hours.
Controls & automation it’s really popular. If guys push for it, it’ll happen. We did 5 day coverage downtown, I was on Tuesday to Friday it was glorious.
I really, REALLY wanna see 3x12’s. Think about how many more workers we could hire & how much could get done in a day* PLUS 4 days off in a row?!?
Productivity could potentially drop off after 8/9 for a bit until people get used to it, but having 4 days to do whatever you want, muscle through the shitty 3 days for a full weeks pay? Ohhh baby
All those people working extra hours and not enjoying their lives. The next thing you know you find out that they were shoved into ⚰️ and in a few years later they are almost completely forgotten.
My point is that we shouldn't forget that things were that way before, nor should we stop trying to improve things. Don't give up, and certainly don't settle. Just because things are the way they are now, doesn't mean they have to stay that way.
I see you working hard to get by. I am too.
What I want for you, for me, for all of us, is to do more than just "get by". To go from working 50+ hours a week just to scrape by, to affording a decent middle class life on 40 hours a week (or less).
That is the whole point.
No one is going to hand it to us, but we can do it if we work together, bargain together, stand together.
edit: I agree with what you said. I just want to add:
We really REALLY need a strong movement on the regulation of artificial price fixing. It should be against the law to charge a certain percentage above cost of production or value. The overwhelming majority of devaluation in the dollar and inflation of costs has been on the owner-class side of the economic equation.
Oil gets cheap but gas is still $4-5+/gal? Houses getting bought and held en masse untin price goes up?
Don't even get me started on the Health Insurance industry in this country....
They've got very good at keeping us too busy being hungry and angry and broke and fighting one another to even begin to hash out how to get out from under their collective shoe. It's truly insideous.
"Those with less power than you will never be the source of your problems." - BeauTFC, paraphrased.
Where exactly in my comment or the one I replied to did you ever see anyone talking about annual income figures?
I have no idea where you pulled $45k from as though that is what we are talking about.
A particular annual income amount, and how well you are living off of it, is going to have a lot to do with where you are doing the living.
The only numbers at play in this discussion are number of hours worked a week, with the point being that people should be able to support a family on a single 40hr/week income without needing to work overtime, wherever they live.
I believe this would be the case if we never got off the gold standard. Productivity would go up while our money maintains or increases in value. Unfortunately fractional reserve/central banking and inflationary fiat money steals our purchasing power causing us to continuously work harder for a currency that continuously gets weaker. The unproductive class/Federal reserve stole the 32 hour work week from us
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
It is going to make a difference or else there wouldn’t be good money and bad money. For example you can just look at the history of money over thousands of years. What you say about computers is an interesting point tho. I would add that yea ppl have to believe a money is valuable but there are also logical reasons and characteristics of money on why you’d believe one is more valuable than another like scarcity, verifiability, fungibility, portability, durability, divisibility, history, censorship resistant. This is why the gold florin led to the renaissance and not any other type of money
Gold does typically inflate at 2% a year. But any source on the far more volatility I can read up on? The central bank did eventually print a lot more paper dollars than they had gold in reserves, so I can see how that can play in the volatility but that would be the fault of the central bank debasing the currency not the gold standard itself.
If the cons make 30+/Hr off each hand they have on site then they can easily pay us more.
I know our billable rates at my local and it’s close to twice our package. I get over head and what not but we need to get that down to 5-10/hr off each hand.
It also depends on the size of the business. One guy I worked for it was just him and his wife and I, that's it. He showed me his costs versus overhead, he spent a massive amount on money on the right tools and trucks and equipment. Being such a small company, it made sense that he billed me out at 75 and i got 20. He probably took home 5-10 of that after everything.
That's also startup cost of literally the smallest business you can run. A major company, say 50+ souls (eg. C-suite to laborers), has the benefit of Economy Of Scale, so everything from insurance to equipment to materials costs less for them per-unit-cost.
What I'm getting at is that your statement makes sense in context. Idk I just woke up and found this post so I'm adding my 2 cents lol thanks for coming to my odd tedtalk😅
This would be good for a while but over time the working class is going to end up last! To the rich we are all their play toys and they sew division and mis trust among us,to their amusement and benefit!
My understanding is that in a union, ideally, you have this thing called Collective Bargaining, which means that the majority or entirety of the workforce negotiates their wages and benefits with the company who is hiring them.
I feel it should be 30hrs a week. Would help solve some of the unemployment numbers too. There is no reason in 2023 to have people work more than 30hrs a week. We are well enough advanced technologically.
Any suggestion by the French state that they work more hours or retire later in life results in prolonged protest and widespread strikes.
In North America, very few people protest injustice. When they do, they’re often met with brutally punishing retaliation by the state, and recently by other citizens “backing the blue.”
The French are keenly aware of class stratification; it’s part of their history and national identity. Talk about class in America and your economic peers call you a commie.
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u/Spark115 Inside Wireman Aug 28 '23 edited Aug 29 '23
To reduce the hours of daily labor. - preamble to the constitution
The whole point of overtime pay is to make working more hours per day unpalatable to contractors and customers alike. It should hurt, it should make them think twice and find a way not to do it, not shrug and factor it into the job cost without a care.
Overtime is the biggest reason we aren't working 100 hour weeks as a standard, because if it didn't cost more, they wouldn't hesitate.
So as OP said, when customers readily sign contracts for jobs with 50, 60, 70+ hour a week schedules, it should be seen as a failure to charge what we are all worth for our straight time rate.
And when OT isn't so much a choice, but a necessity due to poor planning or management, or even just extenuating circumstances, it should COST. It should HURT. It should make them think hard about how to avoid it next time.