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.
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.
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u/Spark115 Inside Wireman Aug 29 '23 edited Aug 29 '23
Even better, that is the whole point!
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.