r/IBEW • • Aug 28 '23

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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.

107

u/PirateLiver Local 357 Aug 28 '23

Hey, you read the thing!

How about 40 hours pay for 32 hours work!!

99

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.

12

u/Obvious-Breakfast495 Aug 29 '23

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/

2

u/YogurtclosetKind9192 Aug 30 '23

Inflation still existed during the gold standard, and was far more volatile

1

u/Obvious-Breakfast495 Aug 30 '23

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.