this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Work Reform

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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.

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[–] [email protected] 151 points 3 months ago (3 children)

A full time job should never result in being close anywhere close to any assistance programs.

We've let our society fail all of us.

[–] [email protected] 89 points 3 months ago (2 children)

We let corporations take over without limit or recourse.

Walmart pays a wage to people whose job it is to help other Walmart employees apply for government assistance. That's way cheaper to Walmart than paying people more. Then the government assistance comes from the lower 90% who do pay taxes.

Minimum wage hasn't been raised in decades. It has increased a bit only in a few places.

Over half (guesstimate) of prepared food workers do not have a steady income. They rely on a few customers to tip. And very rarely have any sick time or vacation time or health benefits.

You've eaten food that has been handled by someone sick with a fever because they were highly discouraged from staying home sick.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

You know what? Fuck this. I'm so godamn sick of seeing people say "we let this happen" as if we can just suddenly not let it happen. This happens because our current society is just a rebranding of feudalism, and to not give the rich their due on responsibility is downright wrong. We did not let shit happen, WE attempted to survive and got fucked, and continued to get fucked. I've seen this enough times now that everyone one of you reading this better expect to read it again the next time you or I see anything remotely close to "WE lET ThIS HapPen"

I want to put this edit here because I didn't expect your comment to get nuked after mine, and because you do raise a lot of good and productive points. I was drunk when I wrote this and it came with a lot of anger that I should have held back. I just think you should reevaluate the first part, other than that, you're spot on.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's less "we let this happen" and more "we were duped into fighting against our comrades over crumbs instead of banding together to ensure our right to more than just crumbs in the first place." The 1% benefits from every culture war that sows division amongst us. We're too busy and distracted to organize or build guillotines.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I long for the day we can get over culture wars, at least temporarily, and come to agreement on how we're all getting fucked over by the rich. I always think about ways to get involved but I come up short. I know a general strike is the game plan, but as an engineer my professional has strayed away from unionizing. Need to get more involved there. Change happens slowly until it doesn't I suppose.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I'm a power plant operator. Most of my coworkers have chugged the Kool aid in terms of hating unions. We're well paid but the benefits aren't good and the schedule is life-wrecking for the average person. Bad unions exist, but I think that they don't understand the core concept of the power behind collective bargaining. I've seen one person get fired in the 3 years I've been here, so jobs are generally secure, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to gain from unionizing.

They also very much eat up the culture war slop and aren't particularly literate. They're "common sense" forward, which means they don't understand things like tax brackets or geopolitics, but they're very upset about them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Society did let this happen. You know how many rednecks I run into who think billionaires are just success stories who did a good job? You know how people chose to listen to the anti union propaganda back in the 1950's onward? Up until around 5 years ago back on reddit I was in the minority on being pro union. The population absolutely allowed this to happen. We have 80 year olds running the country because the 20 year olds are 100% straight up too lazy or apathetic to vote in elections. When only around 30% of the eligible under 30 crowd vote in elections. Go try and do something that'll change it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Have you seen what happens when people try to change this? I really don't understand how you can hand me the list of reasons why this isn't the case, then turn around and say it is.

The rich have massive wings of propaganda, the rich have the police to beat the fuck out of us for protesting, the rich have access to union busting companies, the rich live in a different world when it comes to access and laws, the rich can buy lobbying.

For us, money is a tool to survive, and we work tirelessly for it. For the rich, money is a tool to protect their control, and they do not work for it. They get to use their time to either relax or to plot new ways to fuck us. So again, no we did not let this happen.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

To play devil's advocate -- Liberalism, or the idea that the people who are ruled should have a say in the rules, started coming about ~500 years ago. The elite's were all always evil and bad to the masses, enslaving us, paying us very little, even clocks and timekeeping were used to trick workers into more hours and when pocket watches became available, they were just banned in early industry.

A lot of people fought and died to establish the idea of Liberalism all the way up to unions and workers rights. So, in a way, 'we' did fight for those things and earned them over a long time. It does kind of feel like now the same 'we' has forgotten the value of that stuff and the sacrifice it took to get there.

I still don't really see this as our fault. We live in gilded age II where money is virtue no matter how its acquired. The internet broke the stable propaganda machines and we're in flux of stabilizing around the new ones and kicking out the smaller bad actors.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Can't forget to mention that those Walmart employees usually turn around and use those food stamps and government assistance at Walmart due to whatever meager employee discount they get.

So now Walmart not only gets to pay their workers far below a living wage, they also get reimbursed by the government for all those food stamps their own employees spend at their stores. These corporations are the biggest "welfare queens" the world has ever seen.

Reminiscent of owing one's soul to the company store, eh?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

This is how societies have traditionally operated. Far from failing, they are correcting back to the exploitative mean.

With no more free real estate to conquer and no frontier to expand into, we're boxed in by limited resources and forced to choose between socialism or barbarism.

Since we categorically and unequivocally proved Socialism Doesn't Work back in the 1980s, that only leaves one option.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

They're not assistance programs for people, they're basically a wage subsidy for corporations.

[–] [email protected] 78 points 3 months ago (2 children)

…And last year the CEO made $31.4 million dollars

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

That's what i was looking for. Fuck these people. Tax the rich and put in beneficial social programs, not just programs for the rich companies to abuse.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well obviously the flight attendant job is entry level and meant for teens living at home with their parents! It's not supposed to provide a living wage until you're more senior.

/s

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

And by "senior" we mean actually senior. Like, wrinkles, gray hair, liver spots; etc. Of course, if you're that old, you're too old to be a flight attendant, so sorry, you're not hired.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (5 children)

One of my favorite things about social media is how everyone is seemingly aghast at the egregious and corrupt results of capitalism, but every single election, you all insist to me that I have to vote for a capitalist as a moral imperative.

And it's been accelerating since Reagan, but 99% of voters aren't going to change. Ever.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

"What?"

"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"

"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."

Ford shrugged again."Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."

"But that's terrible," said Arthur.

"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”

― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (21 children)

You have to vote for the lesser fascist

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

but every single election, you all insist to me that I have to vote for a capitalist as a moral imperative.

Have you ever had the choice to vote anyone other than a capitalist?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

reagan, bush jr., trump. I wish that party could not win and election so that we could have the democrats as the conservative party and start making real progress on shifting left rather than their continual wins moving us right.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

muricaaaaaa

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Man, Fortune running articles they would have never 10 years ago, they were like the WSJ in my recollection, what pivoted?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Boomers aren't the productive people anymore they're now just leeches - Gen X and lower are the workers now and most of us actually give a shit.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

AA's CEO is a Gen X. You have a lot of Gen X with that Greed is Good crap from the 80's

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You don't get to the C-suite without being a greedy, sociopath

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Once Gen X is gone, there will still be CEOs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Imagine the communal gasps when these folks realise that an entire generation cannot be generalised in such specific ways. There will always be sociopaths - all the while there is the human condition.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

ahh brother boomers gave a shit too. and kurt cobain didn't exactly give motivational speeches, did he, let's put it that way.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (4 children)

The benefits of incorporating in a Republican state: We can say none of our employees is on government assistance. (That's because our state doesn't have government assistance.)

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

Gotta keep em starving to keep weight down

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

All the people making below median wages need to get better jobs.

/s. (Was this necessary?)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Or pull themselves up by their bootstraps!

/s

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Shouldn't have been.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

The solution is to stop bailing out mismanaged companies. Crony capitalism/corporate socialism are scams.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Flight attendant? Well clearly their mistake is not living in a third world city, they constantly travel anyway.

/s

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

i mean they can't even afford to build their planes properly on account of all the stealing their executives are doing, you expect them to pay people too?

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