5 ms·

Sounds sucky to always be watched but, as someone that actually worked in an aircraft repair facility, we'd show up for work at 6am, then a 5 minute "break" at

by esaym 6y ago

Sounds sucky to always be watched but, as someone that actually worked in an aircraft repair facility, we'd show up for work at 6am, then a 5 minute "break" at 8am and 10am followed by a 30 minute unpaid lunch from 12-12:30. Then another 5 minute break at 2:30pm followed by work ending at 4:30pm. And that was the schedule for Monday-Thursday followed by 8 hour days on Friday and Saturday. It got old quick and I left that field and went back to school lol. But the point is, anytime you provide 4 "breaks" a day for bathroom time, you'll get some managers staring at you for breaking the pattern. And don't forget that most tasks in aircraft assembly require 2 people. If you're installing fasteners, you've got to normally have someone on the other side of the assembly to either buck the rivet or put a nut on a bolt. So one person running for the toilet causes work to stop for others.

txru 6y ago
That's just why workers' unions are useful though. Workers need breaks, especially more experienced (older) workers, managers don't want to provide those breaks. The union can work with the workers to determine how many breaks they need, and have the negotiating ability to back up workers whose breaks are being violated like above.
- Alupis 6y ago
  > That's just why workers' unions are useful though. Workers need breaks, especially more experienced (older) workers, managers don't want to provide those breaks. The post you're responding to just stated they had 4 breaks a day. I doubt Boeing isn't providing breaks either, since that would be illegal. It's entirely possible to have a non-union shop and still have highly skilled and fairly compensated employees. There are always going to be some employees that abuse things - people taking bathroom breaks every hour, 10 minutes at a time, etc. Those are the ones that get let go, when you're not a Union Shop. Unfortunately, for all the good Unions do, they also tend to protect exactly these sorts of employees, making it difficult or impossible to trim poorly performing employees.
  - txru 6y ago
    4 breaks a day isn't either enough or too much in general-- it's very job and industry dependent. Refusing to provide breaks is illegal, true, but it's trivially easy to legally force employees to take many fewer than they're entitled. Amazon employees in FCs don't piss in bottles because they're very into logistic efficiency of picking... True, there will always be entities that abuse understandings, employer and employee. The thing is, corporations are superentities with monopsonic power. Employees are units, discouraged from communicating, with limited time in a day to make complaints or study potential improvements to working condition (or law, for that matter). Unions are a method for setting up a superentity that has the bargaining, informational, and legal power to have a more equal footing with the corporate superentity. Particularly when Unions have substantial ownership of the company, they have no specific wish to lose dues-paying members or make the company fail.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      > or make the company fail Hostess famously failed due to the Bakers Union stalling wage talks, even though the Teamsters (representing the other portion of the employees) agreed. Now... nobody works for Hostess and everyone lost their jobs. Not all Unions actually align their goals with what's best for the employees. Sometimes, it's all about collecting union dues...
      - txru 6y ago
        I don't think you can use Hostess as a simple case of the BCTGM getting too hungry for dues, since Hostess has reformed under a new corporation after a defensive bankruptcy filing, to hire an entirely new set of employees. That is something that companies can do, and have done so for centuries. At the very least, that seems like a case of a mix of vulture capitalism and failed union negotiations.
        Alupis 6y ago
        The Hostess of today isn't the Hostess of yesterday. It was shredded up and pieced out. What is today called "Hostess" is owned by a holding companies and is not the original ownership. They went from well over 30,000+ employees, down to 2,000 today. Pretty sad honestly. The company was in a tight financial situation, and asked to postpone paying into the pension fund for a few years. The Bakers Union was the only holdout... and now nobody has a pension or wages.
mjevans 6y ago
Such precise schedule keeping is a job for robots. Either factor in time for squishy bio-bot maintenance or switch to machines.
- samatman 6y ago
  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Taylorism substantially predates robotics, and the low-hanging fruit for robot assembly in factories is good and plucked.

by esaym 6y ago

txru 6y ago

That's just why workers' unions are useful though. Workers need breaks, especially more experienced (older) workers, managers don't want to provide those breaks. The union can work with the workers to determine how many breaks they need, and have the negotiating ability to back up workers whose breaks are being violated like above.

Alupis 6y ago
> That's just why workers' unions are useful though. Workers need breaks, especially more experienced (older) workers, managers don't want to provide those breaks. The post you're responding to just stated they had 4 breaks a day. I doubt Boeing isn't providing breaks either, since that would be illegal. It's entirely possible to have a non-union shop and still have highly skilled and fairly compensated employees. There are always going to be some employees that abuse things - people taking bathroom breaks every hour, 10 minutes at a time, etc. Those are the ones that get let go, when you're not a Union Shop. Unfortunately, for all the good Unions do, they also tend to protect exactly these sorts of employees, making it difficult or impossible to trim poorly performing employees.
- txru 6y ago
  4 breaks a day isn't either enough or too much in general-- it's very job and industry dependent. Refusing to provide breaks is illegal, true, but it's trivially easy to legally force employees to take many fewer than they're entitled. Amazon employees in FCs don't piss in bottles because they're very into logistic efficiency of picking... True, there will always be entities that abuse understandings, employer and employee. The thing is, corporations are superentities with monopsonic power. Employees are units, discouraged from communicating, with limited time in a day to make complaints or study potential improvements to working condition (or law, for that matter). Unions are a method for setting up a superentity that has the bargaining, informational, and legal power to have a more equal footing with the corporate superentity. Particularly when Unions have substantial ownership of the company, they have no specific wish to lose dues-paying members or make the company fail.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    > or make the company fail Hostess famously failed due to the Bakers Union stalling wage talks, even though the Teamsters (representing the other portion of the employees) agreed. Now... nobody works for Hostess and everyone lost their jobs. Not all Unions actually align their goals with what's best for the employees. Sometimes, it's all about collecting union dues...
    - txru 6y ago
      I don't think you can use Hostess as a simple case of the BCTGM getting too hungry for dues, since Hostess has reformed under a new corporation after a defensive bankruptcy filing, to hire an entirely new set of employees. That is something that companies can do, and have done so for centuries. At the very least, that seems like a case of a mix of vulture capitalism and failed union negotiations.
      - Alupis 6y ago
        The Hostess of today isn't the Hostess of yesterday. It was shredded up and pieced out. What is today called "Hostess" is owned by a holding companies and is not the original ownership. They went from well over 30,000+ employees, down to 2,000 today. Pretty sad honestly. The company was in a tight financial situation, and asked to postpone paying into the pension fund for a few years. The Bakers Union was the only holdout... and now nobody has a pension or wages.

mjevans 6y ago

Such precise schedule keeping is a job for robots. Either factor in time for squishy bio-bot maintenance or switch to machines.

samatman 6y ago
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Taylorism substantially predates robotics, and the low-hanging fruit for robot assembly in factories is good and plucked.