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I'm a Frito-Lay Factory Worker. I Work 12-Hour Days, 7 Days a Week

• knuthsat 5y ago
  Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? Whenever I see people working really hard in other parts of the world, especially when the country is filled with other opportunities, I always wonder is it just everyone else that is raising the bar and now the standard is very time consuming work. For example, there's year long tourism on Madeira. Everyone there is working hard all year long, charging for tourist services very cheaply. Yet there are many examples of places with year long tourism, but you can still find mass closures during siesta. Everyone, through culture, decided not to overwork and there's no one "hard-working" enough to have their business open during siesta. No employee will agree to work during siesta, similarly employers do not expect their business to be open.
  • brianwawok 5y ago
    Factories aren’t generally in cities. In a rural town, your job choices may be work at Walmart, one of two factories, or on a farm. The “hard” factory job may be the “best” bet among the choices. The bigger question is usually why don’t people move from a rural location? And the answer is usually “it’s complicated “. Old parents to take care of. It’s familiar. Friends. Maybe own your simple home. Maybe your church is there. Maybe quiet life is your thing.
    • bena 5y ago
      Maybe those jobs don't pay enough to save up to move. That and the logistics of moving. Not to mention, having a job beats not having a job. And moving often means not having a job to start. Especially when your only work experience is retail, factory floor, and farmhand. You can't really afford to take a week off of getting paid. And if you're constantly working to make ends meet, you don't really have time or energy to work on developing marketable skills.
    • 8note 5y ago
      Another answer to the bigger question: it costs money to move
    • hallway_monitor 5y ago
      The best thing about moving to remote work is that it will enable people to live in these smaller communities while having the increased income of the city. I hope this will bring more money back to local economies and revitalize rural areas.
      • ryandrake 5y ago
        If remote work really takes off, it won't be long until most employers adjust salaries down to each employee's local cost of labor. Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana?
        • barry-cotter 5y ago
          > Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana? Because you can't get anyone in rural Montana who is capable of getting a job paying Bay Area or NYC salaroies to accept that offer. Adjustment will result in meeting somewhere in the middle but whether that's 25% or 95% of Bay Area salaries is an open question.
        • nawitus 5y ago
          Remote salaries might end up being somewhere between rural Montana and Bay Area. There's no reason to assume there's a huge supply of software engineers in the US which would make all remote salaries to be in the low-end.
      • vitaflo 5y ago
        All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as remote workers compete for it, driving out the locals. Remote workers also don’t fully contribute to the economy of the rural area because their place of employment is not in that area. If the company the remote worker works for does well and grows, that won’t grow the rural community.
        • sigstoat 5y ago
    • pauljurczak 5y ago
      Maybe you can't afford a house in suburbia...
  • petee 5y ago
    Depending on your skill set or circumstances, you need a job quick; more hours means more money. What sucks is then you become reliant on that money, and changing careers is near impossible without risking your family's security. Personally Ive done the 12+ hr/7 day in the film industry, a notoriously abusive industry (tv shows shoot 14-18hr days) but the money is great. We call it blood money, and do it until we need a vacation. We also get health benefits
  • ac29 5y ago
    According to the article, "Most people make between $16.50 and $20 an hour". So, at 84 hours a week (46 normal pay, 38 overtime at 1.5x), thats $1700/week on the low end, or $88k/year. I dont think that excuses the forced overtime and I would absolutely expect severe health and/or mental health issues to result from the overwork. But, these people can quit (and according to the article many do) - I expect the only reason folks do stay is because they cant make the same money anywhere else.
    • robarr 5y ago
      People with poor formal qualifications or habilities not longer marketable have little choice except double shifts to raise a family. Just imagine being 40 years old, no college or technical education, having only retail work experience.
      • throwawayboise 5y ago
        You still have many options. It is probably true that for a person in that situation, they may not be apparent or seem feasible.
    • quickthrower2 5y ago
      They are not making that much as it’s unpaid overtime or “suicide” as they colloquially call it according to the article. Edit: sorry I’m wrong. I read “kills you over time” as “kills your overtime”
      • ac29 5y ago
        The article doesnt say anything about it being unpaid. The "suicide" is a forced double shift, not a forced unpaid shift.
      • sdfsadfjaslj 5y ago
        The article does not claim that it is unpaid. If they were working unpaid hours that would be a serious legal issue and state and federal regulators would be getting involved.
  • nine_zeros 5y ago
    The real problem is cost of living without a job. It is just too fking expensive to live with little or no income. As a result, people in less than abundant job markets are forced into taking up jobs to merely survive. If someone is trying to imagine an alternative world, they should visit non-tier 1 cities of SE Asia or India or China. People routinely survive with less than full time income. Sure, it's a life with less material pleasure but it is a surprisingly adequate survival life.
  • AndyMcConachie 5y ago
    People running factories have been exploiting and overworking the people working in their factories since there have been factories. There's nothing new here.
    • kcplate 5y ago
      I think there is always going to be a bit of a disconnect and lack of empathy about excessive work hours when an hourly worker gripes about forced overtime (where in the US they are legally required to be paid at least 1.5x their hourly rate for the overtime) is complaining to salaried management (that are generally working a similar number of hours…but unpaid beyond the 40). Kind of makes you wonder which side is being exploited.
      • alisonkisk 5y ago
        Management gets paid a lot more, and half their "work" time is goofing off.
      • parafactual 5y ago
        As far as I can tell - correct me if I'm wrong - management is just easier compared to (say) manual labor in a factory. They're also paid more per expected hour.
        • kcplate 5y ago
          I’ve been both and can tell you with assurance that in my experience in a 35+ year career that management is not easier, you don’t make as much per hour worked, and as an exempt employee…you generally have much less legal job protections as compared to hourly employees. I bet I haven’t worked less than a 55 hour week in the last 20 years except for weeks where I was on vacation. Those lovely weeks of vacation—-probably 20 on average.
  • Exmoor 5y ago
    Besides some of the obvious reasons such as the previously mentioned location limitations and low education limiting possibilities, I'll throw out another one. Once you're in a job like this it kind of limits your ability to branch out into less physically demanding and better paying work. Your resume kind of pigeon holes you with respect to future employment and the fact that you're working long, exhausting days means its very hard to find the time and energy to build your skills outside of work.
  • risedotmoe 5y ago
    There is no job that won’t work you for as much as they can. They pay you low enough to where you’re dependent on them paycheck to paycheck. The turnover is high and if you don’t like the conditions they get rid of you. There are a ton of people in line for your job who will put up with worse working conditions so you either lick boots or you aren’t making ends meet this week. The culture at every job is that if you aren’t sweating from 6AM to 6PM you’re “lazy.” Don’t want to work overtime? You either won’t make ends meet or you will be fired. If you don’t make ends meet in America you will be homeless unless you are married with children or can live with your parents. The only way to remedy this is to go to college or trade school and hope your degree makes you valuable enough that you can bargain for a realistic work/life balance.
    • XenophileJKO 5y ago
      College or trade school is not the only way out. The core way out is skill attainment. College and trade school are one way to do this.
  • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    Its a very good question. I think in general it is important to realize that a significant amount of "design" work goes in to creating economies. Local, state, and national decisions will lead to certain conditions. How were those decisions made, and under what conditions? For any given place the answer will be different. How does one place compare to another? It is my view that it is perfectly feasible to design economies (in a voluntary way) where people can work 20 hours a week and have two months off a year every year. Or closer to our current world, there is no question in my mind that we could keep things as good or better they are now materially, while making sure no person has to work more than 40 hours a week to survive. I do love to talk about specific strategies [1] but that quickly activates our tribal instincts and can cause violent arguments even when our underlying goals are in near complete agreement. So it can be useful to just ponder on the above. How did things get the way they became? Is it due to iron wrought natural laws, or historical decisions we could freely agree to change? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27860696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27860696
    • clairity 5y ago
      as nice as that utopia would be, the fundamental flaw with trying to limit working days/hours is that some people will still pour their whole lives into work, which creates an iterated game that pushes the equilibrium for everyone toward working more. there's no practical way to mitigate this powerful, arguably inate, incentive. the other option is actively coercing a daily/weekly work limit, and that not only severely infringes personal liberties, but eventually makes whole economies less competitive as the hardest working & most ambitious workers migrate away. the better approach is to try to ensure everyone has dignity and fair pay for the amount of work that they do. that's a function of the distribution of pay and wealth, which is something we can legislate via sticks and carrots.
      • Frost1x 5y ago
        >some people will still pour their whole lives into work, which creates an iterated game that pushes the equilibrium for everyone toward working more. there's no practical way to mitigate this powerful, arguably inate, incentive. The trick here is to make sure those who don't push for the incentives are taken care of. You need to make sure everyone participating at the sane rates are taken care of in their needs and some wants. After that, you allow for those obsessed with incentives and wants to work as much as they want to get extravagant things. It's easier said than done but I believe its attainable. If you can create an economy where that sort of effort at work is used to buy luxuries and not necessities, then you have a good model that still has a balance of incentives without dragging the rest of society into a work obsessed life. People who put for this amount of effort shouldn't be doing it because they have to, they should be doing it because they want to. Unfortunately many people are doing it because they really have to, that or their standard of living drops significantly, their overall longevity. Unfortunately that's the world we have. People are forced to work at these sorts of rates to survive and it's only getting worse. It's not that they're slaving away their lives because they want to get a new luxury car or exotic vacation, it's that the alternatives to not doing it means they may be homeless next month or looking for somewhere new to live.
  • anemoiac 5y ago
    Why people “decide” to do this sort of work? Oh, I don’t know, probably the same reasons people “decide” to be poor.
  • mcculley 5y ago
    In addition to the many insightful replies here add: Once you have a working class addicted to some combination of fast food, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, pot, opioids, and other drugs which cost money, they have a reduced capability to dig themselves out of a hole.
    • samatman 5y ago
      Man it is super weird that you put caffeine on that list. I assume, because you did it, that you're one of those mutants who doesn't use it nor like it much. Good for you and all, but caffeine made the modern world, the majority of the population uses it every day, and industrial society wouldn't function without it. It's also super-cheap even on a modest salary, and most workplaces give it away for free because of how necessary it is to production.
      • mcculley 5y ago
        I am aware of Pollan's recently well-publicized assertion that caffeine made the modern world. I am unconvinced. I quit caffeine a few years ago. I'm not an unusual mutant. I have the genes on markers rs4410790 and rs2470893 that indicate a typical reaction to caffeine. (https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/ https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/) Most people experience a temporary increase in productivity until they build up a tolerance for caffeine. Thereafter, they are just paying and consuming to avoid headaches and reach the baseline.
        • diordiderot 5y ago
          What was your experience quitting like. I want to but am afraid
          • mcculley 5y ago
            It was not bad. I wrote about it in the linked blog piece. I also recommend /r/decaf where you can get support from others who have been and are going through decaffeinating.
  • jollybean 5y ago
    "Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work?" About 50% of people have very little choice in the types of jobs and conditions they work in.
  • vasco 5y ago
    There's no "siesta" (a spanish word and custom) anywhere in Portugal, including Madeira. Businesses may close for an hour or so for lunch, but "siesta" is not a thing. Not sure why you picked that as an example out of any other work expectation in any country.
    • spiritplumber 5y ago
      Why not? Siesta makes sense in the climate of Spain and Southern Italy. Isn't Portugal just as hot?
      • rvieira 5y ago
        Some parts of Portugal are hot, others are temperate (just like Spain). Siesta is mostly a cultural thing and Portugal doesn't have it.
    • knuthsat 5y ago
      I was comparing hard working Madeira to other places with year long tourism. There, for some reason, culturally, they decided to work really hard all year. I was talking to a hard working cab driver and told him about seasonal tourism in Croatia (tourist season lasts about 5 months) and he couldn't believe me that for the rest of the year a bunch of people do not work at all.
  • nabilhat 5y ago
    If you don't have an easy option close at hand it ends up being a choice between continuing, taking a massive hit to your income, or choosing unemployment. The pay is exactly high enough to maintain minimal staffing. That's normal, but in working conditions like this sometime it ends up a tiny bit higher than the local rate for similar jobs if there's competition for employees. Not everyone can maintain the working conditions. They leave, get kicked out, or they're useful (or connected) enough to keep around working humane hours. The rest have bills, or legal requirements to maintain employment, or burned a bridge at the other factory in town, or they're inexperienced enough to not know better. They establish a reputation as an employee who can be pushed into working inhumane hours. Managers are often rewarded for keeping up with production with a small team. A few years go by before you know it, and working hours like this is expensive. You don't have time to maintain your stuff and house, you pay someone else to. Kids need to be watched. Spouses leave. Drugs or alcohol offer to fill the holes in Maslow's Hierarchy you've sacrificed. Savings don't pile up like one might assume. Interviewing is treacherous. If you're lucky you work a night shift so you can do an interview instead of sleeping. They'll ask you how much you make per hour and offer you a lower "starting rate" hourly wage with fewer hours, which would cut your income drastically, and suggest there might be a review/small raise in 6 months. They'll call your employer before offering you a job at that rate, putting you at risk of retaliation whether you take the offer or not.
  • intricatedetail 5y ago
    I think it is also interesting why people agree to work for the fraction of value they create for the company. Somehow this kind of suffering and exploitation is socially acceptable. Companies make billions and workers struggle to put food on the table. I think governments should focus on companies avoiding tax rather than taxing them though workers (as workers suffer and yield is fraction of what companies should be paying) and we should look at tying minimum wage to company revenue (with a nationwide minimum, so that worker always gets paid a wage they can live off).
    • hallway_monitor 5y ago
      I'm generally a libertarian but I think current corporate law is insane. This seems like a reasonable starting point, maybe along with a policy requiring giving each employee a stake in the company.
      • opinion-is-bad 5y ago
        Does the employee have to buy into that stake? Do they surrender it, or sell it, or keep it when they leave? Do they get more over time? Why should minimum wage field hands that will work for a month own part of my farm? We have had negative cash flow for the last decade, should our employees have made under minimum wage due to capital calls that were made by the business? How does a bank do proper due diligence on a loan for a business with 47,000 owners, but isn’t publicly traded? What about the administrative overhead around decision making needing a timely signature from every owner? It’s really simple to say employees should have equity, but get into the details and the idea falls apart.
  • xyzzy21 5y ago
    No choices. This is in the Midwest in the middle of no-where. No you can't realistically move - every other location is far more expensive and would require significant relocation expense, and you'd have to leave your community, likely where you were born and raise(d) your family.
    • nradov 5y ago
      And yet during the Great Depression poor people moved by the thousands to find work in other states. Sure it was hard but they did what they had to in order to survive.
      • elliekelly 5y ago
        Mobility doesn’t work like that anymore. Moving states in 1929 meant, for the most part, a completely fresh start - your landlord wasn’t going to chase you for the rest of the rent on your lease, you didn’t have a car payment or health insurance to worry about (using social security nets like medical or housing assistance is even harder when you haven’t yet established residency in a new state), and if you had any debts or even reputation issues they were very unlikely to “follow” you. Now we have credit reporting, background checks, and a system that, by design, makes it all but impossible to “start over” when you have no other options.
      • alisonkisk 5y ago
        Except the large numbers that didn't survive.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • pryelluw 5y ago
    Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? As someone who had to do similar work for years the answer is that there were no alternatives. No one takes a shitty job on purpose.
    • phreack 5y ago
      I thought so as well, but then I started offering jobs to people I knew hated their jobs and also worked unpaid overtime constantly, with the smallest salaries. But for some reason, when offered a 6x salary freelancing, for less hours, with guidance, and the road paved as much as possible, everyone refuses. Turns out there are people who take shitty jobs on purpose, out of a sense of... I don't know, fear, embarrassment, impostor syndrome, or a combination of them. *This is not in the US.
      • ipaddr 5y ago
        They want something stable. Freelancing is not.
        • diordiderot 5y ago
          Kids, car, rent, healthcare = Need something stable
      • mertd 5y ago
        Maybe they think the offer is too good to be true. In some countries it is default to assume everyone is out to scam you until proven otherwise.
      • pryelluw 5y ago
        Freelancing is how I broke out of the shit job loop. But freelancing is not widely available and I consider myself extremely lucky and blessed to have been able to do it.
      • heavyset_go 5y ago
        How many of these people had all of the necessary funds to fall back on should their foray into freelancing not go as planned?
  • walrus01 5y ago
    > Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? A lot of people who work paycheck-to-paycheck in "flyover state" parts of the USA do not have sufficient savings to relocate to a place where they could work a normal 40-hour week schedule and support themselves on a reasonable income. That, combined with family ties and obligations force them to remain in their local community. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-struggle-to-save-in-pandemic-year-2-and-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-2021-03-25 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-struggle-to-save...
  • rufus_foreman 5y ago
    Time consuming? I worked in a factory for years when I was younger, not too different than what he is describing. There are some jobs, like the one I have now writing code where you think about them even when you aren't doing them, they invade your dreams. I feel like I am writing code all the time, even when I'm not logged in to the work laptop actually doing it. There are other jobs where you don't think about them when you aren't doing them, you go home after work and then you stop thinking about work. The factory job I had was not like either of those, I did not think about work even while I was doing it. My mind was free while my body was getting paid to do work. I could be thinking about anything else other than the physical work I was doing. I'm getting old, won't be able to write code much longer. The factory job that I used to do doesn't exist now, it's been automated. Save your money, kids.
  • bko 5y ago
    From the article: > After 37 years, I still get forced to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week... I make $20.50 [an hour] after 37 years here. Assuming they obey overtime laws, he's' making $112,996 a year ((40 * 20.5) + (44 * 1.5 * 20.5) * 52). I think that has something to do with it. There likely aren't any alternatives where someone with that skill set can make nearly double the median income for Topeka, Kansas. But there are probably alternatives where they can make maybe a half that at more reasonable hours.
    • GravitasFailure 5y ago
      It looks like Kansas overtime law kicks in at 46 hours in a week[0], so closer to $110k. Maybe a touch less since they probably shut down periodically for machine maintenance. Thing is, this sort of schedule turns into a weird form of neo-slavery. You don't have enough time to yourself to job hunt, even if something is even available, and you can't schedule an interview around your work. Saving money can be nigh impossible even when making that much because you no don't really have the time to try doing anything the cheap way (making your own food, fixing things yourself, etc.). It turns into this vicious, endless cycle of nothing but work and sleep. If you try take a day off, you run the risk of getting fired. [0]https://www.overtime-flsa.com/kansas-labor-laws/ https://www.overtime-flsa.com/kansas-labor-laws/
      • PhantomGremlin 5y ago
        That link directly contradicts you. Federal overtime starts at 40 hours per week. Your link specifically says: Whichever law (state or federal) is more favorable to the worker will apply. In most instances, federal law will cover issues involving overtime pay and minimum wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime#Federal_overtime_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime#Federal_overtime_law
        • GravitasFailure 5y ago
          > Kansas state labor laws on overtime pay do not require overtime pay until an employee has worked 46 hours within a week. While this may apply in limited circumstances where an employer is not covered by the FLSA, generally the FLSA will apply and requires employers to pay time and a-half for all hours worked over 40 per workweek, unless an employee is properly classified as exempt. Yeah, the 46 hour rule probably doesn't apply in this case, though who knows what sorts of shenanigans Lays is trying.
  • justlern2code 5y ago
    You are free to offer them $100k / yr for 40hr weeks at your company.
  • nitwit005 5y ago
    Going on strike is deciding not to do it, and the article suggests they can't hire anyone: > Frito-Lay has been told they need to fix this but unfortunately, when they bring in new people, they force the same schedule on them and they quit. Frito-Lay has waited so long to replace workers, and now Frito Lay has a horrible reputation in town so a lot of people won't work here. It seems like the existing workers mostly put up with it for a while, and then it eventually fell apart like you'd expect.
  • bitexploder 5y ago
    Most of these workers have no technical skills. Their jobs are very physical and laborious in many cases. My dad was a maintenance tech at Frito for a very long time and he never experienced anything like this. They still would not promote him to management because he had no degree, despite him being the most senior and experienced maintenance tech there. They often flew him to other plants to set them up, do PLC magic, etc. Anyway, the packers, cooks, and all the unskilled labor are treated like replaceable cogs. There is zero upward promotion in these roles. It takes almost no time to train someone up for most of these roles. They will use them up and hire the next person who will burn out in 6 months. (I think these kind of working conditions are terrible, but it’s pretty clear why Frito can do this).
  • dzonga 5y ago
    don't know if you read or watched Catch-22. There's phrase - what's good for the enterprise, is good for the country, hence good for the citizen. But if you're educated enough, you soon realize it's a lie. Hence why the `ills` of socialism are played all over the news n media. Then of course, the propaganda that you're poor because you don't work hard. Which again forces people to work hard. Then you put in incentives such as tying employment to healthcare - hence no choice to be unemployed. n now you've the perfect recipe oh sorry I meant endless supply of labor / soldiers you can abuse at your whim.!!
  • andrepd 5y ago
    > Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Is the world getting hard enough that there is no alternative? I don't think anyone works 12/7 in a dingy factory doing repetitive work for fun. So the answer must be yes, there is no alternative for them.
    • nimchimpsky 5y ago
      I can't believe this an actual question. Fuck me hackernews is a dumpster fire sometimes.
  • mmmBacon 5y ago
    Not everyone has the opportunities that many of us on HN have enjoyed. The HN crowd is insanely privileged. Don’t assume they have had the same access to opportunity that you did or they have the same talents you do. In my own life, I was one decision away from driving trucks in West Virginia. The decision at the time was not obvious and the path I took was much harder. It took 10 years to see light at the end of the tunnel. However, I have since had incredible opportunities that I could never have imagined at that time. It was a costly personal decision as I lost a lot of important human connections along the way.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • MikeTheGreat 5y ago
      Clearly you're using vague language to protect your privacy by obscuring the details but if you ever do decide to publicly post about this please let me know! The journey sounds fascinating (and harrowing!), and I'd be curious to read your blog post / memoir / watch the feature length movie made based on it.
  • rsynnott 5y ago
    > Anyone knows why people decide to do this kind of time consuming work? Weak labour laws and enforcement of same, weak unions. This and worse used to be completely standard in all industrialised countries. > Everyone, through culture, decided not to overwork I mean… Madeira’s subject to the EU working time directive. It’s not just culture; it’s law.
  • acover 5y ago
    The man in the article is working there due to golden handcuffs: > I stay here because in two years, I'll be 62 and I have a union pension acquired over 37 years. I've spent so much time here that I might as well take that pension and social security and call it quits. New hires keep quitting once they experience the work and schedule, which is why those who are trapped are forced to do overtime.
  • swman 5y ago
    In America a lot of these positions are not full time. Employers like McDonald’s and frito will try to do their best to give “hours” (part time) so that they don’t need to give benefits. So, imagine you’re making minimum wage and you have no benefits from your job and you have to remain in a certain income band in order to qualify for government aid. It’s very hard to take a vacation let alone to just take a Sabbatical and backpack around the world to “find themselves” because they can barely afford to survive. It’a a very hard life.
  • Spooky23 5y ago
    Because they pay marginally above minimum wage for unskilled work and offer consistent hours. When I worked in the mall in college, our prep guy was an immigrant from Ireland who worked about 15-16 hours a day. He prepped vegetables and fruit at our place, did painting, did maintenance work and closed the day doing janitorial stuff. You do it to support your family and because you’re too busy to find a better option.
  • etempleton 5y ago
    Factories like this are typically “unskilled labor” and there are few options in any given job market for unskilled laborers that pay this good. For Topeka Kansas w/ all of this forced over time the individual featured has moved himself into upper middle class income range. I have met a number of parents who give up their personal lives and well being workingto provide their children the best lives possible, so that their children never have to work night shift or over time in a factory to provide a decent life for their families. It is a sacrifice.
  • sneak 5y ago
    There are zillions of unfilled jobs in the US at the moment. The author of TFA says he's been at this one for a long time. I think a lot of it is inertia and fear of the unknown.
• Beaver117 5y ago
  Everyone knows to work smart not hard. What's stopping them?
  • brianwawok 5y ago
    That’s a pretty demeaning way to look at people.
  • quickthrower2 5y ago
    They are being very smart, by striking and standing up for their rights. I think forcing people to work that many hours should be illegal, like in the EU
    • mchusma 5y ago
      They weren't forced to work though. Conflating optional decisions with force is dangerous. If they have better alternatives, they should do those. If they believe that by stopping work, they can get change from their employer, go for it. But nothing here is forced.
      • quickthrower2 5y ago
        Depends what you mean by forced. If you can get fired for “underperforming” or even think you can then this is forced in the minds of the employee. There is a massive power imbalance. Sure the guy can resign and get another job, just like the tech industry right? Might even get $200k plus RSUs and free lunches? More like struggle to get another job, maybe get evicted, and oh surprise new job is shit too and they force you to do OT or an algorithm fires you.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • Layke1123 5y ago
    What a myopic view. Everyone knows to just be rich, whats stopping them from being so? /s
  • deleted 5y ago
• akudha 5y ago
  Jeez! 59 year old guy with the same salary for the last 10 years. People working in 100 degree temperatures with no air conditioning. This is depressing to read :(
  • cj 5y ago
    It’s these people I think about when reading the weekly threads here on developer burn out.
    • regularjack 5y ago
      Burnout is a legitimate health issue for many people in this forum, and elsewhere.
      • edoceo 5y ago
        Every laborer sells the same the same thing: their body. It's just about which parts for how much - and the toll/risk each entails. All deserve a fair wage and respect.
      • bitanarch 5y ago
        Agreed. Humans are inherently fragile beings with almost no redundant parts. If I fry your brain with long hours and politically hostile work environment and drive you to depression; vs. I fry your brain with long hours in physically exhausting environments. The results are the same - your brain is fried. One type of hostile work environment is not necessarily better or worse than another type of hostile work environment.
        • willbw 5y ago
          I would push back against "the results are the same". They are objectively not the same. Of course physical and mental exhaustion are both bad, but I think people would prefer to work in an office than a factory and trying to equate the two experiences is a little reductive.
• hogFeast 5y ago
  I used to work as an equity analyst, so have come at this problem from totally the other end. The number one problem, that I have seen no-one talk about, are certain incentives from the market (not short-termism, if someone says that they don't understand what is happening). I buy PEP at 15x earnings...I don't need a lot of growth to make that price work. Even if they grow a 10-20% over five years, I will probably make a market return. Which is fair. If I buy PEP at 25x earnings plus (roughly where it is today)...that is different. I need earnings to double and then some within five years. Huge imperative for growth. If I don't see the growth, I will lose 50%+ on the position. So when the share price is that high, the incentives are out the window. The board is never going to hire the guy who says: well, share price could do with a reset, how about we take a year boys...no, at 25x earnings, they will take the guy who comes into the room ten minutes after his piece, rips his shirt off in the interview, and drinks blood for breakfast. The boys on the comp committee want growth, they will set the 20x salary bonus package accordingly, and the exec team is going to fight like rats in a bag to get the juice. This got very bad in FMCG too because 3G Capital exposed the amount of middle management waste at Heinz and, of course, consumers are consuming less of these unhealthy snacks. No top-line growth, so costs is the only way you can pay out. On the OP, it is deplorable. Investors do not want this. Most fund managers do not have money in their own funds, the PR is horrendous. Companies shouldn't treat their workers this way. But...the Fed has pumped up the market, every exec team is feeling joocy on that stimmy, multiples are through the roof...everyone knows it is going to blow but the music is still playing. I have no idea what the solution is, only that lots of people get the incentives totally wrong. Investors aren't short-term. Every investor wants the stock they can hold for five, ten, twenty years. But I have seen good companies run themselves into the ground because the comp committee wanted a "stretch" target that was literally impossible (particularly in retail, any company that can grow unprofitably but cheaply will be hung by the comp committee). Companies are even doing % of market cap growth by date X packages now, it is truly obscene (thank Elon). CEOs create these cultish atmospheres because of the incentives of pay (this is true of PEP: afaik, Nooyi was a terrible CEO, made terrible acquisitions to goose the share price, never got challenged, and walks away with $25-50m...if you lose the guys on the floor, you don't have a company tomorrow...if you don't hire Nooyi, you have saved billions in shareholder value...but it is the latter that is indispensable?).
• raffraffraff 5y ago
  America needs an equivalent to the EU working time act.
  • bserge 5y ago
    People like that work the same hours in the EU.
    • Kwpolska 5y ago
      Working 7 days a week all the time is not legal in the EU, see [0]. Also, many EU countries have even stricter local regulations in that regard. https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/working-hours-holiday-leave/working-hours/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/workin...
      • Tarucho 5y ago
        But are the regulations enforced?
        • mrunkel 5y ago
          Yes
        • celticninja 5y ago
          Yes, although workarounds exist, but not in a way that would make this sort of employment possible.
        • raffraffraff 5y ago
          I would say yes and no. If you (the employee) are heavily invested in the success of the company because you have a lot of stock options, or its success would look great on your work history, or you lied about having certain skills and now you have to work double to get the job done while learning, then you might decide to put in crazy hours. But that is a don't ask / don't tell situation. If there is any record that management knew you were working 7 days straight, then they would be in the soup. But ultimately this gives the power to the employee. At a previous company where I was that overworking employee, management tried to force a new oncall rota onto the whole team which clearly took the piss, I was able to pull on the ripcord and say "fuck, no". Unfortunately this put more pressure on the US team. And if management try to fire you in Europe they better have a better reason than "wouldn't work longer hours" or "knows their rights", so you're protected when you do raise the concern.
• jjcm 5y ago
  "In its latest contract offer, Frito-Lay has said it would raise wages by four percent over the next two years" Consumer price index has risen 4.5% since June of last year. With Biden planning similar amounts of printing, it's likely this trend will continue. What Frito-Lay is actually saying here is that they will cut employee's purchasing power by 5.2% over the next two years if that amount of inflation holds.
• JackFr 5y ago
  Where is the union? That has got to be the single most ineffective union I’ve ever seen. If that’s what a union shop looks like I can understand why people might not want to pay union dues.
  • pedalpete 5y ago
    I'd like to understand why you're being downvoted. Your comment isn't suggesting the factory owners/managers aren't at fault, but isn't the purpose of the union to protect the workers from exactly this? Frito-Lay should be ashamed of themselves, and the union is an absolute disgrace as well. Both the union and Frito-Lay are stealing these peoples lives.
  • phnofive 5y ago
    Well, they're on strike.
    • pedalpete 5y ago
      But look how long it took and how much harm was done. The union should have headed this off long ago.
  • caseysoftware 5y ago
    100% agreed. We've been told for years that THIS is what a union is supposed to fight back against and prevent or fix. If they can't accomplish their sole purpose in existing, what is the point? What are the employees paying for?
• bpodgursky 5y ago
  My brother-in-law works at the Target distribution center in Topeka, and is very confused why these workers don't just quit and work at either the Target or WalMart centers that are practically next-door and begging for workers. Definitely sounds like a rough gig here, but everyone is begging for entry-level labor, most at higher wages than this. The workers need to just protest with their feet and quit.
  • harryh 5y ago
    It sounds like there are some pension benefit lock in effects that might make job switching costs higher than one would like.
  • brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
    And in the mean time, starve.
• underseacables 5y ago
  What percentage of labor cost would a company like Frito lay have to reach before they consider moving the company to another country? I think about Oreos and how they are made in Mexico now, and I always wonder what was the calculus behind that. How much money are they saving? Is there a generally recognized point where labor is so expensive that outsourcing begins to make more sense? Edit: my bad grammar
  • crackercrews 5y ago
    The U.S. keeps sugar prices artificially high, and sugar is the first ingredient in Oreos. [1] That is why the candy companies fled Chicago for Canada. Probably also drove Oreo mfg out as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreo
• JackFr 5y ago
  Off topic tidbit from the article - note only corn based snacks are made in Topeka. One presumes there are factories in Washington and Idaho for the potato chips. Shipping vegetables is shipping water.
  • abakker 5y ago
    Vegetables bought from contract farms (most of them) are bought by weight. This means the farmers have an incentive to over water right before harvest weigh in heavy. Even for stupid stuff like ketchup where more energy is then spent to dehydrate the water right back out.
    • fy20 5y ago
      Is there an alternative? By volume would lead to the same as well, for certain crops that may lead to waiting until crops are over ripe - less tasty - so they are bigger.
      • abakker 5y ago
        It seems like the only better alternative might be a fixed price based on count/average yield. It’s not perfect, but it seems possible that you could pay a farmer more (net of water costs) and the supplier could save money (net energy and transport costs). It wouldn’t work with all foods, but the volume of tomatoes alone could be meaningful.
• kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  > raise wages by four percent over the next two years Matching inflation is not much of a raise.
  • boring_twenties 5y ago
    June CPI is up 5.4% YoY and 4.5% ex food and energy, so this doesn't even come close to covering that.
    • astrange 5y ago
      That's reflation. Looking at YoY doesn't work when the previous year was an exceptional deflation.
      • boring_twenties 5y ago
        What deflation? The previous year was +0.6% or +1.2%, excluding food and energy. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi_07142020.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi_07142020.htm
• baron816 5y ago
  > I stay here because in two years, I'll be 62 and I have a union pension acquired over 37 years. I've spent so much time here that I might as well take that pension and social security and call it quits. Had they not been locked in by the pension, I'd imagine most of them would've quit, and Frito-Lay would've been force to improve conditions. I wonder if unions prefer pensions pretty much for the same reason--it allows businesses to abuse workers, forcing them to turn to unions to bargain for better conditions while also keeping them locked in to the business and thus the union.
  • user-the-name 5y ago
    You read this and your first instinct is to attack unions?
    • baron816 5y ago
      Why is your first instinct to assume unions are wholesome, benevolent actors? Unions have a long history of corruption, racism, and being associated with organized crime.
      • user-the-name 5y ago
        Remind me where I said that, please.
  • vfclists 5y ago
    Nope. He is just like a prisoner coming up for parole who doesn't want to get into any trouble that will affect his release. The risk isn't worth it.
    • ffggvv 5y ago
      would being featured in this article jeapordize it? why even do it when you get a pension in two years
      • 5y ago
• brundolf 5y ago
  Wasn't this made illegal 100 years ago?
• mchusma 5y ago
  I thought about this case more and the root issue appears to be pensions. They create a situation where someone will do a job they don't want to, not because they are forced but because their entire retirement relies on it. Pensions are just a bad idea.
  • cherrycherry98 5y ago
    Same with 401ks and vesting periods and employer sponsored healthcare. It gives leverage to the employer to keep people working a job they otherwise wouldn't. Jobs should pay cash and in some cases equity. Expand tax advantaged accounts for retirement (IRAs), do something with healthcare (maybe single payer, idk).
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  Wouldn't overtime cost Frito-Lay a lot extra? I don't get how a business can get to the point of heavily using it to the point that employees complain without thinking that it must hire more people. And in plenty of union workplaces overtime is easy to give away, so they must be so enormously understaffed.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • pfranz 5y ago
    My guess is they've exhausted the local supply of labor for the price they're willing to pay, but I've been in situation where I don't think they crunched the numbers (or they didn't care). In my situation, which I feel bad comparing since it wasn't anywhere near as egregious, a team of us had mandatory overtime--enough to cover another salary at base pay. They didn't want to hire someone else because they said paying us 1.5x was less than hiring someone new with benefits. What I don't think they appreciated was covering vacations, resignation, or illness put even more stress on us and local laws required double-pay after a certain number of worked hours (which was put on us to try and avoid but still cover the shifts). When someone did resign, interviewing and onboarding made the next few months suck. Even with stronger labor laws than Kansas, the economic pressure wasn't enough to have them address the situation. A few people didn't mind the overtime and had the flexibility and willingness to work. I suspect that many organizations have a "model" that's profitable and they're afraid to mess with it or dig into problems making it work better. I had another job where it was kind of a joke that most people quit their first week. They had a group that had been working there for years, they just had a lot of turnover for new hires. It seemed like a weird process to interview and hire so many people that left immediately, but they were running (presumably) a profitable business and they didn't seem interested in changing things.
• fnordfnordfnord 5y ago
  Anecdotal: I have worked with Frito Lay in the past (training their workers) and they are ruthless. Would not do it again.
• GuB-42 5y ago
  How is it legal? I live in France, I know we have more worker protection laws than most countries, but I expected at least some from all first world countries. Factory work is typically among the most regulated kind of work, and often unionized too. Things tend to be very clear: there is a boss, there is punch clock, it is not like software development where it is not clear when you are working and when you are not. It is easy to see exactly what is happening.
  • OldHand2018 5y ago
    It's legal because the workers welcomed it. At first. This is one single factory in the entire United States, and it is news because it is so far out of the ordinary. I grew up around a lot of steel mills in the middle of America. What happens is this: Demand increases rapidly but nobody expects it to last. So they go to the union and work out a deal for increased working hours at a higher salary. Everybody, and I really mean everybody, is happy. Because nobody expects the conditions to last long. The workers see the opportunity to buy a boat or a truck with cash from all the extra work they put in, and the thought of it makes them excited to do all the extra shifts. But then towards the "end" the excitement wears off and they can't wait for the extra work to end. And it does. Except for this factory.
    • msrenee 5y ago
      Is it out of the ordinary? We're working minimum 50 hours a week and being told that it's only out of the goodness of the supervisor's heart that we've got any time off. Even at above-average pay for the area, they can't get new bodies in the door and experienced workers are leaving. It's been the same story everywhere I've worked. I'm sticking at this company because the pay is good, but I've been on overtime since shortly after I started here and this is the slow season right now.
    • etempleton 5y ago
      I would not say it is completely outside of the ordinary for factory work. It is an extreme, but forced over time is a pretty common problem in warehouses and factories in the US. Typically that comes with a 1.5X pay increase for overtime hours worked, but working 60-80 hours a week or more is physically and psychologically draining, especially when the factories and warehouses are not air conditioned and the temperature inside hits 100-120 degrees during the summer. Employees tolerate it because it can double their annual salary buying a better life for their families. It just comes at a huge personal cost. In this specific instance the 80 hour work weeks are simply not sustainable and I have to imagine that management will want to end the practice as soon as possible. I did not see mention of 1.5X pay in the article, but unless Kansas has very lax labor laws that would be the norm. If 80 hour work weeks are common it is costing them to not hire new workers.
• deleted 5y ago
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