4 ms·

There's nothing wrong with 24/7 support and high availability; just pay people to do evening and night shifts and compensate anyone who gets called to help with

There's nothing wrong with 24/7 support and high availability; just pay people to do evening and night shifts and compensate anyone who gets called to help with an incident outside normal working hours. Night shifts can be pretty rough, but back when I still did shifts I sacrificed a couple nights around new year once and added a good chunk of money to my usual income that month over a few days due to getting holiday compensation (double pay) plus night shift compensation and that got doubled again for being an emergency substitute for another person who'd gotten sick. You only get problems when social manipulation is used to pressure workers into providing that level of support without appropriate compensation.

ithkuil 5y ago
I think GP's point is precisely that once you normalize something that used to be a special case requiring extra compensation, it's hard to make the case that you need to get paid extra for your extra work, since it's, well, no longer extra?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  It depends how the labor supply and demand curves are moving. The case for extra compensation is that you will stop working there if you do not get extra compensation.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    People are still working the same retail jobs they did in the days before 24/7 expectations and, after taking into account inflation, making about the same amount of money. https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/ https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      And? Evidently, there was a huge increase in labor supply relative to demand for that type of labor in the decades since the 1970s. Hence the workers could not negotiate higher wages. If the workers had better options, they would have chosen to go elsewhere. Around me, I now see restaurants and stores closing earlier, which must mean they are no longer able to find labor willing to work at the low wages they were expecting them to.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

ithkuil 5y ago

I think GP's point is precisely that once you normalize something that used to be a special case requiring extra compensation, it's hard to make the case that you need to get paid extra for your extra work, since it's, well, no longer extra?

lotsofpulp 5y ago
It depends how the labor supply and demand curves are moving. The case for extra compensation is that you will stop working there if you do not get extra compensation.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  People are still working the same retail jobs they did in the days before 24/7 expectations and, after taking into account inflation, making about the same amount of money. https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/ https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    And? Evidently, there was a huge increase in labor supply relative to demand for that type of labor in the decades since the 1970s. Hence the workers could not negotiate higher wages. If the workers had better options, they would have chosen to go elsewhere. Around me, I now see restaurants and stores closing earlier, which must mean they are no longer able to find labor willing to work at the low wages they were expecting them to.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]