6 ms·

> Modern jobs are quite comfortable and flexible relative to what was expected a few decades ago. Companies today bend over backwards to retain employees. Some

by bsder 5y ago

> Modern jobs are quite comfortable and flexible relative to what was expected a few decades ago. Companies today bend over backwards to retain employees. Some modern jobs. On the other end of the spectrum you have Amazon drivers pissing in bottles--something that a steel mill laborer would never have had to do.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> On the other end of the spectrum you have Amazon drivers pissing in bottles--something that a steel mill laborer would never have had to do. Are you really suggesting that laboring at a steel mill decades ago was a more comfortable job than being an Amazon worker? That's incredibly out of touch. Even modern steel mills, with all of our technology and safety regulations, are difficult jobs. That's why they pay more than being an Amazon warehouse employees or drivers. Older steel mill jobs were absolutely hellish. The struggles at modern Amazon jobs have been greatly exaggerated or cherry-picked in the news. There's no comparison between the two.
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  I'd take driving a truck and having to piss in a bottle over working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of 100.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Pssh, I'd take working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of a 100 compared to being a slave. Race to the bottom mentality.
    - Supermancho 5y ago
      That's an unnecessary (inflammatory) diversion from the comparison, which is the core of the thread. I understand you want to elevate the conversation to what YOU feel strongly about, but posting it on impulse is not constructive.
      - Clubber 5y ago
        The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. I applied the argument to his example to show how silly it was to dismiss current working conditions like that. What he was doing is the same arguments used for the last 40 years to make our work lives worse and worse. Like I said, it's a race to the bottom mentality. I mean what point do you think he was trying to make? That he respects the hard work steel workers endured? Sure, I guess, but I suspect the overriding narrative he was trying to convey was that Amazon workers ain't got it so tough. They should suck it up. That's how I read it. Remember how Chinese workers were killing themselves in factories and the first counter argument was along the lines of, "their lives were much worse before, they should be thankful for those jobs." Guess who's propaganda that was. Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud.
        Supermancho 5y ago
        > The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. You're personalizing a fairly dry back and forth discussion about subjective experience and then deciding that it's constructive to minimize their attempt at coming to a common ground in service of some moral recognition of a higher level wrong. > Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud. I tried to explain why you're not being constructive. Good luck with whatever.
        Clubber 5y ago
        Stop being so sanctimonious, it's not constructive.
    - bserge 5y ago
      A slave in either case, though.
  - paganel 5y ago
    Not sure about how the situation is in the States but the people driving those quick delivery vans over here in Eastern Europe (and over much of Western Europe, too, my country is in the EU so their companies can send them anywhere from Varna to close to Gibraltar at a moment's notice) have a very, very tough life, with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints. Apart of the huge stress that entails and the accompanying health conditions many of them also get into fatal road accidents because of said overwork and tiredness. Fortunately the work of drivers driving big lorries is more tightly regulated with the worker's wellbeing also taken into consideration so that there's a fixed time interval per day you are allowed to drive, after which you have to literally stop at the first parking spot at the side of the road, no matter what the boss screams in your phone from half-way across the continent.
    - rytis 5y ago
      > with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers? From https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/driving_time_en https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/...: "Daily driving period shall not exceed 9 hours, with an exemption of twice a week when it can be extended to 10 hours."
      - paganel 5y ago
        > Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers? Unfortunately not for the smaller vans. In your link they mention: > road haulage and passenger transport vehicles, which "road haulage" I'm pretty sure means the regular big lorries we all think about. But when driving a Mercedes Sprinter [1] the same rules don't apply. You can actually drive that Sprinter with a regular driver's license, while for a regular lorry you need to take additional exams so that you can get into the "you can drive a lorry/big truck" category. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/2019_Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter_314_CDi_2.1.jpg/1200px-2019_Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter_314_CDi_2.1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/20...
      - michaelt 5y ago
        If you're driving an 18-wheeler truck, sure. But a lot of door-to-door delivery these days uses "independent contractors" who use their personal vehicles and fuel, and get paid e.g. £120 for 180 deliveries. Nobody's enforcing digital tacho cards for people's personal vehicles.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  My grandfather worked in a steel mill. It absolutely broke his body down. Died in this late forties.
  - bsder 5y ago
    So, did my grandfather. He also went on strike and got shot at by Pinkertons. However, working in a modern steel mill is a far cry from that. Even back in the 1970s (which is several decades ago please note), "Get the book" (operating manual which specified procedures, training, safety equipment, how many men were required, etc.) was a standard retort when managers ordered you to do something dumb. And the union protected you when you told the manager to go pound sand because it was outside the manual. Amazon warehouse workers are schlepping around heavy stuff--just like many old school manufacturing jobs. And get crushed, injured, etc. just like many old school manufacturing jobs. However, they have zero protection and not much training and no backup to tell managers to get stuffed. Now, would I trade a programming job for a steel mill one? Absolutely not. Would I trade an Amazon warehouse job for a steel mill one? That's not as clear to me.
    - darkerside 5y ago
      > several decades You spelled "half a century" wrong (:
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > Older steel mill jobs were absolutely hellish. The struggles at modern Amazon jobs have been greatly exaggerated or cherry-picked in the news. This might be true but the comparison is profoundly misleading. We should instead contrast the improvement in quality of working life with the improvement of other jobs and society in general. Humanity (and US especially) has amassed an incredible amount of wealth, knowledge and technology in the last decades. Switching from employment to "gigs" is as huge step backward and the quality of life is dropping for many people.
prostoalex 5y ago
Amazon attributed this to COVID-19 lockdowns https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recent-response-to-representative-pocan https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recen... Anecdotally, at the very start of the pandemic I had read a similar complaint from someone whose relative worked in delivery - with offices (and retail) on the lockdown there were fewer potential pit stops along the route.
wahern 5y ago
I never understood the outrage regarding pee bottles. AFAIU urinating in a bottle is common at both UPS and USPS, both of which have very good unions. See discussions like https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.360713/ https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.36... and https://forum.federalsoup.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=31642#post333951 https://forum.federalsoup.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=31642#p... The real issue isn't whether people have to pee in a bottle sometimes--it's the nature of the business--but how prevalent it is. That is, do the drivers on routes with available facilities have the time to make use of them? But that's a far more nuanced question that doesn't make for good sound bites.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- swader999 5y ago
  They are called piss jugs.
edouard-harris 5y ago
Once can be very sympathetic to the experiences of Amazon drivers — and to be clear, the peeing-in-a-bottle story does appear to refer to a real incident — while still recognizing the enormous improvements in the working conditions of the average blue collar laborer. It's sometimes a bit too easy to look at the past through sepia-colored lenses, and assume that the present must be worse. As an antidote to that tendency, it's worth reading this description of the actual reality of working in one of Andrew Carnegie's steel mills at the turn of the 20th century: > Indeed, flames, noise, and danger ruled the Carnegie mills. "Protective gear" consisted only of two layers of wool long-johns; horrible injuries were common. Wives and children came to dread the sound of factory whistles that meant an accident had occurred. > "They wipe a man out here every little while," a worker said in 1893. "Sometimes a chain breaks, and a ladle tips over, and the iron explodes.... Sometimes the slag falls on the workmen.... Of course, if everything is working all smooth and a man watches out, why, all right! But you take it after they've been on duty twelve hours without sleep, and running like hell, everybody tired and loggy, and it's a different story." (Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegie-steel-business/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegi...) I've worked blue collar jobs and I've worked white collar jobs, and I'd take Bezos over Carnegie any day. And the very fact that sounds like such faint praise highlights how far we've come.
- retrac 5y ago
  True. I certainly agree with your example of 1890. And for 1940 and maybe 1970. But it does seems at least conceivable that workers may have been more safe in say 1985 than today. Also, aside from risk in objective terms, which was surely a consequence of technology and level of material wealth available to some degree -- how seriously did the society and culture generally take the issue?
  - jonas21 5y ago
    Luckily, we don't have to guess based on what is conceivable. The US government keeps statistics on this. Even since 1985, the rate of both workplace injuries [1] and fatalities [2] have fallen significantly. (the fatality graph doesn't go all the way back to 1985, but if you look at the source data they cite, the trend continues) [1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborforcedata/chart1.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborfo... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborforcedata/Chart16.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborfo...

by bsder 5y ago

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> On the other end of the spectrum you have Amazon drivers pissing in bottles--something that a steel mill laborer would never have had to do. Are you really suggesting that laboring at a steel mill decades ago was a more comfortable job than being an Amazon worker? That's incredibly out of touch. Even modern steel mills, with all of our technology and safety regulations, are difficult jobs. That's why they pay more than being an Amazon warehouse employees or drivers. Older steel mill jobs were absolutely hellish. The struggles at modern Amazon jobs have been greatly exaggerated or cherry-picked in the news. There's no comparison between the two.

rubyist5eva 5y ago
I'd take driving a truck and having to piss in a bottle over working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of 100.
- Clubber 5y ago
  Pssh, I'd take working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of a 100 compared to being a slave. Race to the bottom mentality.
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    That's an unnecessary (inflammatory) diversion from the comparison, which is the core of the thread. I understand you want to elevate the conversation to what YOU feel strongly about, but posting it on impulse is not constructive.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. I applied the argument to his example to show how silly it was to dismiss current working conditions like that. What he was doing is the same arguments used for the last 40 years to make our work lives worse and worse. Like I said, it's a race to the bottom mentality. I mean what point do you think he was trying to make? That he respects the hard work steel workers endured? Sure, I guess, but I suspect the overriding narrative he was trying to convey was that Amazon workers ain't got it so tough. They should suck it up. That's how I read it. Remember how Chinese workers were killing themselves in factories and the first counter argument was along the lines of, "their lives were much worse before, they should be thankful for those jobs." Guess who's propaganda that was. Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud.
      - Supermancho 5y ago
        > The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. You're personalizing a fairly dry back and forth discussion about subjective experience and then deciding that it's constructive to minimize their attempt at coming to a common ground in service of some moral recognition of a higher level wrong. > Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud. I tried to explain why you're not being constructive. Good luck with whatever.
        Clubber 5y ago
        Stop being so sanctimonious, it's not constructive.
  - bserge 5y ago
    A slave in either case, though.
- paganel 5y ago
  Not sure about how the situation is in the States but the people driving those quick delivery vans over here in Eastern Europe (and over much of Western Europe, too, my country is in the EU so their companies can send them anywhere from Varna to close to Gibraltar at a moment's notice) have a very, very tough life, with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints. Apart of the huge stress that entails and the accompanying health conditions many of them also get into fatal road accidents because of said overwork and tiredness. Fortunately the work of drivers driving big lorries is more tightly regulated with the worker's wellbeing also taken into consideration so that there's a fixed time interval per day you are allowed to drive, after which you have to literally stop at the first parking spot at the side of the road, no matter what the boss screams in your phone from half-way across the continent.
  - rytis 5y ago
    > with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers? From https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/driving_time_en https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/...: "Daily driving period shall not exceed 9 hours, with an exemption of twice a week when it can be extended to 10 hours."
    - paganel 5y ago
      > Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers? Unfortunately not for the smaller vans. In your link they mention: > road haulage and passenger transport vehicles, which "road haulage" I'm pretty sure means the regular big lorries we all think about. But when driving a Mercedes Sprinter [1] the same rules don't apply. You can actually drive that Sprinter with a regular driver's license, while for a regular lorry you need to take additional exams so that you can get into the "you can drive a lorry/big truck" category. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/2019_Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter_314_CDi_2.1.jpg/1200px-2019_Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter_314_CDi_2.1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/20...
    - michaelt 5y ago
      If you're driving an 18-wheeler truck, sure. But a lot of door-to-door delivery these days uses "independent contractors" who use their personal vehicles and fuel, and get paid e.g. £120 for 180 deliveries. Nobody's enforcing digital tacho cards for people's personal vehicles.
germinalphrase 5y ago
My grandfather worked in a steel mill. It absolutely broke his body down. Died in this late forties.
- bsder 5y ago
  So, did my grandfather. He also went on strike and got shot at by Pinkertons. However, working in a modern steel mill is a far cry from that. Even back in the 1970s (which is several decades ago please note), "Get the book" (operating manual which specified procedures, training, safety equipment, how many men were required, etc.) was a standard retort when managers ordered you to do something dumb. And the union protected you when you told the manager to go pound sand because it was outside the manual. Amazon warehouse workers are schlepping around heavy stuff--just like many old school manufacturing jobs. And get crushed, injured, etc. just like many old school manufacturing jobs. However, they have zero protection and not much training and no backup to tell managers to get stuffed. Now, would I trade a programming job for a steel mill one? Absolutely not. Would I trade an Amazon warehouse job for a steel mill one? That's not as clear to me.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    > several decades You spelled "half a century" wrong (:
goodpoint 5y ago
> Older steel mill jobs were absolutely hellish. The struggles at modern Amazon jobs have been greatly exaggerated or cherry-picked in the news. This might be true but the comparison is profoundly misleading. We should instead contrast the improvement in quality of working life with the improvement of other jobs and society in general. Humanity (and US especially) has amassed an incredible amount of wealth, knowledge and technology in the last decades. Switching from employment to "gigs" is as huge step backward and the quality of life is dropping for many people.

prostoalex 5y ago

Amazon attributed this to COVID-19 lockdowns https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recent-response-to-representative-pocan https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recen... Anecdotally, at the very start of the pandemic I had read a similar complaint from someone whose relative worked in delivery - with offices (and retail) on the lockdown there were fewer potential pit stops along the route.

wahern 5y ago

I never understood the outrage regarding pee bottles. AFAIU urinating in a bottle is common at both UPS and USPS, both of which have very good unions. See discussions like https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.360713/ https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.36... and https://forum.federalsoup.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=31642#post333951 https://forum.federalsoup.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=31642#p... The real issue isn't whether people have to pee in a bottle sometimes--it's the nature of the business--but how prevalent it is. That is, do the drivers on routes with available facilities have the time to make use of them? But that's a far more nuanced question that doesn't make for good sound bites.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
swader999 5y ago
They are called piss jugs.

edouard-harris 5y ago

Once can be very sympathetic to the experiences of Amazon drivers — and to be clear, the peeing-in-a-bottle story does appear to refer to a real incident — while still recognizing the enormous improvements in the working conditions of the average blue collar laborer. It's sometimes a bit too easy to look at the past through sepia-colored lenses, and assume that the present must be worse. As an antidote to that tendency, it's worth reading this description of the actual reality of working in one of Andrew Carnegie's steel mills at the turn of the 20th century: > Indeed, flames, noise, and danger ruled the Carnegie mills. "Protective gear" consisted only of two layers of wool long-johns; horrible injuries were common. Wives and children came to dread the sound of factory whistles that meant an accident had occurred. > "They wipe a man out here every little while," a worker said in 1893. "Sometimes a chain breaks, and a ladle tips over, and the iron explodes.... Sometimes the slag falls on the workmen.... Of course, if everything is working all smooth and a man watches out, why, all right! But you take it after they've been on duty twelve hours without sleep, and running like hell, everybody tired and loggy, and it's a different story." (Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegie-steel-business/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegi...) I've worked blue collar jobs and I've worked white collar jobs, and I'd take Bezos over Carnegie any day. And the very fact that sounds like such faint praise highlights how far we've come.

retrac 5y ago
True. I certainly agree with your example of 1890. And for 1940 and maybe 1970. But it does seems at least conceivable that workers may have been more safe in say 1985 than today. Also, aside from risk in objective terms, which was surely a consequence of technology and level of material wealth available to some degree -- how seriously did the society and culture generally take the issue?
- jonas21 5y ago
  Luckily, we don't have to guess based on what is conceivable. The US government keeps statistics on this. Even since 1985, the rate of both workplace injuries [1] and fatalities [2] have fallen significantly. (the fatality graph doesn't go all the way back to 1985, but if you look at the source data they cite, the trend continues) [1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborforcedata/chart1.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborfo... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborforcedata/Chart16.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/surveillance/images/laborfo...