2 ms·
There is so much that could be said here... but a company forcing workers to work overtime is both a) run of the mill in terms of history and b) still reprehens
by dbingham 4y ago
There is so much that could be said here... but a company forcing workers to work overtime is both a) run of the mill in terms of history and b) still reprehensible.
Strikes always have been of grey legality, because the law has always been much more responsive to the concerns of business owners and investors than to those of the workers. There are many examples of historical strikes that ended in workers being gunned down by the army.
The bargaining table is always going to be tilted away from the workers, which is how you end up with collective bargaining agreements like this: with clauses that allow workers to be forced to work involuntary overtime and that make workers using their power to renegotiate the agreement illegal.
But that doesn't mean we should accept that fact or call it "reasonable". It's not. It never has been. It never will be.
This is why I don't believe unions are the solution to issues of inequity and abuse in the workplace. They are a bandaid and a poor one at that. The solution is for the people who are doing the work to also be the ones governing the business. And for the people who provided the capital to merely be given a reasonable return, and nothing more.
- Fradow 4y agoJust to be clear, I don't pass any judgement about forcing overtime / forbidding strikes. I also think those are bad practices, and I'm pretty sure both are not legal in my country (in which most labor advances were a hard-won battle involving strikes, the country is famous for its strikes, you can probably guess it already). I just tried to figure out the actual situation in a way that would actually make sense, assuming everyone involved was reasonable and tried to abid by the law.