4 ms·

One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. E.g. t

One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. E.g. there was a big strike by nurses in Austin whose primary concern was woefully short staffing that was leaving nurses burnt out and making it difficult to provide adequate care. It feels to me like the pandemic fundamentally changed many people's mindsets with their relationship to work: while I think some people went off the deep end with the r/antiwork crowd, others just reconsidered the amount of time and effort they wanted to put towards work so it wasn't detrimental to other aspects of their lives. They still wanted to do good work and have pride in their work, it was just no longer their primary focus. So I feel a lot of these union battles are primarily about control. Many employees basically did get a bit "woke" (not in the woke-liberal sense, but in the "my eyes are opened to why am I killing myself at a job" sense), and employers are trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

Frost1x 3y ago
>One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. E.g. there was a big strike by nurses in Austin whose primary concern was woefully short staffing that was leaving nurses burnt out and making it difficult to provide adequate care. Actualized pay is often more the issue here, however we look at or segment it (working conditions, net pay, etc). It's about the net transaction of your time for labor vs compensation. Magnitude of compensation is important because people need enough money and free time to make it worth working, but there are many ways to squeeze this, just as your example points out. Understaffing, pushing increased productivity requirements, tucking in new responsibilities, reducing benefits in some way, slacking on safety or security, etc. It's difficult to quantify all of this for most people so we often just look at pay. We'll, getting paid more than enough to live comfortably.. sure, but maybe you're working long hours to get that and stressed out of your mind. Maybe you're losing sleep. Maybe you're sacrificing your health to focus on improved business outputs. It's an in/out situation, are you getting enough out for what you put in and that's often the issue. Any business paying market rates will be quick to point at salary and ignore everything else because it's very easy to discuss, compare, and argue about.
- clbrmbr 3y ago
  But the labor market is not that liquid. May be easier to fight for changes at current employer than pound the pavement. This is compounded by seniority perks, insurance (COBRA costs), relocation costs (financial and personal), and to some extent non-compete clauses.
dmoy 3y ago
> is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. A lot of the OG strikes in the US were mostly about working conditions too - e.g. coal wars (which ended with literal armed conflict between thousands of strikers and the military...), railroad strikes, etc etc. Back then the working conditions were like "we don't want to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week", "we don't want to die from toxic fumes", etc.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  A good number of people also died from being in person during the height of COVID. IIRC line cooks had the highest mortality rate of any profession and deaths were more heavily concentrated in lower wage, in-person work.
  - natpalmer1776 3y ago
    Given the political climate surrounding COVID I find it difficult to trust any numbers from any source, with even the raw data having potential for obfuscation and ambiguity. Even ignoring my personal bias on biases, a pandemic is by nature transient, whereas the working conditions cited prior were (presumably) typical conditions that could be expected. All that to say that your comparison strikes (hah) me as at best immaterial to the comment you replied to.
    - sampo 3y ago
      > Given the political climate surrounding COVID I find it difficult to trust any numbers from any source Just look at all-cause mortality, and assume that the observed excess mortality is because of covid.
      - natpalmer1776 3y ago
        The government sources that I was able to find for mortality statistics 'revamped' their reporting and data gathering around 2019/2020, which leaves me with enough doubt. I was quite a bit more rigorous than I usually am when trying to formulate my position on the matter, and even still the only conclusion I could come to was that (for me at least) the information I could gather was simply not trustworthy without specific expertise that I lack. To this day, I simply let the scope and impact of COVID remain an 'unsolved mystery' in my broader world views. To add on to the start of my response, correlation does not imply causation. I can postulate numerous circumstances that, to a layman such as myself, could plausibly explain why there was an increase in all-cause mortality. Things such as an increased scrutiny on data collection pertaining to this specific circumstance could feasibly result in a change in data gathering practices favoring over-reporting, or even an improvement in report accuracy.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
>One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. Labor sellers have always evaluated pay to quality of life at work ratio, not just pay. And increasing pay and quality of life at work always costs labor buyers more money.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Sure, I get that, but I think it's a mistake to think of these things as totally interchangeable, that anything can just be quantified to a salary number. There is some threshold where many people simply quit or leave a profession, and basically no amount of salary would cause them to come back - I've seen this in droves when it comes to nurses and teachers. Point being I guess is that, for employers, the total cost of, say, adding some additional workers to provide better working conditions for everyone is going to be a much lower cost in the long run than simply providing hellish conditions for fewer workers and then needing to pay them out the wazoo to keep them from quitting.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
Often I find that union members actually want their employer to succeed and they tend to recognize that they can't just beat the pinata and expect infinite candy to pour out.
KittenInABox 3y ago
The thing with nurses is that there is no amount you can reasonably pay a nurse to risk their license by forcing them to provide literal medical neglect. I would rather strike, unionize, fight tooth and nail, if it meant I could avoid knowingly killing people because I don't have enough time to care for people. It is far, far more than just "working conditions".
doctorpangloss 3y ago
I support union representation and negotiation. > others just reconsidered the amount of time and effort they wanted to put towards work so it wasn't detrimental to other aspects of their lives... employers are trying to put the genie back in the bottle. On the other hand, reading the Sony e-mails hacks: Sony did every negotiation with its team of finance people to tell their execs a number. The other side, a bunch of ICs as it were like production companies, actors, whatever, always asked for their money or needs "formatted" some weird way. This rider or that weird royalty-esque thing or some dates and terms that made no sense. It's apparent that the people who were on the other side of the Sony execs always lost out. The thing they valued was not as valuable as it seemed. From Sony's POV, Sony was taking all the rewards from the risk, and they were thankful the ICs asked for weird stuff that was no risk no reward. IMO compensation should model the banking industry. It has sophisticated employees and at major banks something like 40% of all costs are employee compensation. Not trying to turn this into a model but the bonus structures are aligned and the payout you get is in a sense quite simple. However maybe country-wide if everyone operated like this - like if people hated nurses guts as much as they hate bankers' - the reactionary politics would not be pretty.
- busterarm 3y ago
  Having worked in the finance industry, I'm glad that my compensation no longer works that way. In years with good recruitment or lean profits or really whenever the hell the bosses feel like, the company will stiff everyone in the back office on their bonus compensation regardless of performance and make some weak promises about how next year will be better. Everyone competent will leave for other companies, or if they're smart and competent other industries.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - malfist 3y ago
    Your comment does not add to this conversation. If you're trying to make a point, please make the point and avoid unnecessary snark
bobthepanda 3y ago
COVID also “pierced the veil” when it came to hard jobs with prestige; nurses and teaching were hit hard with an angry public accusing the frontline worker of conspiracy theories and whatnot. Though teaching has been on the decline with prestige for a while now.
legitster 3y ago
> It feels to me like the pandemic fundamentally changed many people's mindsets with their relationship to work. An underrated part of the pandemic was that baby boomers retired in huge swaths. And immigration for skilled workers plummeted. There are simply MANY less workers in the economy now. So workers have a ton of bargaining power. (Before we jump to the conclusion that everything is rosy, there is a huge downside to a labor-led economy: we'll probably start seeing declines in GDP eventually. Less total hours of labor productivity across the market divided by the amount of people means less labor per person).
6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
Inflation is also a factor. Wage increases kinda cancel themselves out, while working condition improvements stay around.
tempsy 3y ago
Inflation is running at over 20% since Jan 2020. I'm not sure how you measure metro-level inflation, but NYC got noticeably much more expensive post-pandemic, especially housing/rents but also food/entertainment/uber. A renovated studio apartment in a decent area is $4k in some neighborhoods now, and over $5k for a 1 bedroom apartment.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  That has little to do with inflation and a lot to do with the greed and political influence of landlords.

Frost1x 3y ago

>One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. E.g. there was a big strike by nurses in Austin whose primary concern was woefully short staffing that was leaving nurses burnt out and making it difficult to provide adequate care. Actualized pay is often more the issue here, however we look at or segment it (working conditions, net pay, etc). It's about the net transaction of your time for labor vs compensation. Magnitude of compensation is important because people need enough money and free time to make it worth working, but there are many ways to squeeze this, just as your example points out. Understaffing, pushing increased productivity requirements, tucking in new responsibilities, reducing benefits in some way, slacking on safety or security, etc. It's difficult to quantify all of this for most people so we often just look at pay. We'll, getting paid more than enough to live comfortably.. sure, but maybe you're working long hours to get that and stressed out of your mind. Maybe you're losing sleep. Maybe you're sacrificing your health to focus on improved business outputs. It's an in/out situation, are you getting enough out for what you put in and that's often the issue. Any business paying market rates will be quick to point at salary and ignore everything else because it's very easy to discuss, compare, and argue about.

clbrmbr 3y ago
But the labor market is not that liquid. May be easier to fight for changes at current employer than pound the pavement. This is compounded by seniority perks, insurance (COBRA costs), relocation costs (financial and personal), and to some extent non-compete clauses.

dmoy 3y ago

> is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. A lot of the OG strikes in the US were mostly about working conditions too - e.g. coal wars (which ended with literal armed conflict between thousands of strikers and the military...), railroad strikes, etc etc. Back then the working conditions were like "we don't want to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week", "we don't want to die from toxic fumes", etc.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
A good number of people also died from being in person during the height of COVID. IIRC line cooks had the highest mortality rate of any profession and deaths were more heavily concentrated in lower wage, in-person work.
- natpalmer1776 3y ago
  Given the political climate surrounding COVID I find it difficult to trust any numbers from any source, with even the raw data having potential for obfuscation and ambiguity. Even ignoring my personal bias on biases, a pandemic is by nature transient, whereas the working conditions cited prior were (presumably) typical conditions that could be expected. All that to say that your comparison strikes (hah) me as at best immaterial to the comment you replied to.
  - sampo 3y ago
    > Given the political climate surrounding COVID I find it difficult to trust any numbers from any source Just look at all-cause mortality, and assume that the observed excess mortality is because of covid.
    - natpalmer1776 3y ago
      The government sources that I was able to find for mortality statistics 'revamped' their reporting and data gathering around 2019/2020, which leaves me with enough doubt. I was quite a bit more rigorous than I usually am when trying to formulate my position on the matter, and even still the only conclusion I could come to was that (for me at least) the information I could gather was simply not trustworthy without specific expertise that I lack. To this day, I simply let the scope and impact of COVID remain an 'unsolved mystery' in my broader world views. To add on to the start of my response, correlation does not imply causation. I can postulate numerous circumstances that, to a layman such as myself, could plausibly explain why there was an increase in all-cause mortality. Things such as an increased scrutiny on data collection pertaining to this specific circumstance could feasibly result in a change in data gathering practices favoring over-reporting, or even an improvement in report accuracy.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

>One of the things I've noticed with a number of recent strikes (not all, but a bunch) is how many are not over pay but primarily over working conditions. Labor sellers have always evaluated pay to quality of life at work ratio, not just pay. And increasing pay and quality of life at work always costs labor buyers more money.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Sure, I get that, but I think it's a mistake to think of these things as totally interchangeable, that anything can just be quantified to a salary number. There is some threshold where many people simply quit or leave a profession, and basically no amount of salary would cause them to come back - I've seen this in droves when it comes to nurses and teachers. Point being I guess is that, for employers, the total cost of, say, adding some additional workers to provide better working conditions for everyone is going to be a much lower cost in the long run than simply providing hellish conditions for fewer workers and then needing to pay them out the wazoo to keep them from quitting.

micromacrofoot 3y ago

Often I find that union members actually want their employer to succeed and they tend to recognize that they can't just beat the pinata and expect infinite candy to pour out.

KittenInABox 3y ago

The thing with nurses is that there is no amount you can reasonably pay a nurse to risk their license by forcing them to provide literal medical neglect. I would rather strike, unionize, fight tooth and nail, if it meant I could avoid knowingly killing people because I don't have enough time to care for people. It is far, far more than just "working conditions".

doctorpangloss 3y ago

I support union representation and negotiation. > others just reconsidered the amount of time and effort they wanted to put towards work so it wasn't detrimental to other aspects of their lives... employers are trying to put the genie back in the bottle. On the other hand, reading the Sony e-mails hacks: Sony did every negotiation with its team of finance people to tell their execs a number. The other side, a bunch of ICs as it were like production companies, actors, whatever, always asked for their money or needs "formatted" some weird way. This rider or that weird royalty-esque thing or some dates and terms that made no sense. It's apparent that the people who were on the other side of the Sony execs always lost out. The thing they valued was not as valuable as it seemed. From Sony's POV, Sony was taking all the rewards from the risk, and they were thankful the ICs asked for weird stuff that was no risk no reward. IMO compensation should model the banking industry. It has sophisticated employees and at major banks something like 40% of all costs are employee compensation. Not trying to turn this into a model but the bonus structures are aligned and the payout you get is in a sense quite simple. However maybe country-wide if everyone operated like this - like if people hated nurses guts as much as they hate bankers' - the reactionary politics would not be pretty.

busterarm 3y ago
Having worked in the finance industry, I'm glad that my compensation no longer works that way. In years with good recruitment or lean profits or really whenever the hell the bosses feel like, the company will stiff everyone in the back office on their bonus compensation regardless of performance and make some weak promises about how next year will be better. Everyone competent will leave for other companies, or if they're smart and competent other industries.
0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
[flagged]
- malfist 3y ago
  Your comment does not add to this conversation. If you're trying to make a point, please make the point and avoid unnecessary snark

bobthepanda 3y ago

COVID also “pierced the veil” when it came to hard jobs with prestige; nurses and teaching were hit hard with an angry public accusing the frontline worker of conspiracy theories and whatnot. Though teaching has been on the decline with prestige for a while now.

legitster 3y ago

> It feels to me like the pandemic fundamentally changed many people's mindsets with their relationship to work. An underrated part of the pandemic was that baby boomers retired in huge swaths. And immigration for skilled workers plummeted. There are simply MANY less workers in the economy now. So workers have a ton of bargaining power. (Before we jump to the conclusion that everything is rosy, there is a huge downside to a labor-led economy: we'll probably start seeing declines in GDP eventually. Less total hours of labor productivity across the market divided by the amount of people means less labor per person).

6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago

Inflation is also a factor. Wage increases kinda cancel themselves out, while working condition improvements stay around.

tempsy 3y ago

Inflation is running at over 20% since Jan 2020. I'm not sure how you measure metro-level inflation, but NYC got noticeably much more expensive post-pandemic, especially housing/rents but also food/entertainment/uber. A renovated studio apartment in a decent area is $4k in some neighborhoods now, and over $5k for a 1 bedroom apartment.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
That has little to do with inflation and a lot to do with the greed and political influence of landlords.