5 ms·

36-hour shifts, 80-hour weeks: Workers are being burnt out by overtime

42 points by bikenaga 3y ago

behringer 3y ago
Remember. There's no worker shortage. There's only a pay shortage.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Workers can organizer or quit. There is no other path, and they have the wind to their backs due to structural demographics.
  - photonbeam 3y ago
    Or they can lobby
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      That’s worthless in the near term for labor rights issues with regard to action in Congress. We can barely keep the government functioning from a funding perspective. Republicans and the US chamber of commerce will keep trying to grind workers and their attempts at getting agency. The NLRB continues to enact pro union and worker policy; that is the lever to apply maximum force with until representative turnover in Congress can occur. I repeat myself for emphasis: workers must organize, and failing that, quit to starve the business or industry of labor (depending on their means, location, other potential employment opportunities, etc). Otherwise the beatings will continue as long as the workers keep showing up (as this very piece the post is referencing describes). I see no other options, having worked back from first principles and systems analysis. If the economy or its subcomponents must be pushed towards failure, that is reasonable. Just as in tech workplaces where dysfunctional business systems continue to function due to unseen (sometimes Herculean) effort, if you allow the dysfunction to occur, no change will be made. You either let the system fail, or you push it to failure. Examples: https://news.yahoo.com/entire-police-department-quit-over-105609304.html https://news.yahoo.com/entire-police-department-quit-over-10... ("An entire police department quit over $22-an-hour pay, saying there is 'zero incentive' to work there") https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the-u-s-are-trying-a-4-day-week-why-to-retain-teachers https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the... ("Many school districts around the U.S. are moving to a four-day school week to retain teachers. Districts that don't want to raise taxes to pay teachers more are using the long weekend as an incentive.") https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-teachers-parents/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-tea... ("Nearly 900 school districts in the United States currently use a four-day weekly academic schedule. That number rose from 650 districts in 2020 to 876 districts, across 26 states, in 2023. While smaller, rural districts have been more likely to favor the schedule, larger districts are now shortening their school weeks in an effort to recruit and retain teachers. It's a selling point in an era when schools are facing a national teacher shortage.") https://www.deseret.com/2023/5/3/23709769/one-third-us-nurses-plan-to-quit https://www.deseret.com/2023/5/3/23709769/one-third-us-nurse... ("30% of the nurses are planning to quit their career, which is 7 percentage points over the 2021 percentage") https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1207991399/4-four-day-work-week-manufacturing-work-life-balance https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1207991399/4-four-day-work-we... ("A manufacturer tried the 4-day workweek for 5 days' pay and won't go back") TLDR There is no labor shortage. There is a shortage of labor willing to take the abuse they historically have.
      - ianai 3y ago
        There was a historical market correction of labor wages upwards after the 1918 pandemic. Strange to think, but it sure seems those days had fewer factors pushing labor down than now, but here we are. You’re absolutely correct. Price/wage is how to incentivize people to work for a company. Though also these jobs (medical, law enforcement, firefighting) have always been high stress but seem much worse after the pandemic. The answer would probably be less hours worked for higher pay and making sure they have all the resources they could ever need.
      - tr_user 3y ago
        You don't even need to quit to see the effects of this. As people become poorer, demand is going to drop. Only so much blood you can squeeze out
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        I agree mostly, but disagree about demand dropping, as this is industry specific. With regards to teachers, students and families will simply be stuck with whatever resources can be provided (in the citations I provide above, some parents are unhappy with a 4 day school week, but if taxpayers don't want to pay more for a mandated service, too bad so sad, you get what you get). Speaking of police protection, you will get degraded services or no services. Most critically, if there are not enough nurses, CNAs, and other medical practitioners, care delivery will degrade and people will potentially die. These are all services and systems with mostly inelastic demand. Where demand is elastic, there is more flexibility in the feedback loop. Labor is not fungible, so expect this to continue in a lumpy fashion for at least the next decade.
    - pylua 3y ago
      They should definitely raise the exempt salary amount and the minimum wage. It has been too long. In the very least , tie it to inflation.
      - gumby 3y ago
        Tying wage to inflation is unfortunately a bad idea because it drives a feedback loop. People have tried (including in the US in the 70s) and it always ends in tears. Tying thresholds like exempt thresholds though sounds like a good idea.
  - black_13 3y ago
    [dead]
  - behringer 3y ago
    or they can choose not to work at all in a shitty job. That's what's happening here.
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
Much of what I read in this article is outright illegal in many parts of the world. American leadership? Nope.
- pard68 3y ago
  This is largely illegal here in the USA too. This article neglects to point out the fact that everyone except for the railway workers are either police, fire fighters, medics, or nurse which are professions that have legal exemptions from laws governing overtime and such. The rail workers are not pulling 80 hour weeks, the article says they can only work 4.7 hours of overtime in a week, so 44.7 hours a week. Only emergency services and hospital staff are exempt from the laws that protect people from this sort of stuff.
  - calamari4065 3y ago
    There are some extraordinarily broad exemptions to overtime requirements. From memory, it basically boiled down to anyone whose job can be described as spending a majority of their time on a computer. In my last corporate retail job, we had mandatory unpaid overtime. Assistant managers were required to work 44 hours and managers had to do 48, but got paid for 40. Though those same overtime exemptions had their own counter-exemption if you had less than some number of employees as a manager. Because corporate wouldn't raise starting wages or approve new hires, many stores were below that limit and it was a huge scandal when some of them started demanding overtime pay. By then we were looking at 50 and 60 hour weeks with no overtime pay.
    - metalcrow 3y ago
      Can you expand on how this works? Presumably retail workers have to log hours and clock in/out. Did the company demand you falsify your hours? Or did they just not pay for some of your hours? The latter seems clearly illegal, it's wage theft.
      - calamari4065 3y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> Still, Jen Burke, a nurse at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, said it has become routine for her and her colleagues working in the cardiac catheterization lab to have their 12-hour shifts extended because of a lack of staff or beds in other parts of the hospital. I bet if the government mandated triple over time pay for safety critical procedures such as in medicine, the problem would rapidly fix itself.
- gus_massa 3y ago
  It's ilegal for airplane pilots and truck drivers, because tired people make more mistakes that can kill someone. It should be ilegal for nurses and medical doctors, because ...
  - batshibstein 3y ago
    the only thing worse than a tired nurse or doctor is no nurse or doctor at all. you can cancel a flight or a truck shipment (not great but feasible) -- you can't quite just cancel patients that are in the hospital.
FireBeyond 3y ago
Mandated overtime in fire and EMS is common. 36 hours though? The private ambulance company near me only requires 8 hours off-duty after SIXTY hours on-duty.
- pard68 3y ago
  Most professional (non-volunteer) fire fighters work 24 hour shifts. This includes three meals and an 8-10 hours of down time. It wouldn't be too uncommon for a fire fighter coming off his day to et mandated another 12 hours, totalling 36 hours. Sucks, I agree, but this is not 36 sleepless hours. Likely he had 10-12 hours of rest in his 36 hour shift. It is not the same as if a desk jockey worked 36 hours straight.
  - brianwawok 3y ago
    Assuming no fire over night yah? Could be a very long day but won’t always be.
    - pard68 3y ago
      Yes that's right however usually shifts get moved around to accommodate. My father worked for a large fire department, so my understanding is probably skewed by a department with a lot of resources.
strangesmells06 3y ago
Capitalism eventually becomes Japan. Corporations and 80 hour work weeks.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  Japan speed ran the game, we're just catching up.
Cypher 3y ago
I'm burnt out and frustrated, the whole covid era has really taken it's toll on my mental health. Hard to see a way forward when we're hell bent on degrowth as prices spiral out of control.
derelicta 3y ago
It reminds me my project manager works up to 10 hours a day, sometimes even on the weekends. He's sacrificing his life to The Group, and expects me to do the same. Thank God I'm still studying, so I can claim this day I really gotta do my homework etc (which is surprisingly mostly true).

42 points by bikenaga 3y ago

behringer 3y ago

Remember. There's no worker shortage. There's only a pay shortage.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Workers can organizer or quit. There is no other path, and they have the wind to their backs due to structural demographics.
- photonbeam 3y ago
  Or they can lobby
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    That’s worthless in the near term for labor rights issues with regard to action in Congress. We can barely keep the government functioning from a funding perspective. Republicans and the US chamber of commerce will keep trying to grind workers and their attempts at getting agency. The NLRB continues to enact pro union and worker policy; that is the lever to apply maximum force with until representative turnover in Congress can occur. I repeat myself for emphasis: workers must organize, and failing that, quit to starve the business or industry of labor (depending on their means, location, other potential employment opportunities, etc). Otherwise the beatings will continue as long as the workers keep showing up (as this very piece the post is referencing describes). I see no other options, having worked back from first principles and systems analysis. If the economy or its subcomponents must be pushed towards failure, that is reasonable. Just as in tech workplaces where dysfunctional business systems continue to function due to unseen (sometimes Herculean) effort, if you allow the dysfunction to occur, no change will be made. You either let the system fail, or you push it to failure. Examples: https://news.yahoo.com/entire-police-department-quit-over-105609304.html https://news.yahoo.com/entire-police-department-quit-over-10... ("An entire police department quit over $22-an-hour pay, saying there is 'zero incentive' to work there") https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the-u-s-are-trying-a-4-day-week-why-to-retain-teachers https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the... ("Many school districts around the U.S. are moving to a four-day school week to retain teachers. Districts that don't want to raise taxes to pay teachers more are using the long weekend as an incentive.") https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-teachers-parents/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-tea... ("Nearly 900 school districts in the United States currently use a four-day weekly academic schedule. That number rose from 650 districts in 2020 to 876 districts, across 26 states, in 2023. While smaller, rural districts have been more likely to favor the schedule, larger districts are now shortening their school weeks in an effort to recruit and retain teachers. It's a selling point in an era when schools are facing a national teacher shortage.") https://www.deseret.com/2023/5/3/23709769/one-third-us-nurses-plan-to-quit https://www.deseret.com/2023/5/3/23709769/one-third-us-nurse... ("30% of the nurses are planning to quit their career, which is 7 percentage points over the 2021 percentage") https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1207991399/4-four-day-work-week-manufacturing-work-life-balance https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1207991399/4-four-day-work-we... ("A manufacturer tried the 4-day workweek for 5 days' pay and won't go back") TLDR There is no labor shortage. There is a shortage of labor willing to take the abuse they historically have.
    - ianai 3y ago
      There was a historical market correction of labor wages upwards after the 1918 pandemic. Strange to think, but it sure seems those days had fewer factors pushing labor down than now, but here we are. You’re absolutely correct. Price/wage is how to incentivize people to work for a company. Though also these jobs (medical, law enforcement, firefighting) have always been high stress but seem much worse after the pandemic. The answer would probably be less hours worked for higher pay and making sure they have all the resources they could ever need.
    - tr_user 3y ago
      You don't even need to quit to see the effects of this. As people become poorer, demand is going to drop. Only so much blood you can squeeze out
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        I agree mostly, but disagree about demand dropping, as this is industry specific. With regards to teachers, students and families will simply be stuck with whatever resources can be provided (in the citations I provide above, some parents are unhappy with a 4 day school week, but if taxpayers don't want to pay more for a mandated service, too bad so sad, you get what you get). Speaking of police protection, you will get degraded services or no services. Most critically, if there are not enough nurses, CNAs, and other medical practitioners, care delivery will degrade and people will potentially die. These are all services and systems with mostly inelastic demand. Where demand is elastic, there is more flexibility in the feedback loop. Labor is not fungible, so expect this to continue in a lumpy fashion for at least the next decade.
  - pylua 3y ago
    They should definitely raise the exempt salary amount and the minimum wage. It has been too long. In the very least , tie it to inflation.
    - gumby 3y ago
      Tying wage to inflation is unfortunately a bad idea because it drives a feedback loop. People have tried (including in the US in the 70s) and it always ends in tears. Tying thresholds like exempt thresholds though sounds like a good idea.
- black_13 3y ago
  [dead]
- behringer 3y ago
  or they can choose not to work at all in a shitty job. That's what's happening here.

ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago

Much of what I read in this article is outright illegal in many parts of the world. American leadership? Nope.

pard68 3y ago
This is largely illegal here in the USA too. This article neglects to point out the fact that everyone except for the railway workers are either police, fire fighters, medics, or nurse which are professions that have legal exemptions from laws governing overtime and such. The rail workers are not pulling 80 hour weeks, the article says they can only work 4.7 hours of overtime in a week, so 44.7 hours a week. Only emergency services and hospital staff are exempt from the laws that protect people from this sort of stuff.
- calamari4065 3y ago
  There are some extraordinarily broad exemptions to overtime requirements. From memory, it basically boiled down to anyone whose job can be described as spending a majority of their time on a computer. In my last corporate retail job, we had mandatory unpaid overtime. Assistant managers were required to work 44 hours and managers had to do 48, but got paid for 40. Though those same overtime exemptions had their own counter-exemption if you had less than some number of employees as a manager. Because corporate wouldn't raise starting wages or approve new hires, many stores were below that limit and it was a huge scandal when some of them started demanding overtime pay. By then we were looking at 50 and 60 hour weeks with no overtime pay.
  - metalcrow 3y ago
    Can you expand on how this works? Presumably retail workers have to log hours and clock in/out. Did the company demand you falsify your hours? Or did they just not pay for some of your hours? The latter seems clearly illegal, it's wage theft.
    - calamari4065 3y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

> Still, Jen Burke, a nurse at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, said it has become routine for her and her colleagues working in the cardiac catheterization lab to have their 12-hour shifts extended because of a lack of staff or beds in other parts of the hospital. I bet if the government mandated triple over time pay for safety critical procedures such as in medicine, the problem would rapidly fix itself.

gus_massa 3y ago
It's ilegal for airplane pilots and truck drivers, because tired people make more mistakes that can kill someone. It should be ilegal for nurses and medical doctors, because ...
- batshibstein 3y ago
  the only thing worse than a tired nurse or doctor is no nurse or doctor at all. you can cancel a flight or a truck shipment (not great but feasible) -- you can't quite just cancel patients that are in the hospital.

FireBeyond 3y ago

Mandated overtime in fire and EMS is common. 36 hours though? The private ambulance company near me only requires 8 hours off-duty after SIXTY hours on-duty.

pard68 3y ago
Most professional (non-volunteer) fire fighters work 24 hour shifts. This includes three meals and an 8-10 hours of down time. It wouldn't be too uncommon for a fire fighter coming off his day to et mandated another 12 hours, totalling 36 hours. Sucks, I agree, but this is not 36 sleepless hours. Likely he had 10-12 hours of rest in his 36 hour shift. It is not the same as if a desk jockey worked 36 hours straight.
- brianwawok 3y ago
  Assuming no fire over night yah? Could be a very long day but won’t always be.
  - pard68 3y ago
    Yes that's right however usually shifts get moved around to accommodate. My father worked for a large fire department, so my understanding is probably skewed by a department with a lot of resources.

strangesmells06 3y ago

Capitalism eventually becomes Japan. Corporations and 80 hour work weeks.

phendrenad2 3y ago
Japan speed ran the game, we're just catching up.

Cypher 3y ago

I'm burnt out and frustrated, the whole covid era has really taken it's toll on my mental health. Hard to see a way forward when we're hell bent on degrowth as prices spiral out of control.

derelicta 3y ago

It reminds me my project manager works up to 10 hours a day, sometimes even on the weekends. He's sacrificing his life to The Group, and expects me to do the same. Thank God I'm still studying, so I can claim this day I really gotta do my homework etc (which is surprisingly mostly true).