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Presumably, you think we should what? Take the to the streets? Standard of living of food security is still far too high generally for this to seem reasonable f

Presumably, you think we should what? Take the to the streets? Standard of living of food security is still far too high generally for this to seem reasonable for most. Shall we lobby our representatives? This does happen at the state level, and accordingly many states have more pro-worker policies and laws. But change at the federal level is a substantially harder thing to bring.

ryandrake 2y ago
Exactly. It's not a matter of accepting or not accepting. There's practically nothing that can be done about it. At the federal level, no major presidential candidate supports EU-style worker protections and mandatory benefits. And not enough congressional candidates support it, not even remotely enough to change anything. In fact, the vast majority are outright hostile to worker rights due to lobbying/capture by corporate interests. At the state level, there is lots of variance, but even in the states most friendly to workers, it's not remotely possible to reach Europe's level of benefits around vacation, sick leave, maternity leave, let alone the right to organize for these things. There is no political will, and any political candidate who actually has the will could never win a statewide election.
YZF 2y ago
The way this worked in many places is that workers formed political parties. In France people did and still take to the streets over labour issues. You can also unionize. Or sure, lobby. But if people are happy with the current system then that's also fine. All in all the US has been a success story. Whether there's correlation or causation between that and some of the regulatory and legal environment is hard to say. Maybe its success is primarily due to resources and geography and maybe the US would be even more successful with a more European style system. [EDIT: it's should have been its ;) ]
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  The fact that this is not happening at a grassroots level in the US would suggest that it's not as big a deal to Americans as the Europeans in this thread think it should be. Speaking only for myself, I've found that when I joined a company whose time-off policies I didn't like (only one so far), I just asked for more time off as part of the deal. The response I got was "sure. It's easier for us to give you more paid time off than more money."
  - ghaff 2y ago
    On the other hand, when I joined a previous employer that (at the time--they improved) had fairly mediocre paid time off policies (not really that bad but it was the first time I had encountered PTO including both vacation and sick time and there was mandatory shutdown around the holidays). When I got what seemed like a pretty generous offer given I was making a relatively small salary at the time and the company was private so no stock, they also made it clear that the PTO was non-negotiable. Now, in practice, given my role no one was eyeing a few hours here and there to go to some appointment or a bit of personal time tacked on to business travel especially if I had traveled over a weekend, but the paper amount of PTO was just so-so.
- D-Coder 2y ago
  > The way this worked in many places is that workers formed political parties. Given the current political system(s) in the US, this is practically impossible at the federal level; difficult at the state level; somewhat more possible at the city level (eg New York City's Working Families Party). Third parties exist but generally have almost no influence.
GJim 2y ago
> Presumably, you think we should what? Take the to the streets? Ummmmmm, Yes? It's how the people who got ALL the rights we take for grated today did. Especially our employment rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolpuddle_Martyrs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolpuddle_Martyrs
- HelloMcFly 2y ago
  My point was that the situation hasn't reached anywhere near a boiling point for "taking to the streets" to seem wise to the amount of people it would require to bring real change.

ryandrake 2y ago

Exactly. It's not a matter of accepting or not accepting. There's practically nothing that can be done about it. At the federal level, no major presidential candidate supports EU-style worker protections and mandatory benefits. And not enough congressional candidates support it, not even remotely enough to change anything. In fact, the vast majority are outright hostile to worker rights due to lobbying/capture by corporate interests. At the state level, there is lots of variance, but even in the states most friendly to workers, it's not remotely possible to reach Europe's level of benefits around vacation, sick leave, maternity leave, let alone the right to organize for these things. There is no political will, and any political candidate who actually has the will could never win a statewide election.

YZF 2y ago

The way this worked in many places is that workers formed political parties. In France people did and still take to the streets over labour issues. You can also unionize. Or sure, lobby. But if people are happy with the current system then that's also fine. All in all the US has been a success story. Whether there's correlation or causation between that and some of the regulatory and legal environment is hard to say. Maybe its success is primarily due to resources and geography and maybe the US would be even more successful with a more European style system. [EDIT: it's should have been its ;) ]

HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
The fact that this is not happening at a grassroots level in the US would suggest that it's not as big a deal to Americans as the Europeans in this thread think it should be. Speaking only for myself, I've found that when I joined a company whose time-off policies I didn't like (only one so far), I just asked for more time off as part of the deal. The response I got was "sure. It's easier for us to give you more paid time off than more money."
- ghaff 2y ago
  On the other hand, when I joined a previous employer that (at the time--they improved) had fairly mediocre paid time off policies (not really that bad but it was the first time I had encountered PTO including both vacation and sick time and there was mandatory shutdown around the holidays). When I got what seemed like a pretty generous offer given I was making a relatively small salary at the time and the company was private so no stock, they also made it clear that the PTO was non-negotiable. Now, in practice, given my role no one was eyeing a few hours here and there to go to some appointment or a bit of personal time tacked on to business travel especially if I had traveled over a weekend, but the paper amount of PTO was just so-so.
D-Coder 2y ago
> The way this worked in many places is that workers formed political parties. Given the current political system(s) in the US, this is practically impossible at the federal level; difficult at the state level; somewhat more possible at the city level (eg New York City's Working Families Party). Third parties exist but generally have almost no influence.

GJim 2y ago

> Presumably, you think we should what? Take the to the streets? Ummmmmm, Yes? It's how the people who got ALL the rights we take for grated today did. Especially our employment rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolpuddle_Martyrs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolpuddle_Martyrs

HelloMcFly 2y ago
My point was that the situation hasn't reached anywhere near a boiling point for "taking to the streets" to seem wise to the amount of people it would require to bring real change.