#ForcedOvertime #LaborLaws #Unionization
Hey everyone! 👋 I wanted to discuss something that has been bothering me lately. How is forced overtime not against the law in the US? I work in manufacturing, and let me tell you, it’s rough out here. 🏭
– I’m putting in five to six 12-hour shifts every week, and it’s taking a toll on me physically and emotionally.
– We tried to unionize to address these issues, but it didn’t pan out due to some strong opposition.
– We had a great year in terms of production, but at what cost? Where are the labor laws protecting us from burnout and overwork?
Possible solution:
– Educating ourselves and others about our rights as employees
– Advocating for fair labor practices and pushing for legislation to protect workers
– Finding support within the community and forming alliances to fight for change
What are your thoughts on this issue? How can we work together to make a difference and ensure that workers are treated fairly and respectfully? Let’s have a conversation about it! 💬 #FairWorkConditions #EmployeeRights
> What happened to the 40 hour work week?
We completely stopped forcing a government that promoted, even accidentally, pro labor policy as a primary motivation. We got lazy, docile, and now do as they say. We have the power but refuse to be accountable for it so we avoid it like the plague until we have no choice but to engage with politics for a few months.
We just stopped demanding pro labor as a requirement to be a politician. It was always iffy with Republicans but at least Democrats tended to be pretty strong labor rights folks up until Clinton killed anything even slightly smelling like New Deal Democratic politics.
Hopefully you are paid by the hour. I work a similar shift schedule to you and there have been rumors about mandatory OT for the last year.
Thankfully it would only be during certain months where we have a ramp up in production. Still I don’t want to be “forced” to work more If I don’t want to. So fingers crossed it never comes to that.
Sounds like the post office. We are in the same boat.
I had a role with mandatory overtime, and I never would get out on time either, so it was 47-48 hours every week. With the swing shift schedule, it was horrendous. I ended up demoting (it wasn’t the only reason, but it was a big one). Sure, my paycheck is smaller…but I couldn’t keep doing it anymore.
Because oligarchs don’t want it to be
Choose better, choose socialism.
What it all boils down to is that it’s cheaper for a company to pay time and a half plus benefits to 1 employee and have them work 80 hours a week rather than having two employees with benefits each working 40 hours. The company doesn’t give a shit if you’re miserable as long as they get more money in their pockets for the same amount of paid labor hours.
I have the same exact schedule as you OP. I have a 3 day “short” week then a 4 day “long” week. I will say that my favorite part of this job is no “mandatory” overtime. All they can do is ask if you want any OT or not and if you say no, they can’t point you. Don’t get me wrong, this job is still shitty in the fact that it’s nightshift, and lifting anywhere from 20-80 pound rolls of plastic film all day, but at my old job they had a list system that changed every week. If there was short coverage or a call off if your name was next on the list you had to do it or take a point. I hated that shit so much. I’d be walking out the door and they would tell me I had to stay or come in 4 hours early tommorow.
I did this for a while, and it was absolutely brutal. I already suffer from chronic back pain and was terribly mislead about the hours and physical nature of the job during the hiring process. I was hired at the tail end of October and was told that it was 3 12 hour shifts a week, and there might be “a few days of overtime” during the holiday season. The few days of overtime turned out to be 6 days a week starting in the second week of November and me getting a whole 2 days off in the month of December. Again, these were 12 hour shifts, and I had about an hour and a half total commute time on top of that. So I saw very little of my home and family during that time.
My hands and feet were raw and sore. My feet from walking on concrete all day, and my hands from constantly loading cardboard boxes into freezing cold trucks. Gloves, shoe inserts, thick socks… none of it helped. I lost about 20 lbs in 2 months because I was constantly moving and had little time to eat. I was always just so sore and tired. Sometimes I would just sit in the car in my driveway for several minutes because I was mustering up the energy to get out and go inside. I fell asleep in my living room a lot because I was so tired and climbing the stairs felt impossible.
I managed to get out once covid hit and moved on to something better. Now I only work ot if I want to. Just keep looking and applying. There are better jobs out there.
Republicans don’t want you to be paid for OT.
Shitty situation with limited options. The only saving grace is if you’re always at work, it makes it more difficult to spend your hard earned cash on stuff like going to bars, out to eat, going on trips, and so on. So building up a “get me out of this hellhole” fund is slightly less difficult, depending on your expenses.
Back to the options…
1) Though you mentioned unionizing failed, in my experience, if **everyone** straight up refuses to work days that aren’t part of their regular schedule, management has a tough choice to make. Firing everyone would raise hell when it comes to recruiting, training, and downtime costs. I’ve worked places where we weren’t unionized, but anytime management made OT “mandatory”, only one or two people out of each shift of 10-12 would actually comply. The key thing, it has to be a **vast majority** of the staff. If only a couple people refuse, yeah, the company isn’t as incentivized to bend the rule. You and your coworkers don’t necessarily need to be unionized to make enough noise to get management to rethink their strategy. However, if most of your coworkers are bootlickers or need/want the overtime, you’re pretty much screwed. Another example: a different company I was at held fast to their decision of “We need everyone to work the usual Monday-Thursday 4×10’s, but we need people to work Friday-Sunday as well.” Since enough employees raised hell, what they ended up doing is offering an additional bonus of a few hundred dollars for anyone who worked through the weekend. They didn’t get **everyone** to come in, but apparently enough came in to justify the bonuses.
2) You mentioned your current job is one of the higher paying spots in your area, and lower paying jobs nearby tend to work people the same number of hours. If that’s the case, personally, I’d start looking outside of the area. If a 1 hour commute gets you to a job that you don’t hate, but still pays the bills, it can definitely be worth it.
3) The option I most definitely would not recommend, is just continuing to deal with the bullshit. **The more people stay at your company and endure the mistreatment, the more incentivized the company is to keep things the way they are.** The more people quit, either they change their policies, or go out of business. Do yourself and your family a big favor and find a way out. Going to a job you hate each day is a recipe for misery.
Because businesses bought the politicians.
You probably live in a right to work type state. You probably don’t have a union. Meaning you don’t have to do any mandatory overtime. But, they don’t have to keep you employed.
Freedom!
Get out of blue collar jobs my guy.
You can thank our politicians.
This is what unions are for.
[Edit] I hear what you say about anti-union campaigns. You have to go beyond that. You need to organize and hold against the exploitation. You need to get the press involved. You need to form a mutual benefit society so that you can weather management’s fight against your unionization. The owners will push exploitation until labor refuses to do it.
It seems like labor is weak but that’s because management is organized and can divide labor using their tactics.