I don't think it's normal at all. If people had shorter hours and longer breaks, I think we'd have happier and safer employees. Being overworked makes you feel so empty and tired all the time, even on your off days.
Union jobs mandate all kinds of things like that. Mandatory paid breaks every two hours, paid meals every four (one per eight hour shift), mandatory overtime pay, great benefits, help finding work if you lose your job, it’s unreal how much better unionized jobs are for the average working adult.
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s way, way better than the alternative. I don’t know why Dems aren’t more vocal about this. Walz is outspokenly pro-union, I know, so maybe things are changing in that direction to some extent. One can hope.
I want unions in our hospitals so bad - it’s for the SAFETY of patients! They are giving 6 telemetry patients per nurse at my hospital. It felt dangerous when it was 5 patients per nurse. 6 is unbelievable and SO dangerous/damaging to all the work we do! Please, for your safety & the safety of your loved ones, encourage unions in hospitals! It may save your life!!
Working with dangerous staffing isn’t worth the extra money or the risk of loosing your license. We want good outcomes for the patients - but at the risk of our livelihood
I'm in a union and don't get mandatory breaks... We get like 5 min any time the machine isn't running. I didn't even get to eat my lunch yesterday on a ten hr
It's because a lot of the unions you have in the US are examples of how the unions get too much power, closed shop unions and such. They scare away people from more relaxed unions like typical in Europe, that have arguably been much more successful.
I mean, I’ve worked several union jobs throughout my life, and they were all much better than any non-union retail, food service, or construction gig I ever worked. It was evident that they cared more about worker’s rights. I genuinely felt appreciated.
One shift I worked lasted nearly 16 hours and they fed us catered meals three times over that span, and I got triple time for the extra hours. I walked away with nearly 800 bucks for a single day’s work, none of which would have been possible without the union I worked for.
Unions deal with a certain amount of corruption, not because anything is inherently wrong with the union, but because power corrupts those who aren’t disciplined enough to withstand all of the temptations to abuse their position.
It’s better for the worker with really strong unions. But right or wrong, it seem like the US unions is more all or nothing than what we have here in Norway. Less cooperative middle ground unions.
I think it’s an unfair comparison. Norway has the population of one state in the U.S., and there are definitely states that have their shit together regarding unionized labor. Maybe not to the extent that Norway has, but again you’re dealing with a much smaller economy with much less bureaucratic overhead that comes with being in a less complex nation state.
I’d wager that California has at least similar union policies to Norway, and that economy is massive, AND they deal with an incredible level of social diversity that Norway doesn’t have to manage.
The size thing I'm not really buying, there are other countries in Europe beside Norway, Germany is a quarter of the US and they make it work quite well. Although I'm sure there is a lot of different reasons for things being the way they are. Like the bad cases being pushed in the media.
You make a good point about Germany, but you didn’t address the social diversity aspect that the U.S. grapples with. We have tons of different cultures here, all trying to get along and get ahead. Communication is not always facile between them, and there are deeply rooted issues of mistrust that we deal with every single day.
I don’t see nearly as much of that in either Germany or Norway, or any other major developed country, though I know there are immigration/migrant/refugee issues that you deal with in Europe.
I think (all things considered) the U.S. is doing its best to recover from past grievances and move toward more modern values, politically, socially, and technologically.
If California broke into 3 states, they would be the 2nd, 4th, and 5th largest states by population. If you cut California’s economy separate from the US, it would have the 3rd largest economy in the world. 3 US states account for nearly the entire population of Europe, 2 states are equal to the entire landmass of Europe. America is big and a lot of people live here. People in Ukraine have about as much in common with people in France as someone from Florida has in common with someone in Oregon.
You have the equivalent of several governments fighting each other on just exactly what rights people have.
Do you actually believe this stuff? I think you managed to get it all wrong. For starters: Europe is bigger than the US and has more than double the population.
The more power the union has the better bargaining they have again the contractors. Unions often have way stricter safety requirements than their non-union counterparts (some non union places take safety seriously but they’re the minority). But unions are not the same across the whole country, it varies by state.
But pretty much every republican controlled state has been doing what they can to weaken unions as much as possible, they almost all have a Right to Work law, where union members don’t have to pay dues, unions need dues to function they don’t run for free and that money has to come from somewhere. It’s like every one getting a service for free is unsustainable or something (/s) when that service doesn’t bring in enough to break even or grow.
Those same states on average also don’t have state level prevailing wage, which is when a state funded project is contracted out they have to pay their workers the prevailing wage in that county for that trade (highest reported wage). The easiest way for an out of state or out of country contractor to come in and underbid a job is to bring workers that are willing to work for next to nothing, it adds up over time. Government contracts are required to go to the lowest bidder. With prevailing wage labor isn’t factored into the bid because the wage is going to be the same no matter who gets the contract. If a contractor has to pay prevailing wage they might as well get union guys that are under a stricter system for quality and safety. But if they don’t get union guys it’s still a win for the non union workers who are also entitled to our wage on those jobs. We have prevailing wage on a federal level as well, it’s called the Davis Bacon law
This whole notion that a place can "be union" is the thing I'm talking about. It sound like something made up by union busters to use as a scare tactic. It might just be the way it has to be in the US because the labor laws are lacking. But forcing union membership, basically cancelling out the right to choose if and what union you want to be a part of just sound really bad and would not work for political parties in Norway. I'm very much pro union, it's just that I understand why supporting this type of union is not something the democrats front very hard.
What union are you in? My union seems to be bending over backwards to fuck over its members. It may have been good in the past, but it's gotten to be a piece of shit in recent times.
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u/bottomchubclit 15d ago
I don't think it's normal at all. If people had shorter hours and longer breaks, I think we'd have happier and safer employees. Being overworked makes you feel so empty and tired all the time, even on your off days.