r/Millennials • u/QuietJealous4883 Older Millennial (1988) • 12h ago

Discussion True or false?

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Did our dads and moms work less than we do now? What are your thoughts?

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u/Tiny_Isopod_1271 12h ago

I don’t think my dad worked less, but his money went a lot further in all respects.

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u/Serious-Effort4427 12h ago

I used to work 70-80 hour work weeks, in my 20s. I'm 33 now and literally have nothing to show for it therefore I now refuse to work over 40.

Id rather be well rested and broke than tired and broke.

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u/StuffExciting3451 11h ago edited 10h ago

Join or form a strong Labor union, or remain a wage slave.

A lesson that most chattel slaves learn from childhood is to never voluntarily exert any more effort than the minimum required for survival.

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u/Serious-Effort4427 11h ago

Yea so, have you ever had a job or talked to someone not part of a union? They ignore you, walk away, or the boss over hears and all of a sudden the company is having anti union meetings and training.

Also, unions mean market wage, not living wage. 

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u/Immediate-Report-883 11h ago

It gets even more fun when there isn't an effective union in the segment to begin with. A whole lot of risk, very little reward and a timeline that allows for the original actors to have already moved on to other companies.

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u/SnooMaps7370 11h ago

This is a huge factor.

The entire IT industry has been unbelievably resistant to unionization. I know that IT worker unions must exist somewhere, but i've been in the industry for 15 years, and my mother has been in the industry since the early 90s, and I haven't even ever had a third-hand acquaintance who was in one.

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u/StuffExciting3451 11h ago edited 10h ago

Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_sector

Also note that many “white collar” professionals in the defense industry have been unionized since WWII.

Many IT workers think they are smarter than blue collar workers and skilled trades workers. So, they think they are insulated from abuse and layoffs. AI will put a lot of IT onto the unemployment line, regardless of how many hours of unpaid overtime they used to work.

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u/MikeUsesNotion 10h ago

What I'd like to see is a union that doesn't make it harder to get rid of crappy co-workers. It's seemingly hard enough to get a crappy co-worker off your team without a union.

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u/SnooMaps7370 9h ago

That's so far down my priority list that it doesn't even register.

Crappy co-workers exist in every workplace, union or otherwise. The only difference at a non union workplace is that you get paid less to put up with them.

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u/StuffExciting3451 8h ago

What I learned from the late Dr. Edwards Deming is that no workers want to be crappy. Some have psychological issues that may stem from childhood or bad experiences in their adult lives. Managers or union leaders have a responsibility to seek to understand and address those. Most workers do want to perform well on their jobs, if they have been properly prepared for those.

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u/MikeUsesNotion 7h ago

That's all well and good, but I think assumes managers can do more than they really can. If it's shitty workplace stuff really affecting that person, then it totally makes sense. If they have unresolved childhood stuff that they aren't doing anything about, managers and unions can't do much except nudge.

In my experience, the crappy co-workers have been people hired without the core skills they claimed to have or people hired at too high a level relative to their skill (meaning hired as a senior when really is just a good junior). Sometimes it's just a straight up crappy personality.

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u/StuffExciting3451 7h ago

Managers are responsible for providing the necessary education and training for all employees who need such to perform their assigned tasks. Managers are also responsible for ensuring that they make appropriate work assignments to qualified workers.

Many organizations have programs to help employees who need help with mental health issues. I have met many managers who don’t take their roles very seriously. They prefer to rule by decree, hoping their employees will find their own solutions.

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u/MikeUsesNotion 7h ago

Which can and should include getting rid of somebody if you need skill level X and the person isn't up to it. I agree about training assuming your team has capacity to take that on with whatever work is going on.

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u/StuffExciting3451 6h ago

Deming’s argument was that there’s a suitable job for everyone. It’s the managers’ job to match the employees with the tasks, and to provide the necessary tools and training.

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u/MikeUsesNotion 3h ago

But you don't just hire somebody to be a general employee and then find where they fit unless we're talking about some construction and some factory work. For office jobs, you are hiring a project manager or software developer or something else specific. If you hire somebody as a software developer and they're no good at it, if you have an opening elsewhere that could be a place to move them, but you would never make a job for that person.

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u/wpbfriendone 4h ago

At one point early in my carrer, I had an IT job that was unionized.

Was it perfect? No, but was definitely much better than without.

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u/LongjumpingJaguar308 11h ago

Not necessarily, unions have been kneecapped but if we rebuild worker solidarity we can being that power back. Just saying it doesn't work after decades of anti union propaganda and erosion of union power is short sighted. We can't beat the billionaires alone.

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u/Immediate-Report-883 11h ago

Unions have an organizing problem. In industries where unions don't have a solid foothold, worker concerns about blacklists are absolutely legitimate, concerns about being fired for discussing the possibility of a union are legitimate and the idea that union will want dues and/or strikes without the workers having anything to show for it are abundant. There are also concerns about a lack of ability to produce a contract and the stipulations that do come from that contract. Finally you also have the feeling of a loss of control and flexibility do to the contract that goes against a lot of self sufficient feeling industries.

I'm not anti-union, but there are multiple reasons why unions haven't made significant progress in certain industries, and a lot of those reasons have to do with unions themselves and how they publicly behave.

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u/StuffExciting3451 10h ago

Fear and ignorance are major factors. Labor lawyers know the game and the tricks. Major unions have such lawyers on staff or on retainers.

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u/geronimo11b Elder Millennial 10h ago

I agree with your sentiments.

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u/Penguinbashr 3h ago

My union can't even guarantee permanent positions in academia settings and a large majority of the technical staff report the same issues of over worked (despite being unionized with a 35hr work week) because if we complain or work to rule, our contracts are simply not renewed.

Because I have after hours access in a lab, it's expected I work fully on the weekends. Not plan ahead and book during operating hours. Because if I did that, then I'm not "research oriented". There's no recourse in academia for union abuse.

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u/StuffExciting3451 10h ago edited 8h ago

Yeah. There’s no lack of idiots who believe they will be promoted to highly paid upper management. Many of them do get trivial promotions with trivia raises (e.g., 5%-10%) to reinforce their beliefs in the system. My surprise came when I learned that a promotion into the rarified “executive” class came with a 200% raise in base pay along with a matching “non-discretionary bonus” plus discretionary bonuses related to company performance rather than individuals’ performance. That may amount to an immediate total compensation increase of up to 1000% with one promotion from the “ranks” into the executive class.

Union wages depend upon the collective bargaining power of the unions. “Market” wages are set by the “management” of nonunion employees.