Tag: unions

xenoqueer:

vaneloslash:

xenoqueer:

blogging-phelddagrif:

commandtower-solring-go:

The problem with the idea of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of recreation as a structure for a day is that it simply can’t work that way. If I’m expected to be at work at 9, then my work day must begin at 7. Allowing myself a rushed experience to wake up and get to work. And I live close to work. So either my recreation or my sleep needs to take a hit, but for some people it could be more. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week as a basis for full time work is honestly unreasonable at that point. Because it isn’t actually 40 hours a week, it’s 50 hours a week lost to a job, of which 10 is unpaid.

some of my coworkers have 2h of transit to get to work, which takes 4-5h off their free time. working full time is a bad idea and shouldve never been a thing

This is, it’s worth noting, by design.  

It’s perfectly well known that people can only really “work” (in that they can only consistently and effectively perform tasks and create products) 3-6 hours a day, for 1 hour to 2 hours at a time. Generally speaking, the broad consensus among actual researchers is to aim for about 4 hours a day.

The rest of these work hours, and the associated sunken time necessary to get to and from these work hours, serves one purpose:

It exhausts people.

People who don’t have leisure time are stressed. People who are stressed need conveniences. People who need conveniences will pay for them.

People who are stressed also don’t have the energy to fight for their rights, having expended all that energy in just staying alive.

And let’s not forget that maintaining a clean home and providing food for yourself takes over 20 hours a week (appx 20 hours in-house, and varying hours spent running outside errands) if you are completely abled.

This is starting to be common enough knowledge thank goodness.

So here’s the real question: WTF DO WE DO ABOUT IT?!

There are so many people brainewashed into thinking “if you don’t spend every waking hour working, you’re a worthless piece of shit.” And I don’t just mean rich corporate assholes or republicans either, I mean normal ass people too.

And even forgetting that, we will be shouted down and shamed for trying to fight this for the reasons I just mentioned. We have no real power to fight against this shit that I am aware of. They tried fighting this in the 40’s when we had FDR in office and THEY couldn’t do it, how the fuck are we supposed to get anything done NOW?

I’m sorry. I just… I feel so hopeless and beyond frustrated about our future politically speaking.

The fact is, a lot of the infrastructure and culture that helped get there labor changes we had (many of which have been lost to loopholes) don’t exist anymore. And that’s tragic, yes.

But unions and revolutions were not gifted upon the working class by benevolent gods, either.

We’ve made them before, countless times, and we can make them again.

In fact, most labor unions that do still exist- and there are handfuls of them in every state, though certainly not every town- offer education on how to unionize, and some of the better equipped ones even offer training. The two key things to organizing your workplace are having the confidence to talk to your co-workers about it, and knowing the things your management will do you try to crush you out.

Shit sucks, don’t get me wrong. And things get worse once you start figuring back, anyone who has been in any kind of abuse situation knows that.

But people have come together from the ground level before, built things from nothing before, fought before, and won before.

We can do it again.