Long work hours don’t just wear out workers’ bodies—they take a toll on the environment, too. We need a shorter work week if we’re serious about saving the planet.
A t midnight on Sept. 14, the United Auto Workers’ contract with the Big Three automakers—Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors—expired. As promised by UAW President Shawn Fain, stand-up strikes began promptly at midnight. The first three plants called to strike were the General Motors Assembly Center in Wentzville, Missouri, the Stellantis Assembly Complex in Toledo, Ohio, and the final assembly and paint departments at the Ford Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan. Videos and photos of autoworkers pouring out of the plants and joining their union siblings on the picket line hit social media like labor’s version of the Super Bowl. On Sept. 22, stand-up strikes expanded to an additional 38 GM and Stellantis assembly plants across 20 states.
Throughout the highly publicized contract negotiations between UAW’s 146,000 autoworker members and their employers at the Big Three automakers, newly elected Fain has been calling for a 32-hour work week—a goal stated by UAW as far back as the 1930s.
“Right now, Stellantis has put its plants on critical status, forcing our members to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day in many cases, week after week, for 90 straight days. That’s not a life,” Fain said on a livestream on Aug. 25. “Critical status, it’s named right because working that much can put anyone in critical condition. It’s terrible for our bodies, it’s terrible for our mental health, and it’s terrible for our family life.”
read more: https://therealnews.com/uaws-demand-for-a-32-hour-work-week-would-be-a-win-for-the-planet
archive: https://archive.ph/jSu2n
God what I wouldn’t do to work 28 hours less than I do now with no loss of pay
Or at least get paid overtime fuck. I’m hourly but it’s not illegal in my industry to not pay overtime. 60 hours just straight time.
I’m salaried and have no pay after 40 hours 😢. Luckily I rarely work overtime.
I feel that, I’m salary and haven’t worked less than 60 hours a week in years now because the company won’t hire enough people for my team to actually meet our workload. And my brain doesn’t let me leave things unfinished, I’ll just feel terrible if I walk away in the middle of something. I’d love to cut my work time in half, maybe that being the legal max would cause them to hire a couple more and I could at least go down a bit
Your company is exploiting you.
Yea no shit but this is not abnormal in it at all.
Organize.
You m the manager so that won’t help, my team could unionize but I already do my best to keep them as close to 40’as possible and I do all the extra myself. They only work over 40 if they choose to stay after I tell them “go home I got it”
You could encourage surreptitiously your workers to organize, but doing so would be only meaningful if you genuinely accept that they would act against your own interests, and that you would be placing yourself also against other kinds of risk.
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I can’t unionize, I’m management. If my workers unionize it wouldn’t matter because I already shield them from the overages I do. Them unionizing would only make my life worse because then I’d potentially have to pick up more work since the company will never hire more
I second the organizing effort, and am personally fond of the IWWs methods. Take an IWW Organizer Training. You can apply those skills into various areas of life.
Not possible for IT managers to join tho is it? Like I said in another comment I take every effort to make life good for my team by taking all the shit myself
This is literally why I left management, dude. I had the worst month ever and did my P&L, and I still put $5,000 profit to the company’s bottom line. I realized how much I’d be making if I owned my own business and all my hard work paid myself, and that was it, I quit. Ended up becoming a nurse because I make twice as much now as I made as a salaried manager, and I punch my clock and go home and don’t think about work.
That’s worse, I’m scheduled 60 hours. Sounds like you just are having to stay that long to finish things.
Hello fellow truck driver. There are companies out there that pay OT in our industry.
Yeah, this account gets me home every night though.
Probably going to find something else in a year or so.
Yeah my last company was home every night and OT after 40. Current company does it depending on the job and I got bumped to salary with “OT” after 45 hrs and a separate OT for the hours that code as OT depending on the job. It’s a cluster fuck but pays well and I’m home every night unless the job is out of town or something. Would say I sleep in my own bed 98% of the time.
Obviously the 32 hour week would be ideal, but I wonder how a compromise on a 4-day 40 hour week would be received. I know my life has improved drastically since my job went to that format
Full time work being thirty two hours each week would be a compromise.
The defining principle of the systems under which we live is work or die.
No conditions under such a system would be ideal, and any would be a compromise.
Considering all the years that have passed since the Haymarket massacre, and all that has been sacrificed, fighting for thirty two hours is hardly radical or outrageous.
That’s inherently not a compromise. That’s simply giving the union what they’re asking for, which we know is not how it’s going to happen, regardless of what may be ideal.
The defining principle of human history has been work or die, and I don’t see that changing ever. The best we can reasonably hope for is better conditions in which to deal with that truth.
Work or die is a consequences of social systems. It is not a universal condition within human history.
A more dominant feature throughout history has been mutual protection and mutual aid, everyone in a group supporting the survival of everyone in the group.
The union already is seeking a compromise. Seeking compromise is what unions have always done.
Thirty two hours, forty hours, one wage or another wage, are all inventions, arbitrary choices, set by capital and at best also influenced by the power of labor to force some compromise.
If workers got from bosses what we really want, then bosses would not exist. They serve no function for workers. They are parasites, who deprive workers from realizing the full value of our labor.
Do you have an example of any historical society where work or die wasn’t an imperative? My understanding of history is that life has always fallen under that rule, regardless of economical/government system. Mutual aid and charity are, in my opinion, not only are not evidence against the concept, but are the exception that proves the rule, as they say. Because those individuals are unable to work to provide for themselves, for whatever reason, it requires others to care for them so they don’t die.
I don’t believe we disagree on what the ideal of life should be for the working class. I think our differences lie in what is realistic to expect out of life, whether short or long term.
Charity as a concept is only meaningful against systems that produce an original condition of deprivation.
Everyone has always cared for others, and been cared for by others, whether the name given to such practices is mutual aid, or any other.
Under late modernity, abstract systems deeply permeate and constrain every facet of our lives, our action and our agency, and in large part even our capacities for thinking. Those who are not compatible, as atomized individuals, with such systems, are labeled as problematic, and considered as the ones specifically needing care.
No society has ever comprised “individuals” who “provide for themselves”.
Production, distribution, and consumption of resources and assets are social processes occurring within social systems.
I suggest you learn about a broader variety of historical societies, in order to help overcome the limitations of relying so directly on experience that is immediate and personal.
This has been a great read you two.
Do you favor continuing to live under systems through which most of society is subject to the coercive conditions of labor, enforced by the capitalist class?
I feel like a compromise would actually be working four 9 hour days for 36 hour weeks.
I’m viewing it from the standpoint of one side getting the number of days working they want and the other side getting the hours they want.
My brain is fucking fried after 8 hours anyways. Adding another 2 hours to my day would benefit no one.
I’m good for about 4-5 hours a day of solid work, after that I’m just killing time until I can leave without getting in trouble
what? the benefit is clearly adding a whole day to rest, if you’re fried after 8 hours, the additional 2 isn’t going to feel better worse, but you’ll gain a whole day to rest. I always am tired on days where I work over 8 hours, but so happy I get another full day off.
4x10 is pretty good… so long as your commute added-on doesn’t turn it into 12-14 hour days.
That’s actually what mine is and I would still stand by it being much better.
I’m not union but work at the Ford South Chicago Assembly with 3rd party shipping/logistics and was recently laid off. I one hundred percent support the union. Just wanted to say we work 4, 12 hour days a week and I honestly am okay with this. 10 hours would be the sweet spot but I love having 3 days off in a row and I’m usually right and ready to go back to work after the 3rd day, never any dread. 4 days on 3 days off is perfect imo.
Unsere If this would translate 1:1 in the real world, but U would at least have more time to buy locally, cook stuff myself, and repair things. Which would really be a great Thing.
The demand for no pension, no retirement, no benefits and multiple “side hustles” for every worker that techbros can reach is an indicator of the opposite consequences for what those techbros want: a loss for the planet. No wonder they have so many escapist fantasies like fleeing to Mars or bowing to the robot god of the future in VR heaven.
Don’t these plants run 24/7? Even if each worker worked on 32 hours a week, they’d hire more workers so that the plant would be staffed 24/7, right? In that case, I don’t see how that would lead to environmental benefit.
Depends if that makes financial sense. Hiring an additional crew doesn’t just mean paying the labor, each employee will need an insurance and benefits package as well. If the deal says those packages can’t be significantly reduced and the company can’t find another way to cut costs they may be less inclined to stick to a 24/7 schedule. For example… Of course there’s a lot more to it than just that.
There’s a lot of time and money involved in shutting down plants of this size. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they just added more people to keep the plant running. Which like the other person said would probably turn out to be a net negative environmentally since it would be a whole shift basically of extra people driving to and from work every week.
