this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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I think a lot of places in the world would call this intentionally evil. Literally forcing everyone to take part of the night shift or starve. That likely only works because people in that area have no choice. It's intentionally evil.
I have to disagree. This is the same argument against running sweatshops. Everything is relevant in the local context of the people there.
Do people have a better option? If they did they would take it rather than a rotating shift schedule right?
If this is the best use of their time economically, how is it a bad thing how is it a net evil? Would it be better for the company just to not be there at all? Not providing any jobs?
the better option is not having a rotating shift, and compensating the employees that have to take third shift.
you're seriously advocating for sweat shops? like the only options are abuse your employees or fail as a business? if that's true, then your business should fail.
From an economic perspective many countries had to develop with sweatshop labor effectively until they built enough prosperity to develop other industries. But without that intermediate sweatshop stage, they couldn't compete economically, couldn't get the capital to modernize, and would be stuck in the agrarian phase
That’s really just a bureaucratic way of making it nobody’s fault.
We don’t need high enough profits to support sweatshops, no matter how “economical” you make the argument.
An "economic perspective" is horribly skewed in favor of the capitalist class; that's just saying the misery of the commoner is justified by the greed of those who refuse to actually assist in producing any goods or value for society.
In the context of the United States, which I believe the original poster is talking about. There's the classic rural problem of how do you keep them down on the farm. There's many economic opportunities across the whole country, which allows freedom of movement, so people can emigrate to different parts of the country with more job opportunities and more lucrative uses of time.
So it's not a dichotomy of work a rotating schedule or starve. There are other jobs in the area, they might be farm labor jobs, they may not pay as consistently, they may not pay as well, but there are economic opportunities in most rural areas. If those are insufficient, people have been known to move to the cities the urban areas where there's more work opportunities.
This rotating shift opportunity, is just one of many available to people living in the United States. They're not being forced into it. People are choosing it of their own free will.
If we would like to say rotating schedules should be illegal, great, let's codify that into the labor laws. Vote on it. Then every business will have the same constraints.
Oh, for heavens sake. I chose to be born into a life where I can only choose the form of my exploitation, in other words?
No. It is not in any way shape or form a result of my choice that some business owner is prioritizing money over people.
Capitalism is not a neutral system. And it's flaws are certainly not the fault of those being exploited.
Nobody is forcing your labor. You can live off the land mountain man style if you want to.
You literally cannot. Homesteading hasn't been a thing since the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.
So you feel the US is still in that intermediate sweatshop stage and that will go away if they could just get the capital to modernize?
Most of the service industry in the US is still in the sweatshop phase.
Some areas - yes. Developing a local economy is tricky, for places that don't have historic concentration of logistics, there has to be a some attractive force to offset geographic conditions, and attract capital and employers to an area.
I'm all for providing alternative jobs to communities, a national Job corps, increasing military pay, or providing labor laws saying that rotating shift jobs are not allowed. Those are all fine. Giving people better options is the solution.
That would be fine if it weren't fur subsidies keeping these businesses afloat on top of all that, while everyone has to make a net 10+% year over year for investors.
If you need all these handouts and to craft elaborate schemes where youre essentially taking time and money from employees and government to stay afloat, yeah best the business not be there at all. People will start solving the problem differently. i.e don't spend a billion dollars keeping a business in your town afloat, spend a billion dollars educating the population and giving them new skills. Capitalism doesn't work that way though.
If this is evil then any company offering a job is evil. I offer you a job working from 9am-5pm. You have a certain schedule such thaf you cannot meet those terms. I am evil because you have no choice but to work for me or starve.
See what I mean? And sure, capitalism is exploitative. But I don't see how this specific arrangement is any more or less exploitative than any other.
Factories need workers around the clock because it is expensive to start and stop operations. So you develop strategies in order to keep everyone happy.
Sort of like how oil rigs or deep sea fishing does the x months work y months home thing. Work for 3 months, take off for 1. Etc.
This is exactly why. A shutdown/startup is not just inconvenient. In many factories, it can cost them a huge chunk of money. It's more than just lost time and income. There are costly procedures in the mix. There are strict quotas and contracts to meet with customers. A factory that shuts down every night is not efficient or sustainable.
I'm very pro-worker and anti-boss, but it's naive to expect factories to not have a night shift.
Long term it will be robots doing most of it, anyway.
To quote @jpreston2005 "the better option is not having a rotating shift, and compensating the employees that have to take third shift"