Can't unionize if you don't have the energy to fight.
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Yep, you probably end up working with different groups of people too also making unionization harder.
Actually, that would make it even easier, in theory. You'd meet more of your coworkers and would be able to more easily spread the word and discuss pros/cons, etc.
How would you figure out who the plant is?
By not giving a shit. If they are spying on you, they are scared and you have all of the power.
This seems idiotic from the employer's perspective. You're limiting your pool of candidates a lot by requiring that their life can accomodate essentially 24 hours of possible shift time. Companies do shit like this and then complain "nobody wants to work anymore"
It is a selective filter. It seeks the most desperate because they will take any and all abuse.
They also leave the milisecond they can which means the company constantly has to find replacements and retrain them. Lots of resources wasted just to abuse people rather than maximize profit by treating people better.
Slash education, raise cost of living, lower the minimum working age and forcing ppl to work shit jobs is actually viable.
I think there's a political party whose whole platform is based on this for this very reason
As long as "temporary" foreign worker programs exist, there isn't a shortage of labour as far as the elite are concerned.
A limited pool of local applicants is a benefit to them. Then they get to bring in foreigners who don't know the value of their work in a western country and don't know the laws that protect them, both labour laws and actual criminal laws.
Because we havent had a general strike in a while
Industrial engineer here. I have no fucking clue. It was theorized it might be better overall like 30 years ago, but by the time i graduated college it was understood that so long as you have management during changeovers so later shifts aren’t left confused or unsupervised you get all the real benefit of rotating shifts without the tremendous downside of all your workers being constantly off and pissed.
Also they should be providing later shifts with free healthy lunches and other incentives to keep them in good health to reduce the costs to their bodies of later shifts. Late shift operators need extra assistance because they’re living against society and circadian rhythms. Poor health also reduces performance so this isn’t what they should do because it’s right, it’s what they should do because if they don’t they’re always going to be frustrated at late shift performances
I'd hazard a guess that financial impacts of reduced performance as a result of this torturous schedule pale in comparison to the cost due to injuries.
I've recently had to work a couple of overnight shifts when I was overwise working basically dawn to dusk. Staying awake isn't that hard. Getting real sleep becomes the struggle. What surprised me though was the vertigo, constant low grade nausea, and dizziness that disappeared after a normal full NIGHT's rest. I may feel like a night owl sometimes, but my body does not agree.
I don't think this is intentionally evil, it's simply most people don't want to work the night shift, and they don't want to pay extra for people to want to work the night shift, so they distribute the night shift load on a schedule. So everyone has a crappy night shift every couple weeks but no one person constantly has the night shift.
I'm sure if you volunteered, they give you the night shift every day if you want
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.
What I have gathered after seeing threads like this pop up on Reddit periodically over about 11 years, and most of the responses here, is...
Fuck if there's a reason.
No, seriously. Pretty sure it's become standard and as Capitalism and Management do, they follow whatever bullshit tradition exists.
That said, I personally have always felt factory and retail work fuck with schedules so much because it maintains control and limits sociability outside of work and work groups. Thus increasing retention by artificially creating social nodes we feel a part of and/or do not want to be removed from. Likely created by the same people who cut pensions and created things like Mining Towns.
Most people only choose swing or graveyard with a differential. Rotating allows employers to fill shifts without offering differentials.
I used to work nights and got a differential. I would have been significantly less complacent without one.
Because you’re not expected to have a home life that takes precedence over work anymore.
Rotating shifts sacrifice the employees everything to reduce staffing and training costs.
Sounds like they had to do that to keep the night shift people from quitting. Probably not a place to go work lol.
Are they just trying to destroy your soul and your health?
Yes,
But likely for a very stupid reason like 50 years ago some consultant had to give a plan to increase efficiency but forgot until the night before.
I used to work at a place with 3 shifts, and they rotated them because everyone wanted 1st shift rather than 2nd and 3rd. I chose to stay on 2nd because it paid a bit more and I don't like getting up early. It would have been hell to switch every single week!
I think the big issue is that the rotation is every week. Every other week or more would be better.
In a strong union environment, this would likely get addressed with a combination of higher pay and seniority. Senior people choose their shifts and if junior members have to work night shifts, at least they get compensated.
Get rotated idiot.
If anyone's willing to put up with that schedule you might as well try for being an air traffic controller. Way higher salary.
If Green Tractor Factory ever starts hiring again you're welcome to come here, we don't rotate shifts, we make 90k a year, we get free health insurance. Because we're UAW. But we're also about to lay off so it might be a minute.
I've worked all three shifts. There's guys been stuck on 2nd for 20 years, and 2nd shift is fucking WACK. From that perspective I kind of understand rotating shifts because everyone gets fucked the same. It's more equitable. From every other perspective it's shitty as fuck.
Kia plant I worked at for 4 years was like this. Countless wrecks after shift change, untold divorces and ruined lives due to never being able to plan anything. Terrible
I've worked this shift pattern before, and found it very difficult. They call it a 'continental' shift pattern in the UK - it's not a new thing, 'cos the job I'm thinking of was 30 years ago. Switching from sleeping during the night to sleeping during the day is okay if you're on permanent nights, but trying to change every couple of weeks can be impossible (I remember once failing to get any real sleep during the day, having to spend the next 12 hours at work, and then collapsing on my way home the next day.)
Fuck if I know the answer to this, but someone I know well and respect works one of these shifts, and I don’t get it.
4 on 3 off and swap the next week, I get.
But it’s like these were designed to fuck up the workers’ health and lives. Oh, wait, they probably were.
I was a manager of a team with rotating 12 hour 6 to 6 shifts.
It was a datacenter. We had to staff the building 24x7x365. Billions of dollars of equipment, not to mention the transactions flowing through. No mistakes allowed here.
We paid $15/hour in 2010. Entry level. But it was a foot into the industry for someone without experience. Tasks were light security, walk the floor, swap drives, be on hand for server emergencies.
We used the rotation to onboard. No one did nights solo (no one else in the building) until they knew the job. Two weeks days, two weeks nights, back and forth. Two days on, one day off. 6-day rotation meant no one person was always stuck with weekends. And overtime pay every week.
We managed the schedule with a staff of 4.
Prior, the night shifts were handled by sysadmins who would work a day shift, go to the break room and get a few hours of sleep between tasks, then shower and go back on day shift. That really sucked. I did it for more than a year.
We had plenty of applicants every time a position opened. Folks tended to like the rotation as no one would get stuck with repeat holidays or all overnight. It sucked in a fair way to everyone. And if someone missed a shift (sick, emergency, etc.) I would have to fill the shift. It happened at least once a month. It was a good team. I liked all of my people, and after I got canned, they all wrote recommendations for me on LinkedIn.
I work a job where I'm covering other shifts a fair amount as well as working doubles. I also do not get Holidays/any extra days off. Prior to this I was in a salaried corporate middle management job, so for the past 20 years I've worked 55+ hours a week on average. I can tell you that for this particular job, yes, their goal is to destroy your health so that they get a few good years out of you and then you'll leave because it's too hard on you. That way they never have to worry about paying their workers (outside of a small percentage with high fortitude) wages that are much above baseline.
i like that you only have to work 2/4 weekends in a month. That's pretty cool.
How nice and thoughtful of them.