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
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.