this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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No one enjoys it. That's why it's not called "going to fun".
It doesn't really have to be that way, though.
Of course it does. No one enjoys cleaning sewer drains.
My local sewer guy takes pride in his job. Not only does he care enough to know the entire sewer layout for every lot in town, he also cares enough about it to always provide the customer with a good offer. He just wants it done right. But it doesn't just stop there. He is also the chairman for the sewer industry in the entire country, giving advice to all the other sewer companies, municipalities and other industries.
No, he probably doesn't particularly enjoy hosing down somebody's fatberg, but him and his guys usually seem to have fun doing it anyway. He gets paid well be too.
If I got half the pay for having half the fun and being able to take half the pride in what I do, I'd gladly accept the job.
You guys are an absolute riot 😂
Not you.
My neighbors' eight-year-old son's dog walker's second cousin (once removed) says you're a liar (and always will be).
He said no one. I know one. That's more than zero.
Your acquaintance is wrong and should find a different job in the lying business.
I was abducted by interdimensional aliens who told me that vows of truth are only effective in less than half of all cases.
That's like 10 pinky swears or twice scouts honor. I stand corrected.
You have given no explanation or argument, just an appeal to ignorance.
This isn't a college class. I'm not writing a senior thesis. I have given an explanation and an argument, you just don't like it.
OK troll.
Who is trolling who here? You're the one pretending you can't understand my simple explanations.
What did you learn from watching the video?
What are your substantive concerns or criticisms with respect to it?
Speak for yourself. This guy does!
Or maybe, we can automate stuff like that, instead of starving artists.
If they could automate it, they would have done so already.
Not at the level of food service industry, cashier's and the like. Simply cuz automating gutter cleaning doesn't make capitalists any money.
We, not they.
Huh?
The suggestion was that workers ("we") should seek to automate processes that workers prefer not to perform.
Your objection was that if such automation were possible to achieve and to implement, then they would have already done so.
Processes of production, and the utilization and development of machinery implicated in production, is determined by business owners, not by workers.
Business owners are bound by the profit motive, not by a motive to improve the experience of workers.
Any activity or objective not supported by the profit motive is simply discarded, under our current systems.
The meaningful suggestion is that workers ("we") should seek to automate processes that workers prefer not to perform, even if business owners ("they") have no motive for doing so.
Buddy if you "we" could do that "we" never would have been employees in the first place.
If you think automation is not profitable then you vastly underestimate the costs of running a business and hiring human employees.
Workers already are the ones who design and build machines, but our capacities are constrained by business owners, who control the resources of society, including the enterprise that conducts research and manufacturing, and who direct the labor of workers for using the resources they control.
You are attacking a straw man.
Some automation is profitable, at any particular time, but some automation may improve the experience of workers without being profitable.
Various relevant factors include the availability of technologies previously developed through public investment, the degree by which private enterprise is competitive versus monopolized, the structure of the labor pool especially in its degree of stratification, and the relative profitability of other investment opportunities, such as those more overtly framed around speculation, predation, extraction, or exploitation.
Engineers design machines, not sewer cleaners.
I don't know what you meant by this if not to imply that it's not profitable:
Engineers are workers.
Sewer cleaners are workers.
Neither are business owners, who make the decisions within enterprise, about how workers use enterprise.
If business owners decide that engineers would design machines, that factory workers would then build, and that sewer cleaners would then utilize, then the events may occur. Otherwise, not, and the determining force is the profit motive, not the will of workers.
The straw man you attacked was my alleged claim that no automation is ever profitable.
In fact, at any particular time, some automation may be profitable, and some automation may not be profitable.
Yes but sewer cleaners do not have the capacity to create automations...that's why they clean sewers. That's what we were discussing.
We are discussing the reasons certain workers may be prevented from having better experiences through automation, even if development, manufacturing, and utilization of relevant automated systems are possible in principle, through the collective capacities of workers as a class.
You asserted the premise that the nonexistence of certain systems of automation is sufficient evidence for us to conclude the impossibility of their being caused to exist.
The premise is obviously false.
No, we are discussing why people choose to work cleaning sewers. Then someone suggested we could automate the jobs. Then I suggested if we could, we would have already (because profits). Then you suggested that only sewer workers could automate those kind of jobs because it wasn't profitable for companies to do so.
I have observed that workers as a class (inclusive of engineers, factory workers, and all others) may have the capacities to provide automated systems either that improve the experience of those working to clean sewers, or that may obviate the social need of anyone to be working as such.
I also have observed that utilization of enterprise, and direction of worker capacities, is currently controlled by business owners, bound by the profit motive.
Your premise is false, that all automation always is supported by the profit motive, and my alleged premise is a straw man, that no automation ever is supported by the profit motive.
Your suggestion, that "if we could, we would have already" "automate[d] the jobs", is false.
Its flaw is that it erases the conflict of interest between workers and owners. subsuming both beneath an imaginary monolithic "we", who would all share the same interests.
In fact, workers and owners have mutually antagonistic interests.
Owners seek to extract the maximal possible value from workers at the minimal possible cost.
Workers seek better conditions, higher wages, and greater freedom and enjoyment in their lives.
Many concede as inevitable that work should be miserable.
Yet, some even still cast shame on those who emphasize the misery it causes.
Meanwhile, among those who describe work as miserable, it is common to assume the reason as being that work involves effort, rather than that work, at least the way it is generally imposed, requires the worker being subordinated.
There are some jobs that suck, but they're essential. Like maintaining sewers in big cities. It's a miserable job, but if no one does it you're going to have huge problems really fast.
Supply and demand. There's a high demand for workers of all sorts, but no employers want to pay the high price for having a worker on staff.
It's not that no one wants to work anymore, it's that no employers want to pay people enough to live and people don't want to be forced to work 90% of their week to still not make enough money to live.
Business owners that don't understand that are entitled and stupid.
Why do you describe certain jobs, such as the ones you chose to mention, as being inherently miserable?
The motive for my observation was to provoke reflection over the essential factors determining how we experience work.
Unfortunately, you seem too angry and confused to participate in a meaningful conversation.
As I say, you seem quite embittered.
You are also attacking a straw man.
Perhaps take a day or so to unwind, and then try reading my question again (including the entirety of the comment).
I understand and agree but memes like this and the whole "anti-work movement" are doing irreparable damage to any progress you could hope to make in "work reform".
What particularly is your grievance?
I just explained my particular grievance in the comment you replied to.
You provided two different names, each representing collections of ideas and objectives that are extremely general and often nebulous or ambiguous, and you complained that someone is pursuing one to the detriment of the other.
No more is plain from the text you wrote.
I am asking you to offer further details over how you personally are understanding the particular terms, and perceiving the conflicts.