Comment by _lqaf
4 years ago
> You should own the fact that your free time is yours and that you shouldn't open Slack to read those late messages
It sounds like that works for you at your company. Congrats!
But if you're lucky enough never to have had an overbearing boss, you're not familiar with all the nifty ways they will try to control or coerce labor while not paying you.
In US low-wage jobs, they know they can get away with violating labor law with impunity until it gets bad enough to attract media attention. Even if workers had the money to sue, it wouldn't be worth it.
I got to see texts from a younger relative's boss at a national chain restaurant leading up to quitting. She had been working 6-7 days a week for over a month, but wage theft was keeping her under 40 hours a week paid. Multiple demands she come in on her day off with less than a couple hours notice to "support the team" or "do her part", with escalating threats in response to anything less deferential than "yes boss".
She finally responded by quitting. That solicited a remarkable fit of rage, calling her a loser who can't hold down a real job and so on.
The thing that kills me is I know most people don't want to be abusive shitheads. It is absolutely learned behavior from an abusive top-down system. The only way to win is not to play.
And I think that's driving a lot of the job churn our sanctified "job creators" are bitching about. Fuck 'em. If you can't build a company without abusing people, you don't deserve a company. Go get a real job, whiners.
> She had been working 6-7 days a week for over a month, but wage theft was keeping her under 40 hours a week paid.
There are already laws against wage theft, if her current employer is already ignoring the existing laws, what exactly will improve with an additional one? Bad work environment won't be improved by a ham-fisted legislation around when your employer is allowed to talk with you.
This kind of good intention laws can only be used by employees that already have some leverage and are in a decent work environment. Say the no-text-after-5 law is implemented in the US, what exactly do you think will happen when your relative quotes it to her employer? In an at-will state she'll get fired, in a not-at-will state she will get fired for a bogus reason.
Powerless people don't magically gain power with shitty edge-case laws like this. Create a social net that allows her to quit without dying of starvation one month later or going bankrupt from lack of insurance. That will give the poorest among us some actual leverage.
>Create a social net that allows her to quit without dying of starvation one month later or going bankrupt from lack of insurance.
That's a very good point! And true. But it's not a xor situation, you can have both as they handle different things. Regardless of any social security net, you can still be bullied or manipulated into yielding your free time. It's good to have it written into law that it's against the law to contact a worker outside their contracted hours.
> But it's not a xor situation
I did not argue that it was, I meant that the counter argument of the person I was replying to was moot. Vulnerable people stay vulnerable and those laws are just basically just cosmetic.
> Regardless of any social security net, you can still be bullied or manipulated into yielding your free time.
Yes, but I am old fashioned and that's where I break from some of the takes in thread. If you can say no, then it's your responsibility to say no. If you are bullied at work or manipulated while having a social net and you choose to endure then I think the responsibility lies with you as you make no effort to improve your situation.
Now my last point is entirely an opinion based on my values, I can recognize that, but I hope it clears up why I believe in a social net that prevents abuse while also opposing laws like the one discussed.
But all the users above me said the market takes care of it... im confused. It sounds to me like you're saying that labor laws exist as a response to widespread bad behavior rather than dirty liberals trying to make it possible for plebs to have control over their own lives?