Americans say they are being required to work an exorbitant amount of overtime to compensate for staffing shortages that have plagued the economy.

Of particular note:

The Association of American Railroads, which represents freight railway operators, said its members have been hiring in recent years to address staffing needs and recognize employees’ desire for better scheduling. The group said the number of overtime hours worked by BMWE union members increased to 4.7 hours per week in 2022, compared to 4 hours in 2016.

Cory Ludwig, who works as a machine operator repairing railway tracks in Iowa, said he’s been working Saturdays and some Sundays along with 10- to 12-hour shifts since September. Recently, he worked 13 days without a day off. With the mandatory Saturday work, he’s had to rely on friends and relatives to take care of his five-year-old and nine-year-old kids. He said the overtime demands have increased as he’s seen the number of workers assigned to his crew go down.

“You fall asleep and then you wake up in the morning and you go right back to work. It can really break a person down, it gets really wearing on a person after a while,” Ludwig said. “With less people trying to do the same amount of work, working long hours, working multiple weeks in a row without one day off, you get irritated and you get burnt out.”

Recently one of the union’s members had been working 22 hours straight when he fell asleep on the job, an error that could have put his colleagues’ lives at risk but also could have been avoided had the employee had a rest period, said Ballew. Another member was recently disciplined for refusing to work through his scheduled days off on short notice so he could care for a family member having health issues, Ballew said.

“The stress it puts on marriages and parenting and the things you leave behind for your spouse to deal with or the things you miss, that kind of stress builds up,” said Ballew. “In the rail industry, we have noticed recently a spat of suicides and I can’t help but think there is a correlation there.”

Thank God Biden stopped the railroad strike!

I swear if I hear another fucker say that the railroad workers got everything they wanted because Biden helped them negotiate I’ll lose it.

Good thing I voted for the lesser evil in 2020! Gosh if I had stuck to principles we’d have had a genocide or something 😒

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlOP
    59·
    1 year ago

    How do you abolish the profit motive? It’s literally just the motivation to benefit from a transaction.

    By abolishing private ownership of capital and the accumulation of wealth.

    So create another ruling class to imprison these people? Do the new ruling class have to be subject to imprisonment as well? What about the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is now oppressing the previously wealthy? Shouldn’t they also be subject to imprisonment for abuses?

    The goal is to eventually abolish class society completely, so there is no ruling class.

    And it will mean more depending on how much you contribute to society.

    That’s really not true at all. The Arab Spring was started by a simple street vendor who set himself on fire in protest of the confiscation of his wares, and that triggered the collapse of multiple countries. Unfortunately it didn’t amount to any actual progress because there wasn’t an organized party that was ready to take advantage of his sacrifice, and then of course America had to get involved and make it all worse, but he had a huge impact despite not being important or famous or powerful.

    So am I. I’m so tired and angry, I have no recourse but to criticise you. Oh, that’s not a legitimate reason, you say? My mood doesn’t justify my behaviour you say?

    Don’t… put words in my fucking mouth?

    • the post of tom joad@lemmygrad.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      I heartily recommend you waste not one more second on someone so obviously overrating their importance. They can’t see you thru their hubris and arrogance, cursed as they are with dunnig-kruger. Come friend, drop them like a bad habit

    • jasory@programming.dev
      32·
      1 year ago

      “Arab spring …” So you cite an example of social activism that disastrously failed (by your own admission) to justify a similar action by your hand?

      Even then it doesn’t disprove that individuals that contribute more are statistically more likely to be noticed when absent. If you want to have an impact, especially a positive one, it helps to not have anger as your sole motivator.

      “So there is no ruling class”

      What exactly is a ruling class to you? There will always be a deciding group. Even in anarcho-fantasies that rule by consensus there will always be a small group that refuses to negotiate, they become the ruling class in that circumstance. So do they get deported to an archipelago for refusing to come to a consensus? Don’t the deporters become the ruling class then?

      Any sort of organized society outside of intimate groups needs some sort of hierarchical decision making. It’s one thing to advocate for positions to be more logically allocated, and another to be completely destroyed.

      “Don’t put words in my fucking mouth”

      I’m impressed that you aren’t apparently a hypocrite by holding others to a logical standard that you don’t follow. Unfortunately that logical standard is that being angry justifies spreading textual diarrhea all over Lemmy.