121–130 of 225 posts
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That's mainly because the unions have some power in Germany. Without them German employers would also happily have people work overtime.
It is the people getting together that gives the unions that power in first place. Law is meaningless if workers don't make it happen.
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> Marx's writings around the working day are built on the assumption that wages will be set at the level necessary for the worker to survive long enough to turn up to work the following day rather than according to the perceived value of their labour time by the highest bidder, and that because of this near-universal day rate for undifferentiated "labour power", employers' main route to improving profitability would…
American retail workers might have a tough lot but the economics behind it is the precise opposite of the Kapital model: the retail outlets pay people by the hour and the workers need the long hours because they can't afford their family/debt/house/consumerism on 40 hrs per week at minimum wage and sometimes take additional jobs because retailers won't offer them enough shifts, rather than the retailers paying people…
Control and keeping high turnover is an objective in retail management. It’s usually cheaper and more efficient to have full time staff, but it’s easier to skimp 5% of labor hours and force the salaried manager to fill the breach.
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> Marx's writings around the working day are built on the assumption that wages will be set at the level necessary for the worker to survive long enough to turn up to work the following day rather than according to the perceived value of their labour time by the highest bidder, and that because of this near-universal day rate for undifferentiated "labour power", employers' main route to improving profitability would…
American retail workers might have a tough lot but the economics behind it is the precise opposite of the Kapital model: the retail outlets pay people by the hour and the workers need the long hours because they can't afford their family/debt/house/consumerism on 40 hrs per week at minimum wage and sometimes take additional jobs because retailers won't offer them enough shifts, rather than the retailers paying people…
Workers can only change income by applying for more jobs, or by having exceptional skills. (Which may or may not be genuinely high-value, but do have to be perceived as high-value.)
Since most workers don't have high value skills, that means most people have to work multiple jobs to survive. From the Marxist point of view, it's completely irrelevant if someone is working two shifts for two employers or one very long shift for one employer.
What matters is the loss of personal freedom and opportunity for the worker, who not only gives up personal time, but also lacks both the finance and the time - never mind the energy - to develop any independent small business prospects.
The political reality is that there by the end of the 19th century there were aggressive anti-capitalist movements working hard to limit hours and raise pay against very aggressive - sometimes criminal and murderous - pressures in the other direction.
These movements were less successful in the US than in most other countries, but they still had some influence - which had mostly faded by the end of the 20th century, and has now reverted back to the 19th century ultra-exploitative model for most of the working population.
The shocking thing about the US is the extent to which these movements have been written out of history. Instead of an accurate historical account of what happened, US economic and business history seems to have been rewritten entirely by propagandists who not only ignore the influence of worker movements on pay, social mobility, and working hours, but also use spurious pseudo-economic arguments to pretend that the oppressive policies that benefit the ownership caste also benefit the rest of the country.
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Avg dev salary in Dallas: $93k. Avg dev salary in Berlin: $55k. There's a saying you should be careful with what you wish for, you might as well get it. (I deliberately didn't pick SV/NYC. Dallas and Berlin are very similar cost of living wise.)
want to add the additional annual leave you get in Germany and average cost of the same health care in Dallas into that equation let alone the other benefits?
(free healthcare doesn't count as the US amount usually includes insurance)
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So, I currently work in Germany, maybe that’s why, but in my personal experience employers are very strict with overtime and only allow it when there is a justification (e.g: big project to get done at the end of the month). I guess because of strict regulations, but you also have the fact that having tired employees results in more sick days used, a higher error rate and mood swings. To be fair, even knowing this pe…
Us Americans solved that problem by making health care unaffordable and systematically reducing and eliminating sick/vacation pay.
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I'm not sure you're comparing apples-to-apples here. My grandfather drove trucks for the city, and my grandmother worked part-time in a factory. They didn't reach high-school. They had 3 kids, always owned their own homes, in a major metro, owned two cars, and always had "modern" appliances and electronics for their time. They felt little or no economic insecurity, and never expressed that they felt they were lacking…
> Which socio-economic class of today would you compare them to? Well, that's my point: I'd compare them to the lower-middle or "working" class. Your grandparents had a lower inflation-adjusted income (speaking in general here; obviously there will be exceptions) than truck drivers and part-time factory workers today (though today's need a high school diploma whereas your grandparents didn't). That's why I mentioned…
Inflation, taxes, and regulatory burden. Savings have been systematically eroded for 50+ years. Total taxation is now 40+% of GDP. Private sector workforce participation is dropping. Regulatory burden dramatically increases health care, housing, and transportation costs. All of these policies have worked to keep you in the office.
Total taxation is at 26% of GDP in the U.S., 34% in much of the rest of the developed world. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes...
Those numbers seem very low for Ireland. I'm willing to be wrong but something seems very off here.
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American retail workers might have a tough lot but the economics behind it is the precise opposite of the Kapital model: the retail outlets pay people by the hour and the workers need the long hours because they can't afford their family/debt/house/consumerism on 40 hrs per week at minimum wage and sometimes take additional jobs because retailers won't offer them enough shifts, rather than the retailers paying people…
Retailers have taken it to another level by requiring you to commit to availability without a commitment to have work. Nobody gets 40 hours — you target around 28 typically. Control and keeping high turnover is an objective in retail management. It’s usually cheaper and more efficient to have full time staff, but it’s easier to skimp 5% of labor hours and force the salaried manager to fill the breach.
This is the law of unintended consequences as applied to the ACA. If they give you more hours care their costs go up dramatically unless they're already offering health.
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Wages have stagnated but total compensation hasn’t. The cost of health insurance in the US has gone up a lot and most jobs have health insurance.
you know that you pay for health insurance that your job provides, right?
That does not change the fact that wages/salary have been relatively flat in the US for decades but wages/salary + health insurance has very much not been flat.