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Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

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41–50 of 228 posts

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#41
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So demand massivley outstrips supply. If people aren't living in such horrible circumstances (crime, homelessness, drug abuse), why is demand so high that houses are unaffordable?

I don't know if you've been in California recently, but in the East Bay at least a large number of small businesses have closed down and formerly vibrant places now look like homeless encampments. I used to feel comfortable taking out my phone even after dark on BART, now I don't. The economy might still be chugging along but it's not chugging along on the back of the big cities with ultra liberal takes on crime/home…

Downtowns are always kind of dull and empty outside of work hours. They exist to house a temporary population of millions for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week; after those 8 hours, they are totally abandoned ghost towns because it's not like you can use office buildings for some other purpose at night.

Some cities are better at mixing commercial and residential real estate so you feel this effect less. Downtown Chicago always felt eerie to me on nights and weekends. Everything is just closed and there are very few people around. Manhattan is less like this. (There was a time when I would leave work between 11pm and 2am. The bike ride down 2nd Ave was always chaos. The city never sleeps.) I haven't spent a ton of time in San Francisco, but it strikes be as being closer to Chicago than Manhattan. After work, everyone is out in the neighborhoods.

In my non-expert opinion, people in California go to bed earlier than in New York. I feel like everyone thinks they need to be up for work at 5am to "beat the traffic" and be in the office for calls at 9am New York time. This means they are in bed 9pm. Meanwhile, you can stay out until midnight in New York and be sentient again for the same 9am call.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#42
post #35

What we need is more enforcement of existing labor laws. A 40-hour work week with teeth. No "unpaid overtime". No "time shaving". Out of hours phone calls count as work time, with a minimum time for a call. (3 hours in the movie industry).

Yes, I mean we should also have a 32 hour work week but the laws surrounding it need teeth for sure. We should hold executives/managers criminally liable with the potential for jail time for repeat offenses. It's absolutely fucking absurd that shoplifting, especially when performed by disadvantaged folks carries harsher penalties than systematic wage theft. It's upside down clown world out there, abusing your position of power is FAR worse than stealing to eat or even fund a drug habit.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#43

Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is there any way we can turn back? Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly anyone is que…

The definition of the length of the work week and who it applies to is already a concept defined by government.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#44

Note this seems to apply only to hourly workers. All of us salaried techies need to keep waiting for free market to open this up

Unionize, refuse to be on call, refuse to answer slack messages outside of work hours. If working in tech, and at startups specifically has taught me one thing it's that urgency is ALWAYS fake, you can put the fire out tomorrow morning. If there aren't consequences for bad planning then the bad planning continues. See also: financial bailouts of pretty much any kind, the cost of mistakes needs to be adequately large.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#45
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they signs of an unhealthy economy? Gentrification and bad zoning laws alone could explain many of your examples.

Weird comment. Could you define gentrification? For decades, "Gentrification" has the go-to for the people that applaud tesla leaving and Amazon being rejected by New York. Ironically, those same people are strong proponents of zoning and centralized planning of the whole state. Pretty fed up with their outsized control and demonization of anyone that tries to make things better.

Death tax vs estate tax. Immigration vs international talent acquisition. UBI vs Freedom Dividend. Gentrification vs Multi-family zoning.

The (twitter centric) left would make much more progress in America if they worked on better messaging instead of just relying on moral arguments.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#46
post #17
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an extremely close friend, who is at the C-Level, that just shocked me with news of moving to Boulder, Colorado due to the hostile California laws. I haven't gone in detail with him about what laws/ordinances are specifically having him move there, but yeah...

Boulder is California-light. Colorado doesn’t yet have the endemic corruption you get with uniparty states like California, but with all the Californians moving there and doing the same thing, it’s coming. The rise in homelessness in Boulder in just the past few years is amazing.

I lived in Highlands Ranch, CO for roughly half a year, and man the suburban sprawl in anything outside of Boulder is on steroids. My impression of Colorado is that it's a "hot" place to be right now (very much hyped as the place to escape to), but that will in time be expended as housing costs skyrocket and no new housing can be built because everything is interconnected by a 6-8 lane highway.

Reference: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Highlands+Ranch,+CO/@39.55...

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#48
I've worked for 6 different employers in my life, Ive also employed people.

100% of my experience is that its rare for someone to ping me out of work hours, and if they do, I completely understand that its an emergency. Since I also care about the company's well being, (that's where I get my paycheck from), Im happy to help.

In 20 years as an employee or employer this has happened maybe 5 times.

I don't know where people are working that this is even an issue, but if at all possible consider switching jobs because youre working with sociopaths.

32 is too low, employers are going to leave California even more if this is approved.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#49
post #35

What we need is more enforcement of existing labor laws. A 40-hour work week with teeth. No "unpaid overtime". No "time shaving". Out of hours phone calls count as work time, with a minimum time for a call. (3 hours in the movie industry).

This! 40 hours workweek with mandatory overtime pay (usually double per hour) with a minimum duration. Reducing the workweek below that would be considered unnecessary government intervention and is liable to be bad for business and workers. No one wants a pay cut that goes with it.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#50

Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is there any way we can turn back? Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly anyone is que…

Eh whether government should have the right to do this takes a backseat to the fact that the government is the only way we can do this.

The government is the only coordinating mechanism we have to enforce something like this, otherwise everyone is playing the prisoner’s dilemma.

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