51–60 of 237 posts
I'm conflicted about unions, but it would be truly amazing if they brought us the 4-day work-week the way they got the 8-hour workday and weekends.
Have you looked into worker cooperatives? Ocean Spray is an example in the US. Mondragon is an example of one in Spain that has tens of thousands of workers and has existed for many decades.
I have my doubts about unions in our particular industry sector, but out in the real world there are many, many jobs that you would have to be insane to take up without a union at your back.
Unions are fundamental in every line of work. Not having them is a huge problem. In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind, wonder why in America that doesnt happen
Not correct for the whole Europe.
In some places in Central Europe you do not have a Union but instead Work Council that intermediates and oversees the management and acts in the interest of employees.
Personally I like the idea, but at least in some counties it became an instrument of job protection for old employees that sometimes has a different agenda than other employees.
I have my doubts about unions in our particular industry sector, but out in the real world there are many, many jobs that you would have to be insane to take up without a union at your back.
Unions are fundamental in every line of work. Not having them is a huge problem. In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind, wonder why in America that doesnt happen
I'm conflicted about unions, but it would be truly amazing if they brought us the 4-day work-week the way they got the 8-hour workday and weekends.
Weekends and 8 hour work week is not necessarily a good thing. There could be benefits to switching to 996 work week to compete better with China.
Second, even policies that provide some benefit to companies may backfire for society if they increase mental health problems, lower social cohesion, prevent family formation, and/or cause their best-and-brightest to leave. At some level the best way to "compete better with China" may be to focus on maintaining sensible policies focused on maximizing an individual's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" alongside overall national productivity and let short-sighted competitors burn themselves out. (Similar to the strategy adopted during the Cold War.)
I have my doubts about unions in our particular industry sector, but out in the real world there are many, many jobs that you would have to be insane to take up without a union at your back.
Unions are fundamental in every line of work. Not having them is a huge problem. In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind, wonder why in America that doesnt happen
Fundamental in what sense? In most of the world, most of the industries are not unionized. And where there are unions, they came after the line of work started. Which makes unions seem not fundamental at all.
> In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind
Not true at all. Most professional service oriented jobs are not unionized. Even in places like Germany where unions are relatively common.
I have my doubts about unions in our particular industry sector, but out in the real world there are many, many jobs that you would have to be insane to take up without a union at your back.
Unions are fundamental in every line of work. Not having them is a huge problem. In Europe there isnt a single job without an union behind, wonder why in America that doesnt happen
which means growth of unions is just a matter of individual choice of each employee. and there is nothing the company can to to stop it.
By AI guardrails they mean: AI cannot be used to write or rewrite scripts, and cannot be source material; but writers are free to use it if they wish. Reminds me of how elevators originally had operators, until everyone realized how wasteful and silly it is to have someone whose sole job is to press elevator buttons. As AI improves, we will come to feel the same about writers.
If that comes to fruition they'll just have one writer who is responsible for putting their name on a ton of AI-generated scripts. But at this very moment, AI generating anything suitable for something other than SEO blogspam isn't possible anyway. It might be right around the corner, or it might be "right around the corner" like self-driving cars were in 2015.
LLM's spit out derivative nonsense. Highly convincing nonsense, but derivative nonetheless. Any true originality in the output still comes from the human engineering the prompt.
Basically, LLM's know how to follow the rules, color within the lines. A real artist understands those rules well enough to break them and create something novel.
I'm conflicted about unions, but it would be truly amazing if they brought us the 4-day work-week the way they got the 8-hour workday and weekends.
A good chunk of employers will let you work a 4 day workweek in return for a 20% pay cut. For most people here on HN, you could probably survive on a 20% pay cut - you'd just have to have the kids share a bedroom rather than having one each and a guest room. Downside: Those on a 4 day workweek really struggle to get promoted to senior positions.
Where?? This has not been my experience, especially in tech. I've seen that work for "shift work" type jobs, even highly paid ones like doctors, but for "product work" type jobs like most tech, where there is essentially an infinite amount of possibile future work to do, companies are, generally, much less amenable to having people less than full time.
I can see why workers are most concerned with their own benefit but total productivity is important to the health of a business and economy, which is important to workers as well. And no, working 32 hours is not as productive as 40 hours.
In this meaning, when the headline says "unions work", it is being 100% honest.