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Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

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Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#121

Post by duxup »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #77
roughly wrote: post #58

There's a weird incuriosity in the responses here for a place that calls itself Hacker News. "This doesn't happen to me" is about the least interesting or useful response you could have to someone telling you something happens to them. Someone is telling you the world works differently for them than it does for you, which means you've got an opportunity to learn something new about the world and expand your model. Ev…

Are there particular responses you have in mind? I can find two comments making this point, one which opens with >Maybe I just have abnormal leverage while the other opens with >I'm curious The top two top-level comments are responding to this trend, so I assume it is or was present, but I'm not seeing it. I do wish people would reply to the comments they find objectionable instead of doing these meta comments subtwe…

Long ago I once participated on a forum where meta conversation about the conversation was not allowed. It really did a nice job to avoid the kind of (often way off) meta comments about other comments that come up like this.

It's telling if someone can't actually find a comment to reply to in order to address whatever meta issue they're concerned about.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#122

Post by beAbU »

lpolovets wrote: post #106

I think stuff like this is much better settled with compensation than legislation. For example when I was an engineer 15-20 years ago, my friends would deprioritize jobs with lots of on-call needs, but would still take the jobs if they were exceptional in some way or the comp was especially good. Why can't we do that in most other job categories as well? I can think of a bunch of areas where this kind of bill would d…

The very first paragraph in TFA says:

> ... rules on when and for what reason an employer could contact an employee outside of a normal work schedule.

This is no blanket 'thou shalt not call thy employees after hours' law.

All this is doing is preventing employers from effectively pulling a bait and switch, by implicitly expecting employees to be available 24/7 for whatever reason. If you've ever been in a situation where your boss just fucking calls you because of some asinine reason ("hey I just had an idea...) then you know how terrible it is. Nothing spoilt my weekends as much as a boss calling and I'm thinking "o shit prod is down" or whatever, and then it's just him asking on a delivery date for a feature because he's having drinks with the client now and they were asking.

Now, if there is a requirement for after hours availability, it has to be stated in the contract, and the compensation must accordingly reflect this additional requirement.

I think it's great this is happening.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#123

Post by shimman »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #109
duxup wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relevant. We're people sharing and discussing, not a TV show. The idea that if we're discussing a problem that only people with that problem may share their experience is absurd at face value.

"10% of Americans are uninsured. A US state is pushing to insure all of their residents." "I'm insured!" "Open-source software projects are being spammed with LLM generated PRs. Contributions are becoming more restricted". "I have a repo that isn't being spammed!" Sometimes sharing a somewhat related experience is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, and also completely uninteresting. It does not matter that s…

Notice how it's always the plight of people that always get immediately dismissed while the incoherent ramblings of tech leaders like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodei are always taken at face value and immediately never questioned.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#124

Post by tbrownaw »

grayhatter wrote: post #75
tbrownaw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment I was replying to appears to be a call for unquestioning belief. Which is the far extreme in the opposite direction.

No, it doesn't, or at the very least, that wasn't my read and I don't think that's a reasonable interpretation. The comment starts with the topic, shock at the lack of curiosity from a group happy to comment in the theme of news interesting to hackers, and concludes with an argument that someone sharing their life/experience is something valuable. IMO, the only reasonable argument one could take, is that roughly beli…

I don't really see any other interpretation of saying that if someone says you're wrong you should update your worldview. There isn't much that could be other than a call for unquestioning belief.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#125

Post by shimman »

yamillove wrote: post #98
cmatta wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty self-selecting group, so I'm not surprised that most people reading this don't have a problem with after-hours coms. If you've ever worked in hospitality or retail, you'll know that managers will call/contact you at all hours to make sure they have coverage. It's irritating.

[flagged]

Telling people they should get a better job implies that there is work where YOU think the workers deserve to be taken advantage of. Why IDK, guessing you hate people fighting for better quality of life through democratic norms.

People rightfully hating tech workers nowadays makes so much sense.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#126

Post by gruez »

nosioptar wrote: post #37
gruez wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In my experience, one troublemaker can often recruit others to their cause. Maybe if your company is filled with the type of people who run archlinux on their IBM era thinkpads, but otherwise I would be very surprised if could find even one or two sympathetic people who are also against installing a 2fa app. Even if you can get your manager to cave, it'll be less because they want to be "troublemakers" themselves, a…

Dude, your characterization of me being an arch user with an ancient latop is clearly in bad faith. Maybe you're incapable of communicating with your coworkers about how your employer exploits you. I graduated third grade, so I'm not.

>Dude, your characterization of me being an arch user with an ancient latop is clearly in bad faith.

Someone with 3rd grade reading comprehension should be able to realize the comment about IBM era thinkpads were directed at your coworkers, not you. Then again, there was a recent OCED report about how around 7% of tertiary students have the literacy skills of a 10 year old, so that might explain why there are people who proudly proclaim they passed third grade, but nonetheless have worse comprehension.

>Maybe you're incapable of communicating with your coworkers about how your employer exploits you. I graduated third grade, so I'm not.

See my subsequent remark about "...they don't want to deal with the hassle of arguing with you.".

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#127

Post by shimman »

yamillove wrote: post #99
Spooky23 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your fortunate. If you’re adjacent to operations or power, after hours comms is a common experience.

[flagged]

This is a stupid rebuttal. Society is allowed to improve the life work workers while working. Just because you want people to personally suffer doesn't make it right.

This is some old school puritan classism right here.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#128

Post by shimman »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #104
gblargg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least an ongoing retainer fee, plus paying for time spent dealing with comms.

Lots of in office people aren't doing work 100% of the time, they still get paid because they could be asked to do something. Same goes for on call, just with a flipped percentage. Further for non fixed work schedules any shifts that aren't scheduled two weeks in advance should be paid overtime.

Why is the onus on workers to make sure they are working 100.00% of the time? It's not their company, they aren't management. If you want them to cosplay as managers maybe pay them as such rather than trying to pit them amongst each other.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#129

Post by awinter-py »

roenxi wrote: post #11
awinter-py wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a major function of the law is to mediate between groups that have unequal power as a collective, employees out-vote employers and can obtain this kind of concession through the law but not in an individual contract negotiation (mancur olson notwithstanding) taken to its logical extreme your argument would forbid all group negotiations, I'd think?

I'm just going off the summary document [0], but the law doesn't seem to require any particular working hours. It just says people should stick to them once they've been agreed. That's already implied by having working hours. The whole bill basically just tells the regulator that the legislature thinks the fine for not sticking to the employment contract should be up to $500 which is probably redundant since I assume…

ah you're just saying that 'usual work hours' isn't defined in the statute and doesn't seem to be capped at 40 for salaried workers? fair

their jury duty hour cap statute uses similar language:

> hours normally and customarily worked by the person during a day

https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-600-1...

Maybe it's established in case law that this is 40 for a salaried worker? (I'm not a michigan employment lawyer). I wonder if a draft of this proposed hardcoding it at 40 and they had a reason not to?

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#130

Post by tbrownaw »

cmatta wrote: post #23
Havoc wrote: post #16

Maybe I just have abnormal leverage but I've never had after hours coms be an issue. I've had two phone for basically all my working life and just don't look at it outside of work hours. Don't think I've ever been challenged on why are you not reading after hour messages. Everyone around me is professional enough to know that its a discussion that would go poorly.

This is a pretty self-selecting group, so I'm not surprised that most people reading this don't have a problem with after-hours coms. If you've ever worked in hospitality or retail, you'll know that managers will call/contact you at all hours to make sure they have coverage. It's irritating.

> If you've ever worked in hospitality or retail, you'll know that managers will call/contact you at all hours to make sure they have coverage. It's irritating.

I vaguely remember a few years ago there was some news pushing new scheduling software that was supposed to help make schedules more predictable, and how it wasn't working to full potential because store managers wouldn't trust it.

But I don't think the bill in question here would actually do anything to affect that issue?

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