11–20 of 388 posts
It's hugely in the public interest to not have sick rail workers infecting their passengers
It is important to remember that the railroad industry was THE original big money monopoly that made its money exploiting workers. It's just continuing its tradition in the hands of Warren Buffet and similar owners.
Companies want employees rather than contractors in the sense that they want to have a locked in wage rather than negotiate new contract rates for each contract, but companies want contractors rather than employees because employees get benefits in exchange for their relatively slower growing incomes. Here, we see the tug of war and companies trying to have it both ways.
Can probably also optimise things such that shifts and/or journeys start and end closer to home for workers, less nights on road more overtime / less overtime when people want it etc.
Companies want employees rather than contractors in the sense that they want to have a locked in wage rather than negotiate new contract rates for each contract, but companies want contractors rather than employees because employees get benefits in exchange for their relatively slower growing incomes. Here, we see the tug of war and companies trying to have it both ways.
Contractors can also be laid off without any fuss with things like the WARN act.
That’s a long-winded way of saying: ‘We’d rather make more money than care about the health of our employees.’
Moreover, I'm more than happy to pay a little more for things in the long term to ensure that there's enough slack in the system to absorb the shocks that periodically come around.
We've just spent almost three years slowly killing everyone in healthcare because every "inefficiency" in the system has been trimmed to the bone. We've been asking people to shoulder crushing loads to make up for the lack of what is normally excess capacity. We shouldn't need a reminder that all that inefficiency is what adds resilience to the system so soon.
Airlines claim to have learned this. They say they're reducing schedules to more realistically match their ability to absorb hiccups during the holiday travel season. Time will tell, but it seems nobody wants a repeat of last year. If you make flying awful enough, evidently people will find ways to not do it.
Maybe part of the solution is to treat other industries like the banking and finance industries. Banks get periodic stress tests; perhaps it's time to do the same for all of the other systems that we rely on holding together but don't have to think about until they're falling apart under load.