America’s Truckers, Cargo Pilots and Package Carriers Are Fed Up • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s Truckers, Cargo Pilots and Package Carriers Are Fed Up

#61

Post by nerdponx » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

scaramanga wrote: post #3

"Unions have been pushing companies to improve on-the-job conditions. After lobbying for it last year, major freight railroads have started offering short-term paid sick leave—in some cases for the first time—to union workers to ensure ample staffing and service levels." Haha, surreal, wall street journal is now telling me that "unions are the institution by which people (in the richest country in the world) are begi…

For anyone who doesn't get the joke: The USA once had a strong and popular left wing that arose out of the brutal working conditions of the 19th century industrial revolution, sometimes going as far as open armed conflict against mercenary groups hired by their employers. The pendulum swung strongly the other way over the 20th century, undoing the literal blood sweat and tears that went into securing basic workers' rights. Now we have to do it all over again, and it's funny to see the news reporting on labor organization as if it's some new concept.

Re: America’s Truckers, Cargo Pilots and Package Carriers Are Fed Up

#62

Post by nerdponx » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 3:27 AM UTC

usaar333 wrote: post #26

burkaman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See articles 24 and 25: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma... Threatening a person's livelihood if they want to take a couple days off to go to the doctor is denying them "a standard of living adequate for [their] health and well-being". Additionally, if you force your workers to come to work sick, you also threaten everyone else's standard of healthy living by unnecessarily exposing them to…

"Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay." The with pay term feels oddly specific and overly prescriptive. (If your society had UBI is this implying the employer still must pay you for holidays?) I'd feel the minimum requirement to not threaten livelihood when a potentially coercive relationship exists is unpaid leave should be allowe…

It's not about paying people to be sick, it's about how you shouldn't be denied income because you happen to get sick. The source of the income is less important.

Re: America’s Truckers, Cargo Pilots and Package Carriers Are Fed Up

#63

Post by nerdponx » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 3:31 AM UTC

hiatus wrote: post #52

TheAtomic wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to rethink your perspective on this. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy...

> Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession; we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of college students graduate from the super-elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite…

It's also David Brooks, Who has exemplified out-of-touch upper-class centrist conservatism for as long as I've known his name. Maybe he's having a moment of redeeming clarity, or maybe he's just being hypocritical.