If we had a four day working week that would be great or three 12 hour days allows for plenty of time off. I wouldn't want to work in factories otherwise but if they cleaned labor up and started caring more, they'd find me much more productive.
@SatanBurger You're right - it would have to be tailored to meet the needs of workers....which is sort of pathetic considering companies are offering money to folks to work - and it's difficult to find a one size fits all work schedules - it's a factory - so it's all hands on deck during production...the thing that caused China to be successful was the passivity of their workers - obviously an extreme and probably human rights violations...meeting somewhere in the middle would be nice but not sure it can be done....we'll see, or maybe not.
@fun4us2b I've worked in factories all my life and they're not sustainable. I get why they have such high turnover rates.
With factories there's other issues that are really poorly managed usually. The one issue I've found that has got me was the point system.
Some factories are eight points, six or four. If you lose half your points you'll get warnings but it won't be enough to fire you. However, you can lose them really easily.
Suppose you only get a certain number of sick days after a year of employment or only if you're full time but the factory wasn't hiring for full time.
So maybe cos you work for a temp agency instead which has different rules or they will trick you by saying it's full time but production might cut costs and have you out every other week.
So if you're sick and don't have them days those are points. If your car got stuck in snow that's a point. If you were running a little late because children, only two minutes late that's a point.
For breaks, if you only have a 20 minute lunch and you need to pee, warm up your food then you only got ten minutes to sit so if you're late for break, that's a point.
Then they give you a chance to earn back points but it's really slow. So let's say you got three and they allow six, they might have some rule where they take off a half point every three months. In one factory I worked at, it was six months you had to wait.
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Then another issue is breaks.
Some factories do their best to isolate different workers. Like let's say they give you a 30 minute break, they'll tell you to take a break but if you have to go through the entire factory to get to your breakroom that counts as part of your break.
So 30 minutes is really only 20 minutes for lunch and 15 minute breaks are 5 to 10 minutes in reality, depending if you run or not 🏃♀ 🏃♂ 🏃♀ 🏃♀
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Honestly I've got so many different ways factories are screwed. I once worked in the kitchen rather than production and the factory said that all 5 of the kitchen workers couldn't sit down in the cafeteria to have lunch. The cafeteria was huge and hardly was busy except for certain times. I never got why and they never told me.
The factory said we had to go sit in our car if we wanted to sit down on our eight hour shifts.
I could say so much more but I won't. I will say that factories do it to themselves though.
@SatanBurger the factories we have by where I live are all union, they've got probably close to the best pay in the area, most people once they're in never leave. Every complaint you have I've never heard from any of them
@Justafantasy Unions are great as they assure protections and the law, not all factories have unions, in fact there's such thing as union busting. This is a common practice. Furthermore, the amount of factories that actually have unions are slim, at least where I am. In all the factories I worked, I think only two had actual unions, unions aren't a big thing in most factories.
I do support unions though or the idea of them for sure 😃
With that said, even though I support unions, I worked for a major supplier of appliances that had one union, one of the few anyways.
In that factory there was no break rooms and it was constantly 90 degrees. All of what I said before applied. It was so hot.
In fact that company was a little worse cos when it came to ten minute breaks, you could leave the line but it wasn't advisable so most of us just sat down next to our line as we didn't have time to really go anywhere. Right when that bell hit I remember thinking should I pee or should I sit???
Oh and we didn't have breakrooms either, it was just two small tables even though it was a huge factory the size of three football stadiums.
In fact, during orientation, the factory actually encouraged people not to apply to the union, saying that both union and non union members get treated the same. That's how they persuade people not to sign up for the unions.
Nobody also complained, including me.
People did make comments to the point where you would suspect that they had issues too. But if you were standing next to me, it's not like I'm gonna make conversation about it.
So just because no one discusses issues doesn't mean it's not there.
