So slavery as indentured servitude is the American future. Way to “new model” the old model.
Since the New Deal the goal of the capitalist class has been a slow crawl back to slavery. Couldnt do it too fast. Had to take it slow.
No taxes for the rich and businesses. No rights for workers. And eventually No pay or choice for them either.
That beyond all the other myriad failures of this country is why I hate it so much and why I long to see it fall.
And it’s all been fully Bipartisan. Republicans advance the goals of oligarchy by leaps. Democrats are the vanguard that protects the rich and the corrupt. They stop all of us from making things better. Social and cultural issues are ephemeral at best. Ultimately unimportant to the oligarchy beyond their utility as a tool of control and coercion. There is no morality involved. There is just greed and corruption.
Seems that they want to repeat the USSR of 70s, just capitalist and without the revolution and industrialization and mass repressions preceding stages, and rather right-wing.
Maybe they want that to avoid the same fate due to avoiding state capitalism and overregulation combined with politics inside the bureaucratic machine. If they are moderately smart.
Or maybe they just want to repeat the same track with modern technologies. Then it’ll suck.
Whether you want them or not.
NGL I’m envisioning The Factory as in SCP 001
This was always the goal. Serfdom in a different package.
YOU AND YOUR FAMILY FIRST, ASSHOLE.
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Dey tk 'r jerbs!!!
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Ok, here you go, maga listens to its voters, kicked out all the immigrants and imports and is proud to present: serfdom.
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No, not like that!!
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The USSR had lifetime factory jobs, too.
The USSR didn’t have any limits to choosing an employment since shortly after WW2, what are you talking about? By the late 70s, around 10% of positions in the economy were vacant and there was full employment, and people weren’t forced to work anywhere. The average unemployment duration was 15 days.
Please, what’s your source on your claim?
The USSR didn’t have any limits to choosing an employment
You were distributed to a place by the state after finishing your education. If you left that place too soon, you’d be frowned upon and that’d be mirrored in your labor book (USSR had such a document, basically a dossier documenting your whole history of employment with characteristics, you could get such a “flattering” characteristic by a superior not liking you that you’d never be accepted to a good place after, and you couldn’t refuse or lose a record in your labor book).
and people weren’t forced to work anywhere.
Being unemployed for too long was literally, seriously, illegal in the USSR. Google for “тунеядство”.
People with something really bad in their labor books (say, dissidents) or some other necessary documents (being German after the war, being Jewish in a wrong period of time) had problems finding a place that would accept them, and would sometimes be prosecuted for being unemployed (that was usually informal employment, because you still had to eat something).
But in general yes, some kind of employment was always possible. Dying from hunger or being homeless was almost ruled out. Most of the population lived in some sort of “acceptable poverty” - conditions very bad by US measure, but with the previous correction. That’s sort of one good thing that most people from ex-USSR agree on.
The USSR didn’t have any limits to choosing an employment
I’m sorry, do you seriously think the USSR lacked classes/stratification?
and people weren’t forced to work anywhere
Yeah if you ignore the Gulag system you can make a lot of the USSR sound utopian.
And the US still has millions of slaves to this day, completely legally. We use slaves to fight forest fires. How fucked up is that? Hell, the modern US has managed to create the absurd phenomenon of the full-time employed homeless person. Oh, and and the peak of the USSR? The US trapped millions of people in a hellish nightmare of a legally induced racial caste system.
If you ignore the slavery, the homeless working multiple jobs, and the US’s historic racial caste system, you can make the US sound utopian.
Well?
I challenge you to point out where I praised the US. I’ll be super impressed if you can.
This is a flagrant whataboutism. The US’s history of enslavement and atrocities don’t undo those of the USSR.
Come on man it took one google search to read about the centralized labour programs, liquidation of foreign ethnic groups, and militarization of labour. This isn’t even counting the estimated 10 million or so people in forced labour gulags.
Tankie spotted
Bro, shut the fuck up if that’s all you’re going to add to the conversation Jesus fucking Christ dude
Please, what’s your source on your claim?
Tankie spotted
Average interaction.
So if I wanted to change jobs or quit a job to go into higher education, do you know if that was possible, how hard was it to do? Because available positions does not equal job mobility, as you need permission from the factory manager and the state and those are harder to get when qualified workers are scarce.
Higher education was free in the USSR as stipulated by its constitution.
Oh, cool. We’re going backwards. That’s fun.
He means while they’re still kids btw
With good union representation, right?
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ha. see, the thing is… no. make me. i got a bullet for every single fucking one of you that tries to fuck my genuinely good life up. i figured out how to escape this shit life and i’m never going back. i ain’t got no kids so i don’t have to worry about any of this. yall have all fucked this world up beyond recognition and i will fucking kill you if you try to drag me down into your bullshit.
That’s the thing, they don’t care if you work there, they won’t make you, you’ll just starve to death in the street or die from lack of medical care or some previously preventable problem. You likely would never be forced to work but not working will be essentially choosing slow suicide
Strip me off my decent life and try to make me work labor. I will. But my incompetence will be the greatest incompetence. My wages will do nothing but pay for my mistakes and I will just keep making them.
Ok, so a few points, from a lifelong industrial OEM technician:
First of all, there’s nothing wrong with factory jobs IF your employer takes care of its workers, that’s a big “if” but one all the world’s workers should take care of, since manufacturing is of course one of the biggest areas of employment and it’s not going away anytime soon.
My job, working for an equipment manufacturer, can be quite enjoyable and well paid, again depending on the employer, I’d advice any technically inclined individual to look into it. St the same time, I’d never work as a maintenance tech in a factory, that’s usually a very stressful job, with emergency work in poor condition, often pushed to work unsafely because of the rush, on old machines often dirty or in poor repair.
Still, I’ve seen some people make quite a comfortable position in that setting, so it may not be all bad.As for pay, I think pay should depend mostly on 3 factors: effort, skill and comfort. Those who work harder, are more skilled and are forced into unpleasant settings should be paid more. If you want a more comfortable job you cannot expect to make more than a good, equally skilled worker who’s in noisy, dangerous or disgusting environments, and so on.
I don’t understand the intergenerational employment point, that sounds sorta dystopic and has no connection to the rest of the argument.
You won’t be well paid, you will not have benefits, you will be forbidden from unionizing, you will have very little say about the particular job you work or the schedule you’re given. You’ll take what you get or starve in the streets. It’s disingenuous to act like “factory work” will resemble the good factory jobs that currently exist.
If that’s what it takes for Americans to reach their limit and claw back some dignity from their owners…
I agree that the work isn’t too bad if you’re the right type of person. We have pretty good rules from OSHA.
TBH though the intergenerational employment and company towns angle makes it seem like all the rules are going to be discarded so I’m a bit concerned
from OSHA
Not for long!
And that’s the problem! These jobs may be okay for now but the people running the government, including the clown in the article, actively wants to make it worse.
I didn’t realize that I could be a toolmaker when I grew up until I was already grown up.
I fucking love my job. If I had realized how cool this job was when I was in high school I’d be one of the most well paid people in my field right now. As it is I’m just doing pretty well.
Industrial jobs definitely aren’t for everyone, but that’s literally any job. I left a comfortable office job for the trades because those jobs aren’t for everyone either. And I’m far happier for it.
How is it possible to avoid repetitive stress injury on an assembly line? Seems inevitable.
Aside from what @SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone wrote, ideally we’ll reduce human labor to overseeing machines, at least on industrial lines, over time.
Replacing humans with machines generally results in greater disparity of wealth, historically
You still can’t stop progress, so you’ve got to solve that issue another way
If you don’t own the machines you should get supplemental income from being displaced.
You should get income regardless
Development of technology isnt always progress. Sometimes its a step backwards.
Progress depends on if it does good or bad. If it just causes a greater disparity of wealth (while building crappy machines that are designed for obsolescence and people dont need), then it is not progress.
Example: looms are arguably progress (almost everyone needs cloth). Robots that manufacturer ICE SUVs are not progress (making more gas guzzlers is causing mass extinction).
Don’t confuse technological and societal progress.
It may not be positive for society, but you still can’t stop progress, if you don’t develop what’s possible, someone else will.
We can pass laws to prevent things like fossil fuel extraction.
Great question. Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are more difficult to avoid when tasks are repetitive, forceful, and/or use a limited range of motion. Implementing a “stretch and flex” type program, completing thorough ergonomic evaluations (and actually following through with their findings), and rotating workers through various tasks that change the motions performed and body parts being stressed will knock down injuries considerably.
Considering they’re working on getting rid of lunch or bathroom breaks this is just a fantasy… is it possible to have decent factory jobs? Sure. Will that be what’s given to you as an option? Absolutely not
This must be prevented from happening, once it becomes the institutional norm it will be so difficult to reverse course
I agree this “factory jobs for everyone and their children” bullshit needs to be prevented, but what I listed isn’t just a fantasy. It’s literally a major part of what I do for a living. It’s all I did for a time when I was a consultant. Employers who are smart enough to have any concern for long-term sustainability and profitability take this quite seriously as it’s not just ethically the “right thing to do”, it’s a smart business move.
I only contract in upstate NY but the manufacturing facilities were specifically placed in areas that will support the bare minimum wage and consistently have supply and or facility issues due to the location. A major pharma organization draining water towers. A large toothpaste manufacturer neglecting PRVs the decades and constantly shooting silica’s into the air.
I see great potential in these facilities but i am ALWAYS reminded of the shit business practices i see even when they cause the company to lose money.
Sure some of these places will prosper but most will crumble inside 5 years and displace a lot of people.
The factory jobs that existed in post-war America would be a vast improvement over the current service economy, but those jobs don’t exist anymore. Union jobs with high pay, benefits, retirement after 20 years, etc. Those are not the factory jobs they’re looking to create.
Factories are mostly automated now anyway. Rebuilding US manufacturing will not only take years but it will be done in a way that minimizes the actual jobs created. They’ll also still have to compete with factories all over the world where the currency is worth much less and the global price of the end product reflects that.
Post-war America had a strong domestic market and middle class that could afford to buy all the things American manufacturing built. Americans are now buying groceries on layaway and waiting for the sickness or car trouble or new Trump policy that makes them homeless.
The reality is that the job is kind of irrelevant. We had a manufacturing economy then, and a service based economy now, but the real difference between today and back then were wage strength and social parity. Of course pensions existed too, but still.
Back in the day one man could make enough to support a family on a relatively entry level skill level income. Today one person can hardly afford rent by themselves anywhere in the US for the same skill level of work.
Instead of paying people any more than absolutely necessary, we pay shareholders. No pensions, let alone benefits for a lot of people.
We need taxes on the wealthy and higher wages, if not legally mandatory profit sharing schemes for all businesses
Preach! I have an advanced degree in a technical field and I earn (adjusted for inflation) about 75% of what my father did in the same industry doing similar work without even a GED. The real punch to the gut is I live in a high cost of living area while he worked in a very low cost of living area. Thanks, capitalism!
And those jobs weren’t good because they were in a factory, they were good because they were union.
Still, safety standards were far from ideal at that time
Factory jobs used to consist of one person being able to move about and do various jobs. I may be misremembering, but I believe it was Ford (who was not exactly a great person, go search) who stuck each individual in one place doing one minute part of an overall job. Having worked in a couple of factories, one of which was very well paid, it was mind- crushingly boring. And 1/2 hour meals with coworkers was sniping and backbiting other coworkers. I liked repairs better because it was variable, and I got to go to storage and look for things so I could move away from my station.
QA was probably the most soul-crushing, except for that one factory, that didn’t pay well, had everyone on mandatory 7 days, 8+ for about two months at the time my supervisor tried to write me up for being absent the days with the flu, with a doctor’s note. I walked off the job that day and was hired at a nearby competitor the next day, and given a start bonus, told to come in the following Monday. I loved that super, the pay was great, but it still was not great.
Want more than 2 minutes to poop? You’re fired!
Yes ma’am.
They say factory jobs but really they mean mining/oil towns, where everything is controlled by the mining/oil companies that still exists in some parts of Africa and Latin America.
Cool. You go first, asshole. >:(
(Not you, OP, you’re cool.)
Well, we do not know. OP may actually be the new secretary of commerce.
