Topic: So, apparently I can't work more than 40 hours a week... (Read 5708 times)

Unions are great. Thanks for my weekends

When I was a few years younger I had a job where I worked 14 hrs/day, 7 days a week for 6 months straight. That's over 2500 hours. I was also a 1099 employee so I didn't get any benefits or overtime. That portion of my life is gone forever

If one desires to work for sub-standard pay, for as many hours as they like, look no further than being a
Cha-Cha guide... You can earn up to an ENTIRE PENNY per question you answer with a canned shit response and make up to ONE HUNDRED PENNIES before you are fired for incompetence...

You are also required to work at least 28 hours a day before they will consider you worthy enough of a paycheck and will hold your grandparents for ransom if you spell anything wrong. (I hate ChaCha)

Hes working too hard to answer.

Have you taken my suggestion of pretending to be an illegal alien and working 90 hours a week for less than the minimum wage?  Or was it all bluster on your part?

I remember when I couldn't get more than 20 hours a week at my job...
I also distinctly remember going out and getting TWO more jobs, and started working 60-70 hours a week.
I found two more unlucky souls who thought they wanted to purchase my labor for the low, low price of minimum wage. 

Working is fun.

Haha, this guy still believes in "basic human rights". He still believes in an objective morality.

We're dealing with a faith-based zealot here.

This sounds agreeable,except that it doesn't match reality at all. Every day new demands and rules are created by society, ranging from anti-discrimination laws through work regulations to smoking bans. Those who ignore this reality, and its underlying irrational part of human psychology, do so at their own peril.
To me, you seem like saying "LALALALA, humans are fully rational beings that are able fully self-regulate and I don't want to hear anything else because it's not logical, LALALALALA". Maybe I am immoral, but I feel that acknowledging and questioning reality as it stands is better that maintaining feeling of moral supremacy and illusion of knowledge. Still, yes, there are basic human rights and I believe in them and I believe that to violate them is immoral. But also, man is a social animal that needs stable and working society with clear rules to support him/her. There was, is and will be strife for any foreseeable future.  I see the worktime regulations being in the gray area somewhere between, and I am trying to think where they came from.

You say a lot of insightful and knowledgeable things on this forum which I'm sure many enjoy, but this one, JoelKatz, should be posted in big letters somewhere everyone can read it.

If most employers were rational, they wouldn't require I work exactly 40 hours per week, because I've offered to work for less money per hour in exchange for less hours and they refuse.

As long as we're on the subject of forcing people to do things in connection with business, I don't like how governments force me to do all kinds of paperwork, get licenses, and many kinds of complexities that require hiring multiple experts, to sell my services without going through any other business. That's much worse than the 40 hours thing.

That tells you nothing useful about any individual person.

That, again, tells you nothing about any individual person.

I think that making the decision person by person, and making the decision by the person whose interests are being protected, is always going to be superior to having disinterested people making one decision for everyone.

But in any event, society has no right to say to people, "We know better than you what's good for you, so we're going to force you to act the way we think is best."

Plus, I don't believe you. You may say you care about preventing people from being exploited, but it seems much more likely, and much more sensible, that you're really trying to prevent competition. That is, you are trying to prevent people who *do* benefit from working lots of hours from doing so in the mistaken belief that this makes things easier for people who don't want to work lots of hours. That attitude is not only morally repugnant but it's logically wrong.

The people in the business, of course.

Who defines a great business?

Oh, they can threaten to stop working but they will likely get a pink slip because if their terms are too high, the employer would get nothing out of only hiring union workers.

The individual, self-interest enforces my ideal rule. If individuals desire to work for less, in addition to being more numerous than union labor, why should they be denied employment? Why should they be denied a situation better than they have now because fewer union workers desire a higher wage?

So, should somebody make the decision on how to run their lives for them? You know what's better for these people? Should they be parented?

It's because that working too much lower the value of the work you create. Only stupid/short-term/badly managed business are happy to overwork their employees regularly.

Having free time to think, study, discover and experiment helps you grow as a person. The more you are developed physically and mentally, the better you can add value to your work. If your persona stay small and undeveloped, yeah, you can work more hours, but these hours have less value for you over time.

A business owner who works its employees for 60 hours every week will make his profit with the difference between the output of his employees work, and the value as a human being of those employees. If your t-shirt is made in China, it's because the human being there have less value than the human being here. So, they're paid accordingly, and business owners profit from the difference.

A great business owner will let his employees grow their persona, so he can profit from the high value work those employees produce. Sure, those guys cost more, but they output more value in return.

The dogma of "you need to work hard" is half-crap created by factory managers who want to get the more juice they can from employees until they're dried enough to get fired. It's missing the part where you need to think before you work. Think, envision, plan and when you're ready, you go work hard. You stop, evaluate your work, rethink it, try something new, and you start working hard again. If somebody is doing the thinking part for you, you're not better than a slave with good living conditions.

Don't forget where "Arbeit Macht Frei" was written and for who.

Easier to believe != always right Plus, I am not implying that I think I know these people. I supported my opinion with some evidence that:

* many dying people regret their decision to work so much

* many programmers, despite being smart and in quite high demand, succumb to lifestyle that severely hurts their families, without getting anything tangible in return (so much for rationality, eh?).

You did not say a word whether you agree with these facts, or what do you think about them...

So it is OK for people to assemble to threaten their employeer with not working if the employer refuses to pay the whole group 1.5 times pay for working over 40 hours a week, but the workers cannot threaten to stop working if the employer does not agree to only hire people that join the workers group?

Who is going to enforce your rule?

I don't know how you could stop people from doing so -- short of slavery. The "right" to unionize is inherent.

What isn't, is the "right" to force people into unions in addition to forcing all people to support the unions through government force. That is not something I agree with.

If people wish to compete with union labor for lower wages, I believe they should do so.

Do you think people have a right to get together with other workers and refuse to work unless they are paid 1.5 times more for working over 40 hours a week?

I find it much easier to believe that programmers were working for a rational reason then I do that so many programmers were irrational. It's very easy to think that you know what's good for someone better than they do, but you're almost always wrong.

My employer lets me work all the overtime I want... I just don't get paid for it.

It's amazing how much people will allow themselves to be de facto enslaved by a job, and then have a million excuses for why they can't grow a spine and say "enough". Fuck. That. I'm confident enough in my abilities not to sell myself short. So many of my colleagues work for "free" after their 40 because of fear and know what - they still haven't replaced me with some workaholic boogeyman. Quality > quantity.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.... And yes, I have worked in the real world for years.

This.

But I was not meaning it in the legal sense at all! I wrote it in the context of the "regrets of the dying" article - that there are things more worthy to pursue in life than mere work. Besides, law is only very rough approximation of it.

How do you mean that exploitation makes no sense to you? Ever heard of "EA spouse" scandal? Do you really think so many programmers work so long hours for some rational(-ish) reason, like because they have to compete with someone? And if the law was repealed you really think it would positively affect them?

Lol! What's that? (Time spent trolling forums is NOT "free time")

If you want to work more, work in your free time

I actually don't think it negatively affects outcomes that much.  I personally would rather have my doctor (who may be tired), who knows my condition the best, take care of me than someone else who is on shift-work or don't really care. The latest studies also don't show the recent reductions in resident work-hours improve patient outcomes.  But I agree, the system has to change.  We have to find a better way to train physicians and take care of patients.

I, for one, are all for getting more sleep  

Ouch. I have always thought the ordeal of residency was weird. Why do we do that? It surely has a deleterious effect on patient outcomes.

yap, surgical residency

I meant: why would you choose/stick with a job like that for so long?

Med school?

I honestly can't parse this. How can you say that people are free to do something that is illegal? Surely making something illegal deprives people of the freedom to do it. As for being surprised when society tramples on individual freedoms, sure, most people have long since stopped being surprised by it.

The law isn't about people who are exploited. That doesn't even make sense. The law is about stopping people who want to work more hours from doing so as that, the thinking goes, would create competitive pressures on others that would make them want to work more hours to be more competitive. (And, as I argued upthread, that 'logic' is broken anyway.) It is already illegal for an employer to compel an employee to work.

This is only true in the absence of negative externalities.  Unfortunately, force and fraud comprise the vast majority of the economy at this point.

Let's put it this way, if your parents died suddenly and you had everything they now own, would you still want to work 80 hrs/wk ?  What reasonable amount of your time would you then want to spend stocking shelves at Wal-Mart?

Had to.  I was salaried, but I work in the medical field in the US.  Even then, I am glad I am not a factory worker in China. 

To these who feel law is restricting their freedom to work as much as they like, please think about this:

http://lifestyle.sympatico.ca/living/palliative_care_nurse_reveals_top_5_deathbed_regrets/310eaae8

Anyone is free to waste their life as they deem fit, but one should not be surprised if the society is trying to do something about it. While it can be a bit unfortunate that law does not differentiate between people who work overtime voluntarily and these who are exploited, such limits can be easily sidestepped by self-employment, or by silent agreement with employer (as in case of software enterprises).

For one I'm glad I live in Europe, can work just 20-35 hours per week on average (depends on project) and people around me find it quite agreeable . I have small studio apartment(without mortgage), 12 year old car, am quite happy with it and don't feel entitled to more.

+1

Why did you do this?

One day you will wake up and find you have been working for 20 years. At that point you won't want to work 40+ hrs. You will then be thrown away like a broken piece of equipment and quickly replaced by some kid who will work 80hrs. for half as much.
The "free market" sounds like freedom. But it would be a very brutal arrangement. Look at how well it has worked out for America recently. All our jobs are now filled by people in China who work as virtual slaves. There is your free market.

Having worked 400+ hours/month for an entire year, I can say from experience that you lose a part of your soul when you work too much.  I can see that you're young and anxious, but just be glad if you're paid 1.5 times for overtime. If you need the money and don't care for overtime, go get a second job.  Outside of a few regulated professions (like airline pilots, etc), nobody is preventing you from working two jobs.

I think another primary reason people like getting paid in cash is it is often paid at the end of the day for work rendered. It's often amazing how the incentive to work for less goes up when one knows payment is forthcoming immediately.

Tons of people do this with low end labor jobs. Actually, for some jobs, people prefer to get paid cash rather than let the government tax it and withhold it.

Are you sure you want to work as many hours as possible at a minimum wage place, and have no free time, instead of work as little as possible at such a place and spend all your free time on improving your chances for a much higher paying and intellectually stimulating job? (I.e. education/training)

Atlas, I have it - the solution to your problem.

Pretend to be an illegal alien.

That way you can work 90 hours a week AND get paid less than the minimum wage. Best of all, no health and safety regulations so you can risk your life to make the boss a few extra cents.

Problem solved.

No need to thank me - it just makes me happy to know that you will finally be able to work the long hours with low pay that you dreamed of and so richly deserve!

Right, and the only reason those people are competing with him for this job is because, since neither of them can work 70 hours weeks, the two of them are on an equal footing. If this law were eliminated, he would not be competing with them.

Whether that meant he'd look elsewhere or they'd look elsewhere depends on lots of factors. But either way, he wouldn't be competing with them. There are plenty of jobs where being able to work 70 hours a week makes no difference. Teacher, for example.

You assume that the market is some kind of objective being that assigns value to labour.  It isn't. 

when I tried to join the workforce not too long ago, I was trying to find a half-time job. Not at all easy. Because of the overhead they always want you fulltime. Now I'm back to self-employed, working over 40 hours ;|. darn.

On the one hand, I agree with you that you should be able to work as many hours as you would like.  On the other hand, for a rational person in the first world, that number should at least average out to less than 40.

It has nothing to do with stamina or efficiency. The 70 hour workers (not managers) simply don't value any free time. Sticking Twinkies on a shelf is stimulating to them on some level beyond what others deem acceptable.

Sure - I don't think anyone thinks it's a bad idea for you to want to work extra hours (for pay of course).

The problem is that if your labor is just not valued at all (which it basically wouldn't be if you are in direct competition with the developing countries) then you won't even get a job to start with (in which case your biggest problem won't be over getting the latest plasma TV).

Specifically in regards to the OP I'm sure you can find other ways to make extra money outside of the 40 hours if you want to.

Wealth is not zero-sum. It's not the corporations fault that people buy crap they can't afford.

All I am saying is if your labor is not scarce and easily replaced by anyone with a lower cost-of-living, then maybe you need to move up a little to get the first world living you desire.

It's not coercion. It's reality.

Well to a fair extent I think it could be argued that a large proportion of the first world's "wealth" is generated by big business through the use of 3rd world labor for the benefit of the share holders and upper management - and for this case they are indeed generating enough wealth for their lifestyle (just look at those yachts and private jets).

So no problem as long as you are in the right group (a large shareholder or part of the "team") - the rest of the first world populace is the problem (which I guess includes you as you are neither of these two groups). So all those outside of the two groups don't deserve anything (including a job) as you are basically not needed.

If that happens, it seems the first world isn't generating the wealth to justify their lifestyle. The problem isn't cheap labor; it's a poor performing economy and overvalued labor.

Yes I have for I will be harmed nonetheless. When I make no choice, i will be worse off.

He's only in competition with those people because of this law. If not for this law, those people would be working 70 hour weeks at jobs where that kind of stamina is maximally valued and he wouldn't be competing with them at all. He'd be looking for a job where that kind of stamina is of no (or minimal) value. If there are people who can outwork him by that much, then he's picked a job at which he's terribly inefficient. An ideal system would discourage him from working in that field, not hold others back so he has a chance.

But at least you recognize that this law doesn't protect people from "abusive management" or some nonsense like that. All it does is hold the hardest-working employees back for the benefit of the less hard working employees. How about a law requiring that the pinky toes of each of the top 10 NBA players be broken to give the other players a chance.

Well then don't complain when the majority of jobs are outsourced to China and India and the majority of other people in developed countries become unemployed (unless you really do want to work your 80 hours a week for a few measly bucks to be on the "same level").

Profit is not "that which is preferable", it is "that which makes one better off".

If I threaten to cut off either your finger or your toe, and you choose the finger, you have not profited by the exchange of a finger for a toe.

Is life not preferable to death?

Subsistence is not profit, Atlas.

...then they wouldn't work. People will only enter an exchange if they will be better off in return. Masochism included.

Life can be hard but it doesn't justify making the forest equal with a hatchet and a saw.

I remember being your age and thinking that people work for profit.

Then that's just the market rate for the labor. If the employee can be easily fired and replaced with somebody who can easily meet the requirement of un-salaried overtime, then why not?

I see nothing wrong here.

You just need to look at countries like China where often the most lowly paid are also the most ridiculously overworked (often the overtime not paid anyway as it is deemed "just something you have to do if you want this job").

There's nothing like the fear of unemployment to give bosses free labor.

Why should the employer have to sacrifice for less?

Not all jobs can be functional with 80 hour weeks, you know. The fact is if enough of the population wants lower work weeks, their desire will be met in one way or another; whether it be through alternative jobs or lower wages.

Nothing inherently makes an employer more powerful than an employee. They both have desires and something to give.

What about the average person who doesn't want to listen to the asshole manager tell them that he works 80 hours a week and if the employee can't do the same, well then he'll just have to take a hike. That's the way it would be.

There's a big difference in spending 80 hours managing and being managed for 80 hours a week. I'm sure the employees he scheduled just loved hearing him say "I work 80 hours every week."

...and, yes, I don't get how it's preferable for the government to mandate how long one should work.

If men want to and are willing to work 80 hour weeks and the businesses benefit from it, I see no problem. They should be able to act as they desire.

My father worked 80 hour weeks managing a restaurant. I know what it looks like -- or the lack thereof. I want it more than anything. I want a year of the most work I can do. I need to build my savings to their fullest and it will be done.

I will report back.

You're not getting it. The other point is you said you have never worked 40 hour weeks. Try it for six months, and then report back with your new viewpoint on the matter.

I don't have the right to a job from a business that caters to and prefers hardworkers. Why should I deny a more efficient and harder worker more hours and a business better gains for those hours?

That's my point. You're in competition with people who can outwork you like you can't believe. You probably can't keep up with them. They just work and sleep. If not for time and half, the business would fire you because you finally get tired of 70 hour weeks.

I see no problem with this. If the market enables and prefer individuals who can work 60+ hours with no complaints, then so be it. It's their money and labor; let them do as they please.

If I can't meet my employer's desires, I should be fired.

I will not thank the state for coercing businesses and individuals. Some people have families to feed and they need to work more hours. When stores can't afford to, it can be a problem. It hurts everyone in the end: People can't do what they want.

Speaking from inexperience, I see. You said it yourself - it's your first time entering the workforce. I guarantee you, one day you'll find that after you work 40 hours a week, and go to and from work, and eat, and sleep, that your personal times is not much, and then when your employer says, we need you for 48 hours this week, and so on, and it's damn inconvenient, and the employer starts to give you shit work because you're a complainer, and so on...

You'll be damn glad they have to pay you time and a half for overtime.

Be thankful that overtime is time and a half. You have no idea. The whole thing you're missing is without time and a half as a disincentive for the employer to work you more than 40 hours a week, they'd walk all over you if you didn't work 60 hours a week and fire your ass if it happened to be inconvenient for you because in this climate, they have a lot of people who will work 60 and 70 hours a week and they don't need an extra employee on the books if you don't want to do that for the next five years.

Get out there and work 40 hour weeks for six months straight and then report back here.

Work at two different Walmarts.

Problem solved.

You're welcome.

It's my first time entering the workforce and it seems finding work that exceeds 40 hours a week is hard.

Why? Because the state feels it's necessary to mandate employers by force to pay 1.5 times the wage for every hour worked overtime.

Fuck this. If I want to offer labor for more than 40 hours per week, it's my damn right. It's my labor.