Current Events > Business obsession with productivity literally kills people

(+) Yeah! (+)

The topic says it all. Increased demand for worker productivity increases stress and anxiety which increases blood pressure which leads to heart attacks and heart related issues.

I've known jobs that literally work people to death, that saw even their management team as expendable that they could replace. I cannot count the number of people at my last job that drank their stress away but I can tell you the number of people who died as a result of a heart attack in the five years I worked there: 6. But heart issues, heart attacks are not logged as work related deaths in the same way we track cancer related deaths because we don't think of them as being caused by the businesses themselves.

It's only when companies do shitty things on top of that does it penetrate the zeitgeist. That last company, after the death of their employee, refused to pay out his overtime and was the subject to a massive class action lawsuit. They lost but the business kept on keeping on. While overtime is now paid, the reason for this person's death was never addressed.

Every business I've ever worked at is obsessed about productivity, and it is literally killing people.

Im going to say there is a fine line between productivity and creating a shitty work environment that no one wants to be at (just doing what they have to, to pocket a paycheck)

Always has been.

Businesses under capitalism want isolated, desperate workers who see other workers as competition, not allies in the same bucket. Regardless of their individual morality or intentions, they have strong incentives to use, abuse, and replace any particular worker. That's the regular course of things and has been from day one and will continue to be, no matter what coat of paint is put on it.

I wonder if you could implement a "chore sheet" at work like you do with kids at home.
This task pays $45
This task pays $15

When you've made what you want to make for the day, you go home.

legendary_zell posted...

Businesses under capitalism want isolated, desperate workers who see other workers as competition, not allies in the same bucket. Regardless of their individual morality or intentions, they have strong incentives to use, abuse, and replace any particular worker. That's the regular course of things and has been from day one and will continue to be, no matter what coat of paint is put on it.

You can also swap the word 'businesses' to 'politicians' and 'workers' to 'citizens' and it would apply just as much.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

And if a part of the human body acted the way a corporation did, its behavior would fit the medical definition of a malignant tumor.

PoopPotato posted...

I wonder if you could implement a "chore sheet" at work like you do with kids at home.
This task pays $45
This task pays $15

When you've made what you want to make for the day, you go home.

Piece rate is a thing, but it's not necessarily a good thing.

That's one of my big reasons for leaving my last job. The company exploded in size around 2017 - 2018, but didn't expand IT at all. I was the only network engineer. The company went from having 3 locations in Austin and about 330 employees to 5 locations in Austin, 1 in Chicago, 1 in Dallas, 1 in Canada, 1 in Charleston, SC, 1 in China, 1 in Mexico and over 1000 employees.

They sent me to Charleston, SC to set up the network for the location out there. I did 60 hours during the day that week and then another 30 hours back at the hotel trying to keep up with all the normal stuff. When I got back to Austin, I was exhausted. I knew I was going to need help because they weren't going to slow down with expansions. It turned into constant 60 - 80 hour work weeks.

They still refused to hire anyone to help. After a lot of begging and pleading, they finally brought on a contractor. There was so much work to do that we both ended up working 60 - 80 hour weeks all the time. It was never ending. I had to put my foot down and just stop doing certain things because I didn't want that 60 - 80 hours to turn into 80 - 100 hours. They wanted me to rearchitect the wifi at the corporate office. I asked them how I was going to do that when I didn't have enough time to do the stuff I already had to do on a regular basis. They didn't have an answer, so it just didn't get done.

If most of those 6 were under 50 then thats very concerning.