126 comments
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This seems idiotic from the employer's perspective. You're limiting your pool of candidates a lot by requiring that their life can accomodate essentially 24 hours of possible shift time. Companies do shit like this and then complain "nobody wants to work anymore"
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It is a selective filter. It seeks the most desperate because they will take any and all abuse.
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Slash education, raise cost of living, lower the minimum working age and forcing ppl to work shit jobs is actually viable.
I think there's a political party whose whole platform is based on this for this very reason
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As long as "temporary" foreign worker programs exist, there isn't a shortage of labour as far as the elite are concerned.
A limited pool of local applicants is a benefit to them. Then they get to bring in foreigners who don't know the value of their work in a western country and don't know the laws that protect them, both labour laws and actual criminal laws.
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People don't want to work 3rd shift - the rest of the world (your family, sports...) all work 1st shift. 2nd shift is only slightly better. It is probably better for your life to work 3rd shift for 1 week of every 3, than 3rd shift constantly - those other 2 weeks you can live semi-normal and thus have friends.
It still sucks, probably the best compromise.-
As someone who was forced to do this for a couple months when I was in the Army, rotating shifts destroys your ability to get good sleep, its horrendous to actually experience. It took about 2 months before people started getting so sleep deprived that people started failing PT (physical training) tests and it took the brigade commander looking at our battalion and asking "wtf is going on over there?" and hearing what our battalion had done to our shift schedule and put a stop to it. He called over every single soldier who failed their PT test to hear our excuses, and when most of us were first time failures and we all had the exact same complaint, by the time he got to me, he was like "You've been on rotating shifts, unable to sleep, and were forced to take this test after a shift when you're completely exhausted like everyone else?" "yes sir" "ok, don't expect that shift rotation to last, I'll be talking to your battalion commander after this. Send in the next person." Dude was ready to just start ripping into us but changed his tune right quick after hearing about the fucked up shift schedule and lack of any common sense in the leadership's ability to plan properly. One of the few times where shit actually rolled uphill. Suffice it to say, before I even finished the drive back to my barracks, I was being called by my platoon sergeant that we'd have to a new schedule tomorrow and to just show up for swing shift like we normally would be on.
In the prison I worked at we would usually rotate shifts every 6 months, but our commander heard complaints about people being on day shift for so long at one time that they were getting burnt out dealing with 90% of the problem times with inmates, and instead of changing it to every 3 months, changed the rotation to every 2 days. Literally, 2 days on Day shift, 2 days on Swing shift, 2 days on Night shift, 1 day off, then back to days. And that last day was getting off shift at 6AM, doing PT until 8AM, Barracks Maintenance until 10 AM, then because of the rotation, we'd have to be back in at work at 5:30 AM the next day, so our 1 day off a week was only 19.5 hours, and you're exhausted but you can't sleep yet, otherwise you'll be up all night before work the next day, so you force yourself to run on fumes, getting a haircut, getting food and supplies for the next week, etc. Then sleeping, so there was literally never any time to relax. It fucking sucked.
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I'd rather work third shift consistently, I'm a night person.
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It also makes it harder for employees to do things that would give them a chance at getting a better job. Can't go to college anywhere that requires attendance as part of the grade if you're on a shift like that. Also can't get another job that might turn into a better opportunity, they won't deal with your constantly changing availability.
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companies don't even have to worry about that shit anymore. things are so perilous that there will always be people desperate enough for anything no matter how shitty the conditions
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They can rotate my balls in and out of their mouth
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Gottem
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Lmao
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Industrial engineer here. I have no fucking clue. It was theorized it might be better overall like 30 years ago, but by the time i graduated college it was understood that so long as you have management during changeovers so later shifts aren’t left confused or unsupervised you get all the real benefit of rotating shifts without the tremendous downside of all your workers being constantly off and pissed.
Also they should be providing later shifts with free healthy lunches and other incentives to keep them in good health to reduce the costs to their bodies of later shifts. Late shift operators need extra assistance because they’re living against society and circadian rhythms. Poor health also reduces performance so this isn’t what they should do because it’s right, it’s what they should do because if they don’t they’re always going to be frustrated at late shift performances
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I'd hazard a guess that financial impacts of reduced performance as a result of this torturous schedule pale in comparison to the cost due to injuries.
I've recently had to work a couple of overnight shifts when I was overwise working basically dawn to dusk. Staying awake isn't that hard. Getting real sleep becomes the struggle. What surprised me though was the vertigo, constant low grade nausea, and dizziness that disappeared after a normal full NIGHT's rest. I may feel like a night owl sometimes, but my body does not agree.
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Because we havent had a general strike in a while
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Because you’re not expected to have a home life that takes precedence over work anymore.
Rotating shifts sacrifice the employees everything to reduce staffing and training costs.
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What I have gathered after seeing threads like this pop up on Reddit periodically over about 11 years, and most of the responses here, is...
Fuck if there's a reason.
No, seriously. Pretty sure it's become standard and as Capitalism and Management do, they follow whatever bullshit tradition exists.
That said, I personally have always felt factory and retail work fuck with schedules so much because it maintains control and limits sociability outside of work and work groups. Thus increasing retention by artificially creating social nodes we feel a part of and/or do not want to be removed from. Likely created by the same people who cut pensions and created things like Mining Towns.
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Without knowing anything about the situation, my guess is that if you run a static 1st, 2nd, 3rd shift style rotation, you can pay market rate for 1st and 2nd shift, but you have to pay a premium for 3rd shift due to it being a less desirable shift for the general public.
With rotating shifts you just hire people and make them work the graveyard shift for no additional money, and get to argue with those that have to work it as "look, no one wants to work 3rd shift. That's why we rotate it between everyone on. We're a team here. We all pull our own weight". Which is a bad faith argument, but they'll happily use it on you and frame you as the over demanding worker, instead of the underpaid worker.
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This is it. If they're not technically third shift, they don't have to be paid a shift differential.
They can claim everyone is "normal thing, payroll-wise" and the fact that a full third (or 2/3) of the work they do is "outside of normal" can be classified as "as needed" and "occasional other shifts as required".
It allows them to be one thing on the books while being completely different in practice.
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100% they fuck with schedules. Intentionally to stop you from being able to find or transition to a second job. Easier to pay bullshit wages if you have nothing to fall back on.
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Sounds like they had to do that to keep the night shift people from quitting. Probably not a place to go work lol.
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Are they just trying to destroy your soul and your health?
Yes,
But likely for a very stupid reason like 50 years ago some consultant had to give a plan to increase efficiency but forgot until the night before.
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I used to work at a place with 3 shifts, and they rotated them because everyone wanted 1st shift rather than 2nd and 3rd. I chose to stay on 2nd because it paid a bit more and I don't like getting up early. It would have been hell to switch every single week!
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We switched every 2 weeks. Your sleep never adapted.
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We did it monthly, if I recall. I rarely worked another shift, but when I did it was awful. I adapt VERY slowly to sleep schedule changes.
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I think the big issue is that the rotation is every week. Every other week or more would be better.
In a strong union environment, this would likely get addressed with a combination of higher pay and seniority. Senior people choose their shifts and if junior members have to work night shifts, at least they get compensated.
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Compensation and the piece of mind that they will get the prime shifts when they have earned the seniority. AKA there's a goal to be had for suffering though a difficult situation. Otherwise hopelessness is a nightmare.
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It's because there aren't enough unions in this godforsaken country.
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If anyone's willing to put up with that schedule you might as well try for being an air traffic controller. Way higher salary.
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Worth noting that ATC is unusual in that there is both a maximum age that you can start (30) as well as a mandatory retirement age (56).
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Sure, as long as you fit the desired demographic profile
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Kia plant I worked at for 4 years was like this. Countless wrecks after shift change, untold divorces and ruined lives due to never being able to plan anything. Terrible
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Fuck if I know the answer to this, but someone I know well and respect works one of these shifts, and I don’t get it.
4 on 3 off and swap the next week, I get.
But it’s like these were designed to fuck up the workers’ health and lives. Oh, wait, they probably were.
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Then they're dependent on the employer-provided health care and less able to leave!
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I've worked this shift pattern before, and found it very difficult. They call it a 'continental' shift pattern in the UK - it's not a new thing, 'cos the job I'm thinking of was 30 years ago. Switching from sleeping during the night to sleeping during the day is okay if you're on permanent nights, but trying to change every couple of weeks can be impossible (I remember once failing to get any real sleep during the day, having to spend the next 12 hours at work, and then collapsing on my way home the next day.)
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All our cops in my area work rotating shifts. Tell me it's not to make them meaner.
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It's usually because they can't get full teams willing to work only the shitty shifts. So they rotate.
When I was in retail management we had a 3-week rotating shift as well, and it was super dumb. We'd end up over 3 weeks opening, closing, or having off each day once, except for Tuesday, which we opened twice (Tuesdays were staff meetings so all managers worked).
But the worst part was each week we'd start with 2 closing shifts and end with 2 opening shifts instead of doing all opens or closes, so each week we'd have a night we'd get out the door around midnight and have to be back to open the doors at 6am...
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It's usually because they can't get full teams willing to work only the shitty shifts
...at the rate they want to pay them. In ye olden times the shitty shifts would pay more.
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From personal experience, when that happens everybody fights over the shitty shifts.
When my old company got bought out and they started making some people work Thanksgiving, people fought over the Thanksgiving shift because it paid 2.5x.
Reality is people always bitch no matter how shifts are broken up. These crappy rotations end up being the most "fair" system, so that's what corporate adopts even though everyone hates it.
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if you have to work all three shifts every three weeks, you can't realistically hold-down a second job or attend regular classes, you're exclusively at the disposal of your masters.
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I was a manager of a team with rotating 12 hour 6 to 6 shifts.
It was a datacenter. We had to staff the building 24x7x365. Billions of dollars of equipment, not to mention the transactions flowing through. No mistakes allowed here.
We paid $15/hour in 2010. Entry level. But it was a foot into the industry for someone without experience. Tasks were light security, walk the floor, swap drives, be on hand for server emergencies.
We used the rotation to onboard. No one did nights solo (no one else in the building) until they knew the job. Two weeks days, two weeks nights, back and forth. Two days on, one day off. 6-day rotation meant no one person was always stuck with weekends. And overtime pay every week.
We managed the schedule with a staff of 4.
Prior, the night shifts were handled by sysadmins who would work a day shift, go to the break room and get a few hours of sleep between tasks, then shower and go back on day shift. That really sucked. I did it for more than a year.
We had plenty of applicants every time a position opened. Folks tended to like the rotation as no one would get stuck with repeat holidays or all overnight. It sucked in a fair way to everyone. And if someone missed a shift (sick, emergency, etc.) I would have to fill the shift. It happened at least once a month. It was a good team. I liked all of my people, and after I got canned, they all wrote recommendations for me on LinkedIn.
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I work a "9-5," which is basically remote meetings or email from 7-8:30 while I try to eat something and get my kids dressed, work through lunch so I can take "lunch" at the end of the day to be able to pick my kids up in time, go home and finish emails and hope to wrap up by dinner.
How people are working schedules like this is beyond me. I'm going insane as it is, and my job is "cushy." My doctor tells me I need to work less and create less stress in my life or I'm going to start bleeding out of my ears, and he looks more tired than I do. I feel like the only hour or two I get to relax is right before bed, which makes me stay up late desperately trying to hold onto that feeling of mild relaxation because I know, at best, I won't feel that way for another 24 hours.
My doctor says I need to follow up and crap for concerns, and I keep explaining to him that I have to come during work, which means 12min out if his day, but between driving, checking in, waiting in the waiting room, finally going back to the patient room, nurse check in, waiting, talking to the doctor, checking back in at the front desk, then driving back to work DURING THE WORK DAY is like two hours, and it also means if I do the follow up, labs, follow ups, specialist, labs suggested... I'll lose my job, which provides the insurance to afford those things in the fucking first place.
Everyone where I work is scared to quit for fear of working more hours on a worse schedule for less money. Everyone at the top seems to work remote at will and forces us into meetings about how to reduce burnout like they do, which is apparently by working less, having more schedule freedom, and then bragging about it by holding meetings about how to live more like they do, which, if we did, would get all of us fired within a month.
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I wish we abolished the rich already
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i like that you only have to work 2/4 weekends in a month. That's pretty cool.
How nice and thoughtful of them.
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They lie.4.33 weeks in a month.
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thats more like it, that's how i want my work weeks represented.
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It will be at least three a month based on my experience
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i just pretends months aren't real. Being familiar with all of the months is like knowing all of the counties in england when you live in america.
Average calendar skill issue moment really.
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You don't wanna see the schedule of a relative of mine that works as a hospital nurse then.
And she has the good version of the schedule.
You really don't wanna see the schedule of an emergency admission nurse.
Daily changing hours of various schedules switching between early and late with maybe the minimum or 2-3h more of break between shifts... -
I am guessing these workers don’t have a union.
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Wow, that's nuts. At least the manufacturing jobs I see around me are just 4on 4off 12hr shifts, which still sucks IMO, but isn't abusive to employee's mental well being.
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I am sad that we live in an age where 4 12 hour shifts in a row is now considered the norm.
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Its really only the norm for certain industries. I'm just an IT drone, so I still get my 5 8s, but I've heard some of the factory floor guys say they like it so /shrug.
I wouldn't be opposed to doing 4 10s just to have an extra day off, but support gigs don't generally get that kind of leeway with staffing and coverage issues. But I get to work from home, so I'll take the extra day a week of work.
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30 years ago I did 12 hour shifts at a factory, and it really wasn't too bad. It was 4 on 3 off one week, and 3 on 4 off the other week. The OT on week one made up for the lost hours on week two, and having 3 or 4 days off was pretty sweet. But it was a QC job, for a European company in the US, sitting all night inspecting small parts, and was pretty chill.
My brother in law worked at the BMW factory in SC, and they did 4 10 hour shifts, with the days off rotating each week. They only ran 6 days a week, so you'd end up with 5 days off every 4 weeks whenever the days off from two weeks lined up. He liked the 5 days off when they happened, but the rotating days off didn't line up with my sisters schedule, so that was tough.
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We still got shift differential on swing shift. I did it for 7 years. It maximizes 24/7 coverage with less crews, but it has a side effect of the end users of the schedule developing severe alcohol abuse and depression.
Sat - Friday 8 hours day
Wednesday - Tuesday 8 hours night
Friday - Thursday 8 hours second
The pay period was separated in such a way that you would not get double time even though you are scheduled 7 days in a row every week.
I messed the schedule up so I fixed it. And yes, there was only 1 day off between second shift and day shift rotation.
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I work some where that does double shift which is mornings one week and afternoons the next. It's OK but id prefer standard days, I have however done triple shift for a year at one job and it completely messed me up, and to this day I blame it for giving me super high blood pressure I didn't have before I started it. It all comes down to profits, why buy another machine to manufacture whatever it is you do when you could simply run the same machine 24/7. Although it inevitably leads to disaster one machine doing all the work as triple shifts leave little time for maintenance and seeing managers flap about because a machine broke down because you were allowed to shut it down to grease the bearings once a week is hilarious.
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Companies now want 24 hour productivity, which means they will abuse their workers to keep that cycle going. Worker healthy is probably not even a thought, just: how do we get more out of them?
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The rotating to an earlier shift is even more insane. Maybe I'm wrong but I imagine almost everyone finds it easier to push through and stay up later than try to go to sleep 7 hours early.
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My theory is so you cant work a second job thus reducing risk of accidents. Just a theory though.
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I imagine having zero consistent sleep schedule will increase the risk of accidents
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As someone who's done shift work the overwhelming majority of their career, fatigue is worse than being drunk.
30hr sleep debt has you feeling horrible, struggling to focus, 40hr sleep debt has you acting drunk, feeling worse and bordering on dozing off.
I had a week long caffeine withdrawal once due to not realizing how hard I was leaning on caffeine to get through each day. Week off came around, stopped all the coffees and spent most of my week of sweating bullets, shaking and in pain. Never again.
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They probably want to maximise the uptime of the machinery
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That doesn't justify the rotation. Just hire specific people for each shift.
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They're trying to "make it fair" so everyone has to share the bad shifts.
Also they're trying to prevent burnout maybe.
Mostly it's about saving money cuz they don't have to pay shift premiums for 2nd and 3rd shift.
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I'm gonna guess they have a hard time hiring for the night shifts. I know at my job they struggle hiring people who want to work those.
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It does tho in my opinion
Let’s play this out, what’s more likely to get job applicants:
Job with rotating shifts
Working 3rd shift
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They're trying to accomplish that without the aid of an industrial engineer who would immediately tell them their plan was shit.
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Possibly so they don't have to pay night shift more?
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Are there no shift differentials? This is probably a way to avoid paying a bump to fill off-peak shifts.
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Or position differentials like they do in meat processing. Cuts that are harder get a little more.
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They want to keep production rolling continuously to avoid the lag of shutting down and starting the machinery back up again, but they also know how few people are around who'll willingly work the graveyard shift so they're basically trying to package it into the job no matter what so that they don't have to negotiate for volunteers, because now it's part of the job description contract you signed!
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Have fun keeping machines running with enough workers, or when accidents happen because workers are too tired.
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Correct. I walked off a job for missing mandatory overtime (12 hours, 7 days), for having dared had the flu, probably from lack of sleep and sun, with a doctor's note. Went straight to another factory, explained what happened (this was a Wednesday), was told to rest until Monday. Started on Monday five eight hour days, a hiring bonus that covered my lost wages, and immediately made more production. That factory only ran one shift, too. They knew the value of happy, healthy employees. Unfortunately, that happened in the late eighties. So sorry for factory worker abuse now.
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Too many billionaires
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I would assume it's because each hour an expensive machine is not being used is going to waste and if machine goes obsolete in 10 years and being replaced - there is a difference between it doing 30k hours of work and 90k. I'm not sure if that's the reason, but that would make sense to me personally.
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Youre right in terms of using the machines. However, it doesn't make any difference for the machine who operates it. If people operate it while doing their normal first shift like they do every week or if they operate it in the third shift, because they have it this week makes zero difference for the machine. Rotating shifts has absolutely zero benefits and destroy your workforce.
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Thats what I'm confused about, if they have staff to run it all the time, why would they schedule people like this except to make their lives more miserable? I do know bosses love that though.
Edit: Someone pointed out people don't want to work only the swing shift or night, so they schedule like this to keep full crews, I guess that makes sense but it still sucks
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Too tired to look for a better job?
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No one wants to work constant nights, but plants need to run constantly, so you get this bullshit.
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Unionize. Have companies pay you fairly for what you do.
The problem with that here I. The states are two fold. First of all if the companies could, at least here in the states, they wouldn’t allow unionization. They don’t want to pay fairly for what you do. All these companies want to do is make as much money as possible, while paying the workers as little as possible.
Most of the companies here would like us to work until we die on the lines, but pay us nothing to do the work so they could make it all. Companies don’t give a damn about workers rights, or being fair to us. A lot of non-union shops will fire you for trying to bring a union in. They would be extremely happy if the labor boards, OSHA etc would cease to exist.
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Please read The Great Money Trick (or watch the video).
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I don't know either, but there were so so many jobs I didn't even apply for because of this very thing. Seems like more places need unions
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The managers schedule at a trader Joe's is Start the week working 4am to 2pm. End the week working 2 pm to midnight. Every week.
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By keeping you rotating they don't have to pay you extra.
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The second bullet point is called the DuPont Schedule and has been around for decades
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Productivity. It gives the company and increase productivity when you have fresh-ish workers vs burnt out ones in the "undesirable shifts" and have to pay them a fuck ton more to work those shifts to compensate those who have to constantly work those other shifts. But rotating shifts like this really screws up worker health and their circadian rhythm but hey, more profit for the company.
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At this point I"m sure the media only associates religion with crazy people because they want people to stop believing in souls altogether.
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Nah, pretty sure it's because so many religious people are just kinda crazy
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Yeah, they do weird things like believe in souls
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Yep
126 comments
Can't unionize if you don't have the energy to fight.
Yep, you probably end up working with different groups of people too also making unionization harder.
Actually, that would make it even easier, in theory. You'd meet more of your coworkers and would be able to more easily spread the word and discuss pros/cons, etc.
If the union bosses are pricks or shills then you don't have a union, but a glorified HR department. Something we've seen lately is that the unions still have to fight to get what they rightfully deserve. Unfortunately the fight to unionize is only the start of it.