Why do we live to work rather than work to live?

a month ago by Naive to c/asklemmy

I heard that back in the days, people used to just go when their work was done on the farms and there was no concept of 9-5 (these days seem 24 hours work). There used to be a lot of holidays. Is that true? If it is, then given the abundance in technology, why our work hours increased and why do we have such weird lives that we live to work?

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justOnePersistentKbinPlease 68 points a month ago

The concept of 9-5, 5 days a week is exclusively from Unions and organized labour.

As are the ideas of workers rights, any kind of safety regulation, minimum wages, paid days off(holidays and vacation).

These ideas are going away because we forgot that Unions are critical to the idea of a middle class.

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Naive 9 points a month ago

Even the one who are not identified as labors like IT guys, xyz engineers, they have a lot of pressure and the shitty corporate culture.

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justOnePersistentKbinPlease 8 points a month ago

IT is a fairly new concept and companies have rigorously resisted the creation of either a union of IT workers or a society of one like doctors and engineers enjoy

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TheLeadenSea 8 points a month ago

Why would companies have a say in this? Lol

Companies never like unions, it's the workers who create them to protect ourselves

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justOnePersistentKbinPlease 8 points a month ago

Because they intimidate people trying to organize, either subtly or with overt violence.

They will also go after fundraising to block it, they will shut down locations where it is getting traction, they will outsource until the issue is dead, they will encourage the 1-2 year employment cycle silicon valley employs to prevent the kind of bonds that lend themselves to organizing.

Edit: they will also just bribe the leaders and organizers. Everyone has a price.

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GuayaKO 1 point a month ago

I believe that for IT it was more the result of how the technology had increasing productivity and revenue that empowered IT employees to negotiate good contracts for themselves. Because of this they saw no need to organize and considered themselves in par with the owners of the company. Now LLMs are used to undermine IT work and that is partly why tables are turning.

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justOnePersistentKbinPlease 1 point a month ago

The tables were already turning.

Silicon Valley pushed a completely insane concept of free overtime for pizza and beer. They normalized the industry working 3-4 hours a day extra for free.

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