Of particular note:
The Association of American Railroads, which represents freight railway operators, said its members have been hiring in recent years to address staffing needs and recognize employees' desire for better scheduling. The group said the number of overtime hours worked by BMWE union members increased to 4.7 hours per week in 2022, compared to 4 hours in 2016.
Cory Ludwig, who works as a machine operator repairing railway tracks in Iowa, said he’s been working Saturdays and some Sundays along with 10- to 12-hour shifts since September. Recently, he worked 13 days without a day off. With the mandatory Saturday work, he’s had to rely on friends and relatives to take care of his five-year-old and nine-year-old kids. He said the overtime demands have increased as he’s seen the number of workers assigned to his crew go down.
“You fall asleep and then you wake up in the morning and you go right back to work. It can really break a person down, it gets really wearing on a person after a while,” Ludwig said. “With less people trying to do the same amount of work, working long hours, working multiple weeks in a row without one day off, you get irritated and you get burnt out.”
Recently one of the union’s members had been working 22 hours straight when he fell asleep on the job, an error that could have put his colleagues’ lives at risk but also could have been avoided had the employee had a rest period, said Ballew. Another member was recently disciplined for refusing to work through his scheduled days off on short notice so he could care for a family member having health issues, Ballew said.
“The stress it puts on marriages and parenting and the things you leave behind for your spouse to deal with or the things you miss, that kind of stress builds up,” said Ballew. “In the rail industry, we have noticed recently a spat of suicides and I can’t help but think there is a correlation there.”
Thank God Biden stopped the railroad strike!
I swear if I hear another fucker say that the railroad workers got everything they wanted because Biden helped them negotiate I'll lose it.
Good thing I voted for the lesser evil in 2020! Gosh if I had stuck to principles we'd have had a genocide or something 😒
While they mention the number of people who retired during the pandemic, they failed to mention the million or so who died, the tens of millions with long covid, and the family and friends who are now helping out those who are disabled and can't pick up shifts they might have covered before.
Well of course they don't mention the actual health consequences of the pandemic (that never actually ended) - that would make the money line sad!
We joke because we're too demoralized to be angry anymore. Outrage and tragedy takes a lot out of us, eventually we burn out and resort to gallows humor. I don't think that's what's hindering progress though!
It's the evil motherfuckers in the ruling class that hinder progress. They murder us to maximize profits because we're nothing but meat to them.
I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Mockery is the result of helplessness, I don't think it causes it. It's a coping mechanism.
Take that away and people would just... tune out.
Religion is a coping mechanism too, but that doesn't stop religious people from fighting for their freedom. 🇵🇸
My point was coping mechanisms keep us alive so we can keep fighting. Without them we either tune out of current events or committ suicide. Religion is the opiate of the masses but I'm too irreligious for that, so instead I snark to keep myself alive.
Alcoholism is literally deadly so it's a bad comparison.
Look, I either joke about this shit or I cast a 9mm ballot into my fucking head and cast the only god damn vote that matters.
And no, that's not a joke. A public political suicide would do this country a lot of good.
It seems more like you question is if I am the problem. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like you're saying it's my fault for mocking this situation, that it's my fault that the conversation is stifled, that it's my fault problems are being hidden.
As for solutions, we need a unified working class movement lead by a vanguard party to overthrow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establish democratic socialism. Am I hindering this by mocking this demon shithole country for murdering us? Am I to blame for why there isn't a worker's party that can lead a revolution? Am I to blame for our problems not being solved or conversations being had?
I'm getting defensive? You keep telling me over and over that I am the problem, how the god damn fuck am I supposed to respond?
But you never launched. I totally see where they were coming from about feeling attackedm i like where you started but you never went anywhere. Since you never made a point, it would be easy to interpret your unspoken point was to shame op for joking.
Are you interested in taking the next step in this discussion? I would hear where you planned to go
You joke, because you have nothing to contribute. You're not demoralised, this has no effect on you.
"They murder us... nothing but meat" And you are offering alternatives how? Stop pretending to be outraged when you care so little that you can't even be bothered to investigate the causes of issues and proffer solutions.
The alternative is to abolish the profit motive, end the accumulation of wealth, seize the means of production, and put the ruling class in work camps.
I joke so I don't kill myself. Honestly? Fuck you. I'm so fucking tired and angry all the fucking time, so either I joke or I cast a 9mm ballot into my fucking head for the next election cycle. At least that way my vote might fucking mean something.
This comment goes hard for me
How do you abolish the profit motive? It's literally just the motivation to benefit from a transaction.
"Put the ruling class in work camps"
So create another ruling class to imprison these people? Do the new ruling class have to be subject to imprisonment as well? What about the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is now oppressing the previously wealthy? Shouldn't they also be subject to imprisonment for abuses?
"At least that way my vote might mean something"
And it will mean more depending on how much you contribute to society.
"I'm so tired and angry all the time"
So am I. I'm so tired and angry, I have no recourse but to criticise you. Oh, that's not a legitimate reason, you say? My mood doesn't justify my behaviour you say?
By abolishing private ownership of capital and the accumulation of wealth.
The goal is to eventually abolish class society completely, so there is no ruling class.
That's really not true at all. The Arab Spring was started by a simple street vendor who set himself on fire in protest of the confiscation of his wares, and that triggered the collapse of multiple countries. Unfortunately it didn't amount to any actual progress because there wasn't an organized party that was ready to take advantage of his sacrifice, and then of course America had to get involved and make it all worse, but he had a huge impact despite not being important or famous or powerful.
Don't... put words in my fucking mouth?
I heartily recommend you waste not one more second on someone so obviously overrating their importance. They can't see you thru their hubris and arrogance, cursed as they are with dunnig-kruger. Come friend, drop them like a bad habit
"Arab spring ..." So you cite an example of social activism that disastrously failed (by your own admission) to justify a similar action by your hand?
Even then it doesn't disprove that individuals that contribute more are statistically more likely to be noticed when absent. If you want to have an impact, especially a positive one, it helps to not have anger as your sole motivator.
"So there is no ruling class"
What exactly is a ruling class to you? There will always be a deciding group. Even in anarcho-fantasies that rule by consensus there will always be a small group that refuses to negotiate, they become the ruling class in that circumstance. So do they get deported to an archipelago for refusing to come to a consensus? Don't the deporters become the ruling class then?
Any sort of organized society outside of intimate groups needs some sort of hierarchical decision making. It's one thing to advocate for positions to be more logically allocated, and another to be completely destroyed.
"Don't put words in my fucking mouth"
I'm impressed that you aren't apparently a hypocrite by holding others to a logical standard that you don't follow. Unfortunately that logical standard is that being angry justifies spreading textual diarrhea all over Lemmy.
A lot of people on lemmy are just bad at first principles of economics and politics. They don't quite get (as Marx didn't) that the structures of capitalism arise from scarcity and complexity, and that it doesn't matter what you actually call the mediation of scarcity via a monetary proxy - the end results will be largely the same. Which is why the focus needs to be on understanding these complex systems comprehensively and regulating them. Not useless bumper sticker platitudes quietly celebrating even more violence.
Edit - yeah, exactly, there's no bigger threat to outdated ML orthodoxy than a freshman economics textbook
the first thing I learned in economics (which I studied to a masters level) is that modern theories of economics that dont incorperate marx tend to only work in closed systems and fail when exposed to the real world.
source; my freshman economics proffesor and textbook
I completely agree with this take and also think that similarly, we should refrain from typing/saying things ironically, because eventually, they are communicated unironically.
Oh - and I also forgot to mention that, even in the current 'slow' period, the US is still averaging over 100 covid deaths per day. And that also means that we're averaging an additional 1500 people with long covid every day.
And no one cares about getting a vaccine because "COVID is over" 🙃