So slavery as indentured servitude is the American future. Way to “new model” the old model.
The Children Yearn for the Mines!
Since the New Deal the goal of the capitalist class has been a slow crawl back to slavery. Couldnt do it too fast. Had to take it slow.
No taxes for the rich and businesses. No rights for workers. And eventually No pay or choice for them either.
That beyond all the other myriad failures of this country is why I hate it so much and why I long to see it fall.
And it’s all been fully Bipartisan. Republicans advance the goals of oligarchy by leaps. Democrats are the vanguard that protects the rich and the corrupt. They stop all of us from making things better. Social and cultural issues are ephemeral at best. Ultimately unimportant to the oligarchy beyond their utility as a tool of control and coercion. There is no morality involved. There is just greed and corruption.
Seems that they want to repeat the USSR of 70s, just capitalist and without the revolution and industrialization and mass repressions preceding stages, and rather right-wing.
Maybe they want that to avoid the same fate due to avoiding state capitalism and overregulation combined with politics inside the bureaucratic machine. If they are moderately smart.
Or maybe they just want to repeat the same track with modern technologies. Then it’ll suck.
I’d say inheritable professions are more pre industrial revolution than Soviet.
Yes, I missed that part, meant more the “working all your life on the same plant” thing.
Whether you want them or not.
NGL I’m envisioning The Factory as in SCP 001
YOU AND YOUR FAMILY FIRST, ASSHOLE.
This was always the goal. Serfdom in a different package.
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Dey tk 'r jerbs!!!
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Ok, here you go, maga listens to its voters, kicked out all the immigrants and imports and is proud to present: serfdom.
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No, not like that!!
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The USSR had lifetime factory jobs, too.
The USSR didn’t have any limits to choosing an employment since shortly after WW2, what are you talking about? By the late 70s, around 10% of positions in the economy were vacant and there was full employment, and people weren’t forced to work anywhere. The average unemployment duration was 15 days.
Please, what’s your source on your claim?
The USSR didn’t have any limits to choosing an employment
You were distributed to a place by the state after finishing your education. If you left that place too soon, you’d be frowned upon and that’d be mirrored in your labor book (USSR had such a document, basically a dossier documenting your whole history of employment with characteristics, you could get such a “flattering” characteristic by a superior not liking you that you’d never be accepted to a good place after, and you couldn’t refuse or lose a record in your labor book).
and people weren’t forced to work anywhere.
Being unemployed for too long was literally, seriously, illegal in the USSR. Google for “тунеядство”.
People with something really bad in their labor books (say, dissidents) or some other necessary documents (being German after the war, being Jewish in a wrong period of time) had problems finding a place that would accept them, and would sometimes be prosecuted for being unemployed (that was usually informal employment, because you still had to eat something).
But in general yes, some kind of employment was always possible. Dying from hunger or being homeless was almost ruled out. Most of the population lived in some sort of “acceptable poverty” - conditions very bad by US measure, but with the previous correction. That’s sort of one good thing that most people from ex-USSR agree on.
The USSR didn’t have any limits to choosing an employment
I’m sorry, do you seriously think the USSR lacked classes/stratification?
and people weren’t forced to work anywhere
Yeah if you ignore the Gulag system you can make a lot of the USSR sound utopian.
And the US still has millions of slaves to this day, completely legally. We use slaves to fight forest fires. How fucked up is that? Hell, the modern US has managed to create the absurd phenomenon of the full-time employed homeless person. Oh, and and the peak of the USSR? The US trapped millions of people in a hellish nightmare of a legally induced racial caste system.
If you ignore the slavery, the homeless working multiple jobs, and the US’s historic racial caste system, you can make the US sound utopian.
Youre not wrong, but the above proposal will make it worse not better. Born to a factory worker, youll have to work in that same factory your entire life.
Well?
I challenge you to point out where I praised the US. I’ll be super impressed if you can.
This is a flagrant whataboutism. The US’s history of enslavement and atrocities don’t undo those of the USSR.
Come on man it took one google search to read about the centralized labour programs, liquidation of foreign ethnic groups, and militarization of labour. This isn’t even counting the estimated 10 million or so people in forced labour gulags.
So if I wanted to change jobs or quit a job to go into higher education, do you know if that was possible, how hard was it to do? Because available positions does not equal job mobility, as you need permission from the factory manager and the state and those are harder to get when qualified workers are scarce.
Higher education was free in the USSR as stipulated by its constitution.
I’m not talking about that. Read what I wrote. Could I leave my job at the factory to go to university? Didn’t I need permission from the factory manager and from the state to leave my job? Couldn’t either refuse?
Could I leave my job at the factory to go to university?
Yes… as is evidenced by an entirely free education program.
If you’re making the claim that “factory workers of the USSR had no freedom to go to college”, then supply some evidence please. Stop beating around the bush.
Fine…I’m going to ask chatgpt, since nobody knows and I’m not a historian of the USSR:
"In the USSR, while higher education was indeed free, the process of leaving a job to pursue higher education was not entirely straightforward. Workers, including those in factories, were required to obtain permission from their factory manager and the state to leave their job and enroll in university.
This permission was not always guaranteed, and the scarcity of qualified workers could make it more difficult to obtain. The factory manager and the state had some control over the mobility of workers, which could limit an individual’s ability to leave their job and pursue higher education.
It’s not that factory workers had no freedom to go to college, but rather that there were certain bureaucratic hurdles they had to navigate to make that transition. The availability of free education did not necessarily translate to unrestricted job mobility or easy access to higher education for all workers."
I also asked about the 1956 reforms:
"After 1956, the Soviet Union introduced some reforms that aimed to increase social mobility and access to education. The Soviet government implemented policies to encourage workers to pursue higher education, and it became easier for individuals to leave their jobs and enroll in university.
However, it’s still important to note that the process of leaving a job to pursue higher education was not entirely without restrictions. While the reforms after 1956 did increase access to education, the state and factory managers still had some level of control over worker mobility.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s, with the introduction of perestroika and glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev, that the Soviet Union began to see more significant reforms that increased individual freedoms, including the ability to change jobs and pursue education with greater ease."
There. If anything there is factually wrong (gpt hallucinates a lot), let me know.
If you want to play with AI slop, maybe log off lemmy and start doing this on your own… Not a single source cited.
Tankie spotted
Bro, shut the fuck up if that’s all you’re going to add to the conversation Jesus fucking Christ dude
Please, what’s your source on your claim?
Tankie spotted
Average interaction.
Oh, cool. We’re going backwards. That’s fun.
With good union representation, right?
deleted by creator
He means while they’re still kids btw
ha. see, the thing is… no. make me. i got a bullet for every single fucking one of you that tries to fuck my genuinely good life up. i figured out how to escape this shit life and i’m never going back. i ain’t got no kids so i don’t have to worry about any of this. yall have all fucked this world up beyond recognition and i will fucking kill you if you try to drag me down into your bullshit.
That’s the thing, they don’t care if you work there, they won’t make you, you’ll just starve to death in the street or die from lack of medical care or some previously preventable problem. You likely would never be forced to work but not working will be essentially choosing slow suicide
Strip me off my decent life and try to make me work labor. I will. But my incompetence will be the greatest incompetence. My wages will do nothing but pay for my mistakes and I will just keep making them.
Ok, so a few points, from a lifelong industrial OEM technician:
First of all, there’s nothing wrong with factory jobs IF your employer takes care of its workers, that’s a big “if” but one all the world’s workers should take care of, since manufacturing is of course one of the biggest areas of employment and it’s not going away anytime soon.
My job, working for an equipment manufacturer, can be quite enjoyable and well paid, again depending on the employer, I’d advice any technically inclined individual to look into it. St the same time, I’d never work as a maintenance tech in a factory, that’s usually a very stressful job, with emergency work in poor condition, often pushed to work unsafely because of the rush, on old machines often dirty or in poor repair.
Still, I’ve seen some people make quite a comfortable position in that setting, so it may not be all bad.As for pay, I think pay should depend mostly on 3 factors: effort, skill and comfort. Those who work harder, are more skilled and are forced into unpleasant settings should be paid more. If you want a more comfortable job you cannot expect to make more than a good, equally skilled worker who’s in noisy, dangerous or disgusting environments, and so on.
I don’t understand the intergenerational employment point, that sounds sorta dystopic and has no connection to the rest of the argument.
You won’t be well paid, you will not have benefits, you will be forbidden from unionizing, you will have very little say about the particular job you work or the schedule you’re given. You’ll take what you get or starve in the streets. It’s disingenuous to act like “factory work” will resemble the good factory jobs that currently exist.
If that’s what it takes for Americans to reach their limit and claw back some dignity from their owners…
I agree that the work isn’t too bad if you’re the right type of person. We have pretty good rules from OSHA.
TBH though the intergenerational employment and company towns angle makes it seem like all the rules are going to be discarded so I’m a bit concerned
from OSHA
Not for long!
And that’s the problem! These jobs may be okay for now but the people running the government, including the clown in the article, actively wants to make it worse.
I didn’t realize that I could be a toolmaker when I grew up until I was already grown up.
I fucking love my job. If I had realized how cool this job was when I was in high school I’d be one of the most well paid people in my field right now. As it is I’m just doing pretty well.
Industrial jobs definitely aren’t for everyone, but that’s literally any job. I left a comfortable office job for the trades because those jobs aren’t for everyone either. And I’m far happier for it.
How is it possible to avoid repetitive stress injury on an assembly line? Seems inevitable.
Aside from what @SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone wrote, ideally we’ll reduce human labor to overseeing machines, at least on industrial lines, over time.
Replacing humans with machines generally results in greater disparity of wealth, historically
You still can’t stop progress, so you’ve got to solve that issue another way
If you don’t own the machines you should get supplemental income from being displaced.
You should get income regardless
Development of technology isnt always progress. Sometimes its a step backwards.
Progress depends on if it does good or bad. If it just causes a greater disparity of wealth (while building crappy machines that are designed for obsolescence and people dont need), then it is not progress.
Example: looms are arguably progress (almost everyone needs cloth). Robots that manufacturer ICE SUVs are not progress (making more gas guzzlers is causing mass extinction).
Don’t confuse technological and societal progress.
It may not be positive for society, but you still can’t stop progress, if you don’t develop what’s possible, someone else will.
We can pass laws to prevent things like fossil fuel extraction.
Great question. Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are more difficult to avoid when tasks are repetitive, forceful, and/or use a limited range of motion. Implementing a “stretch and flex” type program, completing thorough ergonomic evaluations (and actually following through with their findings), and rotating workers through various tasks that change the motions performed and body parts being stressed will knock down injuries considerably.
Considering they’re working on getting rid of lunch or bathroom breaks this is just a fantasy… is it possible to have decent factory jobs? Sure. Will that be what’s given to you as an option? Absolutely not
This must be prevented from happening, once it becomes the institutional norm it will be so difficult to reverse course
I agree this “factory jobs for everyone and their children” bullshit needs to be prevented, but what I listed isn’t just a fantasy. It’s literally a major part of what I do for a living. It’s all I did for a time when I was a consultant. Employers who are smart enough to have any concern for long-term sustainability and profitability take this quite seriously as it’s not just ethically the “right thing to do”, it’s a smart business move.
I only contract in upstate NY but the manufacturing facilities were specifically placed in areas that will support the bare minimum wage and consistently have supply and or facility issues due to the location. A major pharma organization draining water towers. A large toothpaste manufacturer neglecting PRVs the decades and constantly shooting silica’s into the air.
I see great potential in these facilities but i am ALWAYS reminded of the shit business practices i see even when they cause the company to lose money.
Sure some of these places will prosper but most will crumble inside 5 years and displace a lot of people.
Cool. You go first, asshole. >:(
(Not you, OP, you’re cool.)
Well, we do not know. OP may actually be the new secretary of commerce.
