Austria: Thousands protest against plans for 12-hour workday - Sensationalist Headlines

This is literally zero reason why in 2018 90% of the industries people work in should be 40-hour weeks still.

I worked at Polaris as a pipe fabricator for a couple months. 60-70 hour work weeks, which were mandatory or they fired you. It's fucking insane.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this sadly. I worked at a biomedical facility in California on an assembly line for roughly 2-3 months, we were worked 12-14hrs a day, Monday to Sunday Yes you read that right, even Sundays we had to work, if we were lucky to get a sunday off, they'd tell us the day before at 7-8pm, so you couldn't even plan to do anything ahead of time outside of work. I constantly overhead people talking about the hours we were assigned, the worst of which involving someone who almost crashed their car on the way to work because they literally couldn't stay awake, and another person who had to quit after several months because their vision became so bad from staring into a microscope for so many hours a day (we assembled microscopic stents that would go into the heart) Never in my life had I legitimately considered suicide, because wow did I feel like my soul was being sucked out of my body minute by minute. Maybe 12+ hour shifts are much different in Sweden, but here in the U.S they are a nightmare.

I can barely even handle 6 hours tbh. 12 hours is ridiculous.

Good pay don't mean shit if you feel like wanting to end your life from the stress of it.

It really depends on the industry. Manufacturing? Yeah. It's gonna suck hardcore, and possibly 'cause long-term damage. Viper's coming from the security field though. It's not too much better in my experience, but at least there you're getting long periods on-shift where nothing is happening. It's not too much better, and I'd really rather be spending that extra time at home, but at least it's not straining. Plus, he mentioned he gets five days off after his work week. Five fucking days. That's unheard of over here. Matter of fact, when I was doing unarmed security, I usually only had one day off a week. A couple of months into the job they asked me to "temporarily" cover a shift on Sunday. "Temporary" ended up meaning something like 11 months.

how the fuck are all of you now fact checking this and realise this entire fake shitstorm is just the austrian left kicking up a shitstorm over literally nothing?

Society determined long ago that 40 hours is the maximum amount of hours worked a week because more than that can kill someone. Most people should be earning a comfortable amount of money working much less than that. The fact that corporations have slowly convinced everyone over the years that a 40 hour work week is a good thing is completely fucked up.

Even if the 12 hour increase is preached about being "Voluntary" Employers and companies are sure as hell going to abuse the absolute fuck out of it.

Yeah I think everyone missed the part when I said that it doesn't fit in every line of work (despite saying it twice) but in security twelve hours is pretty standard. Hell, these days I don't work night anymore and I still work ten hours a day as a storeguard (armed, non-lethal).

As long as there's unemployment, people don't necessarily have a choice when it comes to their job. Lengthening the legal working hours doesn't solely affect workers who want to work for longer periods of time, unlike what you seem to believe. If all that's offered to an unemployed person is 12 hours shifts, they'll have to take them because they simply need money to live. Shocker, I know. By the way, good job increasing unemployment by electing to lengthen working hours instead of encouraging an increase in hiring.

I think you missed the part where everyone said two twelve hour shifts are completely pointless when you can have three 8 hour shifts.

Extending work days is fucking stupid. People only have 4-6 effective work hours in them a day, after that their productivity lowers because they make mistakes which they then have to fix the next day. It's fine for jobs where you don't have to do much, like being a night security guard where the biggest challenge is not losing your mind from boredom. We should be using the crazy productivity we have today to reduce how much work people need to do, not force them to work for most of their waking lives.

I used to work 12 hour shifts at a whey plant. They transitioned from 3 8-hour shifts to 2 12-hour shifts under the guise that you'd "have more free time" and it would "increase productivity". What actually happened: With three 8 hour shifts, we had weekends off where you could volunteer to come in and clean the machines while maintenance crews fixed whatever was broken/breaking (you were paid over-time for this). Once they implemented 12-hour shifts the plant ran 24/7, meaning no time to shut-down to do preventative maintenance, so shit always broke, meaning lots and LOTS of down-time (which they bitched about, of course). The plan was "3 on, 4 off, 4 on, 3 off" over two weeks. By some impressive mathematical blunder, my shift ended up having shifts run 5 days in a row, while other shifts got the 3-on/4-off schedule. How they managed that I'll never know. The machines got progressively dirtier and dirtier, with no real spare time to clean them (unless things broke catastrophically) Crews are required to clean their areas/floors before leaving. Day crew and the bosses came in at 8AM. However, bosses left at 5PM, meaning there was nobody to ensure that day crew cleaned their shit, which means they didn't, which meant I got to clean it up on top of whatever mess my machines produced that night, and I wasn't allowed to leave until it was all cleaned up, meaning I'd be staying another 1-2 hours every day.

This is inevitably what happens at late stage capitalism, where companies don't give a damn about their workers or their consumers in pursuit of nothing but pure profit. Why care about keeping your workers productive, sane and safe when you can just replace him with the next poor sod who thinks it's a good idea to work 12 hour shifts? Treating your workers right doesn't look good to the investors on your quarterly report...

Can confirm that it's unhealthy as fuck. I had this happen to me with an labour intensive job and got depression from it. Social life plummeted, sleep became near nonexistent, everything became gray and monotonous, household chores went incomplete, and it wrecked havoc on my motivation/productivity for months afterwards (even coming up to years at this point, but to a lesser extent).

Two weeks ago I had 76.5 hours. That shit is rough. I mean the money is nice, but you can't spend it because you have no time. Usually I average around 50-60. Even that alone wears you out.

Max we got is 9 hour shifts with a break before the last two hours, and 8 hour shifts with no break, so basicaly 3+2+2 as regular, 3+2+3 as 1h overtime, and 3+2+2+2 as 2h overtime after dinner. The 12h shifts are reserved for part time workers that only work on weekends so, I guess they can't complain though. The worst you can get is doing overtime every day plus saturday. Doing saturday alone is shitty af already, so 12h shifts as a regular deal is just brutal.

I've worked 80 hour weeks, they're terrible awful things, but 12s aren't going to kill you, especially if your company tries to keep you at 40 hours a week. I work 4 10s and I would never go back to 5 8s given the choice.

I used to do 60 hour weeks in a hospital. I thought it was badass getting all that crazy OT pay until I realized I was basically dissociated from my body after like a month and was completely zoned out even on my days off.

I've liked my twelve hour shifts well enough for the last three years, but I have a set schedule of two days, two nights, four off so it works out pretty well. But then it's only an average of forty two hours a week, can't imagine a Monday-Friday at twelve hours lol

at my job, the manager said if we discussed our wages with coworkers it was grounds for termination. This is extremely illegal, but that didn't stop her from saying it. When it costs a ton of money to try and contest employee abuse with legal fees and whatnot (and in the US companies are legally allowed to keep you from sueing them or taking them to court. yes, it's batshit insane and is one of the main reasons I'm trying to move out of country) then you can bet your ass you can break any law you want and get away with it because the once in a lifetime chance you get caught, you can afford whatever fines get sent your way and fire the employee right after anyway, making the head honchos rich as hell

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/