If it’s any consolation, there’s also no law that mandates that we get breaks either!
Like, at all. No lunch. No 15 minutes. Now, most companies DO “offer” breaks. But they don’t have to. Except in a couple states (Less than 10, last I checked.)
Combine that with “at-will” employment without contracts, that means in most of the USA you could be asked to work for 36 hours straight with no breaks and be fired for looking tired.
What is the normal break/lunch time provided? 15m sounds like torture. You would have to swallow your food and can’t even digest it before you are back working
I get a 15 minute break at 9:00 and 30 minutes lunch (unpaid) at 12:00. Work starts at 6:30 and ends at 15:00. Mon - Fri
Georgia, USA factory worker
Until September we had been 6:30 - 17:00, Mon - Thu, with 10 minutes break at 10:00, 30 minutes lunch (unpaid) at 12:00, and 10 minutes break at 14:00.
Fuck corporate meddling and I hope they really enjoy the crash in production. This is the 3rd time they have tried to force us into a 5 day schedule in the 8 years I’ve been employed there, both other times reverting back to 4 10s within a few months due to lost output.
There’s no federal law that mandates breaks, but I think there’s one that kicks in if an employer offers any breaks at all, mandating certain minimum requirements about paid/unpaid breaks
While possibly true, in reality an employer doing this struggles to keep reliable and quality staff. They would likely calculate that hiring and training expenses, poor output, and other issues are a higher cost than the cost of offering 15 minute breaks and some amount of benefits.
How it should work if companies cared about anything beyond the next quarterly report.
After my former employer’s economic forecast did an abrupt sharp downturn, I went from being a highly desirable employee to extremely undesirable in the space of less than a week. Add to that a performance limiting on-the-job injury and being the highest paid person in my department.
Guess who was terminated the day before their stock and annual bonus was to be awarded.
it still shifts the power into the hands of the employer, like providing basic acceptable working conditions becomes a perk, when it’s just something that should be universal and normalized.
It hasn’t been like that for most of human history, and the standard of working conditions that I am guessing you’re thinking of is not even experienced by most humans alive today.
I think ideal working conditions should be society’s aspiration and would hopefully pay for itself through superior output. But if businesses can compete unfairly this may not be true. For that reason we should break up companies that get so large as to control entire markets and force them to compete again.
Unfortunately for labor, absent of regulation, that’s how it’s been since the beginning of time. B2B dealings are similar… Add value in excess of cost or be replaced.
If it’s any consolation, there’s also no law that mandates that we get breaks either!
Like, at all. No lunch. No 15 minutes. Now, most companies DO “offer” breaks. But they don’t have to. Except in a couple states (Less than 10, last I checked.)
Combine that with “at-will” employment without contracts, that means in most of the USA you could be asked to work for 36 hours straight with no breaks and be fired for looking tired.
What is the normal break/lunch time provided? 15m sounds like torture. You would have to swallow your food and can’t even digest it before you are back working
I get a 15 minute break at 9:00 and 30 minutes lunch (unpaid) at 12:00. Work starts at 6:30 and ends at 15:00. Mon - Fri
Georgia, USA factory worker
Until September we had been 6:30 - 17:00, Mon - Thu, with 10 minutes break at 10:00, 30 minutes lunch (unpaid) at 12:00, and 10 minutes break at 14:00.
Fuck corporate meddling and I hope they really enjoy the crash in production. This is the 3rd time they have tried to force us into a 5 day schedule in the 8 years I’ve been employed there, both other times reverting back to 4 10s within a few months due to lost output.
No the 15min are separate.
Lunch is usually 30min-1hr (unpaid)
Then one or two 15min breaks (paid)
At least in retail that was my experience.
There’s no federal law that mandates breaks, but I think there’s one that kicks in if an employer offers any breaks at all, mandating certain minimum requirements about paid/unpaid breaks
While possibly true, in reality an employer doing this struggles to keep reliable and quality staff. They would likely calculate that hiring and training expenses, poor output, and other issues are a higher cost than the cost of offering 15 minute breaks and some amount of benefits.
At least that’s how it should work.
How it should work if companies cared about anything beyond the next quarterly report.
After my former employer’s economic forecast did an abrupt sharp downturn, I went from being a highly desirable employee to extremely undesirable in the space of less than a week. Add to that a performance limiting on-the-job injury and being the highest paid person in my department.
Guess who was terminated the day before their stock and annual bonus was to be awarded.
it still shifts the power into the hands of the employer, like providing basic acceptable working conditions becomes a perk, when it’s just something that should be universal and normalized.
It hasn’t been like that for most of human history, and the standard of working conditions that I am guessing you’re thinking of is not even experienced by most humans alive today.
I think ideal working conditions should be society’s aspiration and would hopefully pay for itself through superior output. But if businesses can compete unfairly this may not be true. For that reason we should break up companies that get so large as to control entire markets and force them to compete again.
Sadly
The same could be said about PTO, but…
Race to the bottom, bare minimum it is then
Unfortunately for labor, absent of regulation, that’s how it’s been since the beginning of time. B2B dealings are similar… Add value in excess of cost or be replaced.
That’s what prison labor is for. All those issues vanish. And it’s by design.
That’s more true in the more skilled the job is.
In entry level jobs where people are desperate, it gets a lot less favorable for the employee.
Really it’s the same argument as a minimum wage
AI don’t want no break