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[Texas Tribune] “We are dying”: Houston workers protest new state law removing water break requirements
(www.texastribune.org)
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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This will sound like I am not supporting workers, but hear me out. The intention of this law has nothing to do with taking away breaks. There’s this picture being painted of “state and evil construction companies” vs “workers and municipalities.” There’s actually two different fights here: workers vs evil construction companies and, the state vs municipalities. Focusing on the first one is important outside of how the state and city are bickering.
If you know your construction company will take away your 10 min / 4 hr water break because the city can no longer enforce that, that’s NOT the state’s fault because they’re taking a common sense approach to consolidating laws and eliminating bureaucracy. That is an evil fucking construction company.
You want to blame a lawmaker because they assumed no company would be evil enough to do that, fine, but think about that, and the entire scope of this bill, when deciding who to protest against.
EDIT: Sorry to come off looking like a republican shill. That was honestly not my intention. I'll try harder next time. ESH except the workers trying to stay hydrated!
Every large company will squeeze every second of productivity out of a worker unless it’s forced not to.
The 8 hour work day was fought for by workers, the 5 day work week was fought for by workers, child labor laws were fought for by workers. These things required protests and often time violence to get, because companies were literally killing people through work until these things became labor law.
Removing labor protection does nothing but remove safety for workers and increase profits for corporations.
The free market doesn’t work and has never worked. Anyone who says otherwise is willfully ignorant of history and basic logical reasoning.
I get that, and I support everything you're saying. It feels like the workers are getting played by the companies though. Workers should be lobbying for rights to the state, federal and municipal levels, but this feels like a "red herring" of a bill to get behind.
We’re talking about a Texas state law that repeals existing protections for workers.
The workers are protesting for a law that protects them. Removing this law will give them back the protections they had before.