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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!
What kind of asinine logic is this? When has any profit driven corporation ever done "the right thing" without government stipulations? Maybe you should read up on Dupont, Shelll, Exxon, Enron, Rocketdyne, and about a million other companies that did the exact opposite of that as long as they possibly could and even then some.
I'm not sure who you are quoting, or trying to reason with, but I agree with your sentiment. A profit driven company will do everything it can to profit. Are you trying to say we should "only" be mad at the government and not the company, in this scenario?
Not the person you're asking but we can be mad at both. Companies are evil, profit driven, employee exploiters. We know this, and we must force them to treat their workers like humans. Failure by the government to force companies to treat their workers like humans is something we should be mad at the government for.
We want the government to step in BECAUSE we're mad at the companies and want to change the companies policies.