They have a large rework of an Executive suite that was supposed to begin in January, but which they held off on, so as to make a LOT of revisions. Work commenced some time in March. The original deadline was July 1, based on a January start date. They decided to keep the July 1 date, despite the delay.
This has meant numerous trades not only working 80-90 hour weeks, but also constant redoing of work already done, that has been damaged by other trades. The painters, for example, have more or less had to paint the place twice. It is the second biggest cluster-fuck I have ever seen, and by far the largest preventable one I have seen. There is no urgency, outside of the stupidity and cupidity of the top executives. The punch list will be so long it may as well be viewed as on-going construction. The final, end date of absolute completion will 2-3 weeks AFTER it would have been, had a tough but sensible schedule been put in place.
Here is the point I wanted to make: pretty much EVERY trade has had fantasies of walking off the job, but chosen to stay because they need the work. Choice, as in worker self determination and freedom, can ONLY come in conditions of economic prosperity. Nowhere else.
In any negotiation, the strength of your position is your BATNA: Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement. This is the one idea of which I know that has originated at Harvard in the past 50 years that has been useful.
In conditions of economic malaise, such as characterizes every foray into socialism, your BATNA is shit. You have no choice. Workers are screwed.
And it doesn’t matter if you have a union. Unions make everything more expensive, and thus cause decreased overall economic activity. Find me a Rust Belt, and I will find you States which allow unions to coerce membership.
It doesn’t matter if you have protective regulations. Workers who need the work are going to overlook abusive practices.
The ONLY thing which reliably empowers workers, which would allow these guys and gals to tell this large corporation FUCK YOU, you sorry, abusive sacks of shit who don’t give a flying fuck about us, our lives, our safety or our families, would be plentiful economic activities elsewhere. The GC would then be forced to actually treat them with some sense of fairness and consideration.
As always, the policies pursued by the Democrats and their apologists in the Republican Party work to disempower the very people they rhetorically claim to support. The problem is that they don’t really care. They perhaps did at one point, but that was 50 years ago.
I will add as well that the root cause of economic malaise is monetary inflation and the wealth transfers it enables. Everything else is window dressing. Of course relative economic freedom is a good thing–we should in my view abolish corporate income taxes, for example–but if you ponder that 90% of our collective wealth has done to banks and the government over the past century, via devaluation of the currency, you should readily see this is the single most important factor.
Given sound monetary policy–such as the Germans appear to practice–we could all work less, earn more, and have more time for pursuing happiness as we conceive it.