Political Memes

Yes, fight among each other and leave us millionaire bosses alone 🤑

This thread is so fucking sad to read. All of you are workers squabbling over the basic dignity to have paid leave from work. You all sound like slaves, justifying your lashes. What if, and I know this is radical, we enabled all workers to have as much flexibility as possible over how they are productive with their labour?

i’ve thought about this a few times since having a kid and it’s made me realise that the most important change is the confidence to say there is something that work must be flexible over.

for example, it is a dealbreaker to me that i must be able to drop and collect my child from school. so my manager and i have spoken about arrangements that allow that to happen.

but it’s that same kind of confidence that someone without kids could bring to the table and say that wednesday is guild night and they need to leave early for it. i mean it doesn’t sound “socially acceptable” but i think that if having kids or religious observances allows you to say “i need this flexibility” you should have the confidence to demand it.

and if your manager is someone who only respects religious or family demands id also condone saying it’s for religious observances and taking no further questions.

Agreed, all workers should have maximum flexibility to balance their lives. Why hurt productivity for the sake of a rigid schedule?

Its my contention that happy workers are more productive. Let every worker take the time they need to maintain their work/life balance, so long as the quality of their work is unaffected.

Rule: if your company sets you up against your colleagues because you xor they have children, it's time for a strike or time to quit

A lot of parents in the comments here. I do believe that there are some concessions that parents should receive, but there is a noticeable imbalance in the flexibility given to parents and non-parents.

I think that paid parental leave is something that parents should receive over non-parents without question. You are being given that time to recover and raise your infant. In my country, it is even paid by the government to the employer so that they can pay the employee.

The thing that irks me is when parents get priority for leave requests etc because of their kids. My wife and I have missed out on family holidays because our employers have told us that parents get priority for leave during school holidays. Ignoring the fact that our families are travelling in school holidays because there are children in our family.

I have been told by employers that I cannot start an hour early today (in a job that has no client facing role) in order to leave early for an appointment. Yet there are people sending the “out of office for an hour to pick up the kids” message every other day.

A society should always prioritize its weaker members. Children are among these. The flexibility given to the parents is not a gift to the parents, but to the children.

Based on the tone and language of the discussion, this is very USA things.

And for that I've a song.

Same energy

Extra time off isn't some kind of reward for having kids, it's to make having kids possible. We'll be old someday and we'll need those kids to support us. Give parents all the time off they want. Imagine the kind of guy who sees a new mom get time off work to take care of a literal shit machine and thinks "She's the one who decided to excrete a crotch goblin. I should get the same amount of time off work as she does so I can play more Elden Ring." Then imagine how that guy smells.

A possible option working within existing systems would be:

Parental leave: you get pop sustain rate (2.1?) parental leaves banked. You use 1 leave for every child you have and bank is allowed negative with no penalty. At 45 or so you get to use your bank without being a parent.

Something like 95% of people become parents.

Flex time/time-bank + home/hybrid office fix most other issues in office jobs.

People saying that kids are important to society so we should allow parents extra flexibility, it rests on the assumption that what non parents would be doing with that flexible is less important to society. What if I'm giving blood, or helping an elderly parent, or volunteering at a homeless shelter? It's hardly the employers role to judge pass judgement on what is a worthwhile use of time.

I think it would be ideal if everyone could be afforded the flexibility they need in their own lives for whatever they might wish to do, but I don't think this take is a very good one.

The reason parents are often given these benefits is because there is an understanding that there is a literal human being's life on the line, and that this person cares incredibly strongly about that child.

I might care a lot about an event I want to go to, but when it comes down to it, any boss would probably pick making sure a parent can pick their kid up from school over me being able to go a concert or something.

If everyone had a kid tomorrow, you'd probably see a lot of these benefits not be offered as freely, considering how businesses would simply just be understaffed to handle that much demand for flexibility, skipping certain hours, schedule changes, etc.

All that said though, there is still room for benefits and additional flexibility to be afforded to workers... if corporations are willing to spend extra money on more staff, better accommodations like not requiring in-office work when the work only requires being on a computer all day, stuff like that.

Whomever wrote that never had children.

It's not about "deserving". It's about enabling the reproduction of the proletariat so that there's proletariat left to exploit in the future.

monkey's paw / evil genie / etc:

Wish granted. All employees - with or without children - will now be treated badly and given no flexibility

Those who take the responsibility of caring for society's newest members should be given more leeway/support in many areas, not just employment. I don't have kids (yet, God willing), I'm just not unempathetic/extremely self-centered/nihilistic. We do live in a society, after all.

In my country, a parent must be at home when their children arrive home. If both parents work, that means one has to come to an arrangement with their workplace to be home at 3.

If a non-parent has an important reason to be home at 3, they should also be allowed to leave early, but preventing kids from electrocuting themselves is a pretty important reason.

This question is what you ask when you want to get your employees fighting against each other and not against the boss who is stealing all of their money.

The first step would be to fix wage theft and then the second step might be to get rid of the ultra rich, or maybe those could be done in the reverse order. At some point long after those things are accomplished we could talk about how people get jealous when they see someone else who apparently gets privileges that they wish they had. And sometimes there are small changes that can be made that will alleviate those situations.

What extra flexibility do parents have? Are we talking about doctor and school appointments? I don't have kids and I'm allowed to go to a doctor during work hours. I'm also allowed medical leave to care for family members. I can come up with any excuse to leave work for couple of hours as long as I make up for it later. If I work less, I'm unreliable and it happens regularly I will eventually get fired, same as someone with children.

I could really go for a 6 months hiatus and the same for my girlfriend. We both never had kids.

I know that having kids isn't a vacation though. It's a lot of work. So it's not quite the same.