What is your opinion on American "work culture" and working conditions?

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Hello, since today is/was Labor Day, I decided to create a post asking about your opinion on America’s “work culture” and working conditions. From my understanding, it seems like Europe has a much more relaxed work culture than the US though the US seems to have a lighter work culture than East Asia. That said, it does seem like there could perhaps possibly be room for improvements such as like expanding access to paternity and sick leave and ensuring wages catch up with living costs (higher living costs in areas like the cities make it difficult for livability, much less saving for retirement, rainy days among other things). I understand these are nuanced issues and would like to see other perspectives (holding off any policy endorsements for now but I do feel like things could be better for American workers). There’s also issues like worker burnout and work-life balance. What do you think in respect to all this?
 
I certainly think that America could take some cues from Europe in regards to worker quality of life, and work/life balance
 
I definitely agree to a point, from what I understand as nicer as these perks do sound (and they do look quite nice and have their benefits), from what I understand they do increase the cost of hiring which means like the minimum wage, it could constrain or limit the supply of labor or jobs. And one perhaps possibly argue that if we create the conditions to promote and encourage plentiful and abundant jobs (and one might point out a generally free market economy with a limited government as such a scenario), then here would be good opportunities for society. Additionally, one could point out that people could opt out from certain jobs if the conditions (or wages) are not desirable (one could make possibly use seasonal agricultural jobs as one example). Although, I’m more skeptical, because it does seem like there are people stuck in rut, people in dead-end jobs, people struggling to pay the bills (like making rent), what can be done about people in those situations?
 
Job training, and welfare, if nessecary - from both private and public sources.
 
Do you mean MORE job training and MORE welfare than we already have?

Who will pay for it? The rich? How rich?
 
And once again, I respond–MORE? You think that the private and public sources should give still more?

What percentage of our income do you believe we should pay to help those who are already given a totally free education, free housing, free food, free transportation pass, free health care, free childcare, free books and computer use (public library), and plenty of goodwill in the form of children’s clubs and activities, health fairs, JOB FAIRS!!!, etc. offered free by many churches, para-church organizations, and community organizations?!

I think that there are some people for whom it will never be enough to raise them out of poverty. Maybe that’s why Jesus told us that we will always have the poor with us. Yes, we should help them, and yes, there will be some people called to give everything they have to the poor, who will still be poor because of their mental and emotional health issues, addictions, and personality disorders.

But when I am worried about having enough to pay for my needs in my own old age because we are taxed to the max–well, this isn’t right. People in the U.S. have all kinds of opportunities to find work and earn enough to pay for their needs. Sometimes, giving someone something for nothing or little is NOT helpful. Sometimes, people need to have the rug pulled out. Sometimes.
 
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Some people who are envious of the rich would like to see them taxed to the most unreal standards.
 
Working conditions for the most part are fine. I have supervised people in all pay grades and it is pretty simple: if you work and do your job, and do it even AT LEAST halfway decent, you will be fine. You will get your paycheck and benefits, put a roof over year head and food into the mouths of your family.

But no matter what the pay scale, you always get the people who don’t show up, always call in sick, complain, spread rumors about others, are lazy, and quite honestly are toxic to the rest of the workforce. So it’s not rocket science; it’s called “work,” so when you show up to your place of employment, you should do so.

Folks must also face the reality that the vast majority of folks will not get the fairy tale romantic American notion of the “dream job” or “doing what they love.” Get over it, folks! Take up your cross and just do your job.

Obviously this does not excuse unfair labor practices or oppressing workers or wages. But here in America, while this may happen on a small scale, it is not some kind of epidemic.
 
Working conditions are great in the US. Most work is very safe. Even dangerous jobs have been made much safer. We should all be happy and thankful we live in such times.

When it comes to work culture there are some problems. But these problems aren’t solved by government. The chief problem is we value material wealth too much. This is true of rich and poor. As a result we are often willing to sacrifice anything for it including our health and our families.

I think this culture came about from bothe America’s pioneer days and from its Protestant work ethic. The early settlers worked hard and had to in order to settle this land.

A family member told me of a story of an Italian immigrant he read. I forget the time period but I assume a hundred years ago or so. The immigrant wrote home talking of how much he worked and how much he made. But he pointed out that the greater wealth come from greater work. He said if he worked as much in Italy he would also be wealthy.

One problem we have is the 24/7 society. God told us to take a day of rest - for our own sake. But we don’t really do that. We want what we want, whenever we want it. As a result people have to work all the time to satisfy our wants. The workers wouldn’t be working if there was not customers. This is one area where I do think the state could step in. I am a proponent of blue laws.
 
I spent some time with relatives from Europe. They’re attitude about work/career is much different from ours in the U.S.

We have a tendency to define and identify people by whether they went to college, what they majored in, what they do for a living, etc.

In Europe, the attitude seems to be that work is what you do when you’re not relaxing with friends at a cafe.

A friend’s husband works for an international Swedish manufacturing conglomerate. When they have business meetings (here in the U.S.) the Swedish managers assign people to take turns bringing baked goods to the meeting. My kind of company! 😎
 
Though I am politically Conservative, I owe a tremendous debt to the worker movement of a century ago. It’s only because of organized labor that most of us enjoy things today like regular holidays, a five day, forty hour work week, wages that allow one to live not just survive, and defenses against abusive and manipulative employers. There were many fine examples of Industrial Age fairness and kindness among factory owners, but as a whole we owe our standard of living today to the labor unions of the last 100 years.
 
Working conditions are good by comparison. Our problem is work/life balance. Far too many people live to work rather than work to live. This is one of the reason our anxiety, depression, and suicide rates are so high. But, even here things are not as bad as they could be. Take the Japanese for instance…
 
I’m American but I live in Europe. I’d say it is more relaxed, people generally are able to get more time off.
I sometimes grumble about people being “lazy” when something isn’t open as late as I’d like 😉 but I’d say it’s probably just as well the culture doesn’t always have people working such long hours. A month for the year is the standard, so it surprises me that Americans still only get 2 weeks on the year off. When I lived in the U.S. I was fortunate enough to have a university job that gave me 1 month, but that was only the exception.
 
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It always seems to me (I’m from the UK) that Americans live to work, they don’t work to live. One of the things that put me off moving to the States back when I worked in casinos was the shocking lack of paid holidays and the crippling expense of medical insurance. It also surprises me that you have no provision in law for paid parental leave, surely this stuff could be paid for from general taxation instead of pumping yet more money into defense?
 
That’s up to the individual group collecting taxes. I pay more in school district taxes then regular property tax. Then you add in income tax then the double and triple income taxes for Medicare and social security. My company provides 8 paid holidays for the hourly group. All pilots and flight attended to are exempted from this we are considered professionals and have a contract unlike the rest of the hourly employees.
 
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My company actually gives 2 months off - paid - for the man - maternity leave.
Two weeks off for a death of a family member.
Though last month, someone’s stepfather died - he told coworkers ‘stepfather’
and they only gave him 3 days - many rules - etc.

I don’t like undocumented illegal immigrant workers - everywhere -
like the recent murder that happened to a young girl in Idaho ( ? )
I mean, 50,000 illegals - entering the USA - a month. Wowza.
Then the horrible problem of homelessness - and how they cant get jobs…
because they have no home address. It’s tough out there.
 
I work for a European company. I find it much nicer than working for an American company. I also appreciate having more of a chance to work with and interact with colleagues from many countries. One of my degrees was from a heavily international program with people from 100+ countries in it, so it just seems natural to me.

It probably wouldn’t appeal to all people but it works for me.
 
One of the biggest problems we are just beginning to see in the U.S. is that lack of workers.

We struggle to get people to work in our hospital! They bring people in from all over the world because we don’t have applicants from U.S. citizens.

My brother’s factory is so short-staffed–he never takes time off.

The main reason for that, IMO, is that 50 million people have been killed by abortion. These were the people that would have been applying to replace me when I retire or die. There simply aren’t enough young people anymore. Many of our elementary and middle schools have closed and are consolidated into one big school (which means bussing). And many of our small rural towns have shut down because the population has dropped to the point where they don’t have any people left.

Those small town young people are the ones who often have a dream of leaving the small town and coming to cities like mine to work in hospitals like mine o factories like my brother’s. I love all our international co-workers! But what happens when they decide they want to move back to their country? We really are paying the cost for our killings.

This is one reason why there is such a push to develop more automation–there simply aren’t enough people to do things by hand. OTOH, robots can’t provide relationship/care.

We’re all in trouble here. If I could spend five minutes with Pres. Trump, I would ask him to please allow more people to enter the U.S. legally so we would have more help in our workplaces so we could actually get all our work done well and have the time to take vacations!
 
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