ChiGoose

14% of full-time employees do not have paid sick leave. As far as I can tell, it does not breakdown between hourly and salaries. Though I would argue that’s irrelevant anyway. And I’m glad that you have generous benefits. My argument is that it would be beneficial to all of us if all American workers had some baseline of paid sick time. Also, if anyone is looking for details on the railway dispute, I found this explainer to be incredibly helpful: Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

22% of American workers do not have access to paid sick leave. 14% of full time employees do not have access to paid sick leave. Something else to keep in mind is how sick leave is accumulated when changing jobs. In an employee-friendly economy, employees can easily leave one job for a better one. Here, the lack of PTO requirements causes friction that can (and does) lead to people not taking a better opportunity or risking starting a new business due to lack of insurance or other benefits should they leave their current employer.

I'm being very specific about the railroad workers here. You local Starbucks workers striking for a union, or factory workers striking for better conditions are good. I support that. Unions, while they have problems, are great for working Americans and help protect them against the power of big business. I don't want to get into generalities around unions, I support them and I support workers banding together to take power from the C-suite. I wanted to talk very specifically about the current railroad labor dispute. In the real world, the options at this point are: Let the workers strike. In doing so, you will cost the US economy $2 billion per day, spike inflation even higher, severely disrupt commuting in our biggest economic sectors, prevent food products from moving from farms and factories into local groceries, among other effects. This would be done in the hope that the unions would be able to do something they have not yet been able to do. Intervene and codify the agreement that 75% of the unions agreed to. Potentially add on the 7 paid sick days that the remaining 25% of unions were holding out for. Upset your relations with the labor unions, but prevent the severe negative consequences while giving the unions most of what they asked for. I don't think either option is particularly good. But I think Option 2 is clearly better for the country than Option 1. Long term, I would prefer better protections for all workers. It's insane that we are the only wealthy country without paid sick leave or parental leave. I think Congress should push for those reforms to benefit all workers. But in this immediate conflict, existing in the real world, the options are between bad and catastrophic. It's dirty and unpleasant, but it's reality and the responsibility of being the adult in the room to do the right thing even if you don't love it.

I blamed the GOP for exactly one thing: voting against paid sick days. Most of the people who voted for this acknowledged that they didn’t want to do so but the cost to the economy would be too great not to act. So they put on their big kid boots and did the dirty thing to save taxpayers money and prevent economic disruption. Of course, some keyboard warriors would prefer chaos that would cost taxpayers billions in the quixotic hope that it would magically get the workers what they want.

Well, it would cost the US economy $2 billion per day and cause a national security nightmare, but hey, some guy on the internet thinks it’s a good idea!

1. The contract was rejected by some of the unions 2. Congress does have the authority to do this, and has done so 18 times in the past: ”Congress can step in to resolve disputes between labor unions and railroads under the 1926 Railway Labor Act, as part of its power under the Constitution to regulate commerce. That law was written to prevent disruptions in interstate commerce. Congress has previously intervened 18 times in such disputes after the process has proceeded without success to a Presidential Emergency Board, which issues recommendations that the parties may choose to reject.” (Source) It’s fair to disagree about the terms (the unions are not happy with this), but Congress can do it and doing so prevents a strike that would cause massive disruption to the economy during the holiday season.

The overall bill passed 290-137, with 79 Republicans voting for it. There was a separate resolution for the 7 paid sick days which passed 221-207. Only 3 Republicans voted in support. (Source)

Part of the working class right here:

For the “No Republican can get a fair trial in DC” crowd, try to remember that if you are arguing politics on an online forum, you are in the extreme minority of weirdos (this includes myself). ~99% of Americans don’t follow politics as closely and are less politically activated. The jury pool is going to be made up of normies, not weirdos like us. Remember that even a red-hat MAGA juror found Manafort guilty in one of his trials. While some jury pools are generally more favorable to certain defendants than others, the idea that a trial is fundamentally unfair due to the political lean of a jurisdiction is just brain worms nonsense.

I’ve tried explaining this before but this guy has the brain power of dimly lit bulb. He could just read the law or he could just spout nonsense. He always chooses the latter.

If you are seriously still comparing Jan 6th and the 2020 protests, you are not a serious person.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

While very little of my criticism of Musk buying Twitter has been about content moderation, something to keep in mind when seeing news about advertisers pulling out of Twitter is that, for social media companies, the users, the content they create, and therefore, the content moderation policies, are the product. The content moderation policies define the content that will be allowed on the site and that in turn is used to entice advertisers to the site. Since most brands are small-c conservative, the more bland and boring the content is, the less reluctant they will be to put their branding around it. On the other extreme, in a wild west of no moderation, you end up with something like 4Chan or 8Chan with an unending stream of racism, vitriol, and violent language. For most social media companies, the goal is to draw the line somewhere between Club Penguin and 8Chan. Give your users freedom to post but keep the content clean enough to avoid chasing away advertisers. Different people will have different ideas on where to draw the line, and that's fine. Different sites will draw it differently, it's mostly a matter of opinion. I think one of the issues that Twitter is currently experiencing is that Musk is talking as if he wants to go the 8Chan route, but Twitter is still suspending tweets and accounts, so there is confusion on what is actually the new content moderation policy. Companies like GM aren't going to want to see their logo next to a bunch of posts with the n-word in them, so they suspended their ad buys. Of course, if the content moderation policy is made more clear and Twitter enforces it, GM might come back on. Or maybe they won't. That's up to them, because we live in a capitalist economy. If Musk had moved more slowly and deliberately, clearly defining the new moderation policy and demonstrating that he had the ability to enforce it, he likely wouldn't be having these problems, even if he loosened up the moderation to appease those on the Right. By moving fast and breaking things in an established company with existing contracts and relationships, he's shot himself in the foot. He may still recover, but this isn't some grand conspiracy, it's just the obvious consequences of his words and actions.

Are you having a stroke?

That might be the single dumbest thing I’ve ever read on this board, which is pretty impressive, honesty. I’ve never seen you speak out against the Armenian genocide, therefore, you must support it.