The traditional hours model does serve a purpose. A business must be certain that a certain minimum number employees show up to get the work done, and at the same time it to make sure that there won't be so many workers showing up that it is wasting payroll.
If instead you give employees unpaid time off at will and scheduling someone is more of an invitation to come in rather than a requirement under threat of penalty, then it is the employee's choice and the moral hazard is removed. Some people call that freelancing. Some would call it employment with an open door work policy. I don't care what you call it, it solves the problem.
My workplace has flexible quitting times in which whomever has been on-site longest is welcome to leave early if we're slow and the important work is done.
I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm saying it gets around the corona virus issue.
I also don't think it will be as costly as people think especially if you structure your work properly.
I've never had downtime at a job. That indicates that there is always work to be done at most places. If you have a few too many workers then you utilize them effectively.. and you might as you said, send someone home early.
If you end up with too few I've seen that most businesses survive a busy day. You schedule a few extra over the next couple days (invite more workers to come in) over the next couple days to get caught up.
But if you do this it would be helpful to have the business open more hours a day because everyone's desire to have exactly 40 hours and it's exact correspondence with the number of hours the business is open a week doesn't allow you to over hire available staff while giving everyone 40 hours.
I think businesses should open more hours anyway with two crews that overlap. Why? Because if every business is open the exact same hours and it's all the hours that people are working.. then workers can't access businesses. If you've ever worked a job where you work 10 or 12 hours a day 6 days a week and you realize you can never go to the bank (back when that was important) you realize the stupidity of everybody having the same operating hours.
I'm also against 24 hour operation because night shifts are unhealthy for workers. If businesses could break tradition and see the value in an 11 hour operating window where some workers come in an hour and a half earlier than tradition, and some workers come an hour and a half later than tradition, and all employees have a five hour overlap (giving them more than enough time to coordinate with each other). Then all people will be able to access all businesses either before or after work. This also guarantees overlap with other employees in other organizations that you may be expected to work with.
scheduling someone is more of an invitation to come in rather than a requirement
You can't be serious. Have you never worked a job before?
Yes. And I've worked some really shitty ones lately thanks to the corona virus. I'm writing something radical for a reason. That's not lost on me. I'm telling you though, there are more businesses that could organize like this successfully than you realize. There are places that do organize like this currently, particularly a lot of software companies. To name one the motley fool. They are, in their own words, responsibility based. I'm just suggesting that more places could manage it than realize.
The motley fool is an open door office. Technically they aren't right now because of the virus. Right now they are a closed door office and people are working from home. But normally people there set their own hours. For companies that need to apply more guidance there are tools for that besides hell or high water dictation.
In the case of meat plants they may have to, because that would enable them to open plants that otherwise would be closed (or face lawsuits). All I'm saying is as a company you say if you don't want to work during corona virus you will not be fired. They have more workers than they need right now anyway. They are laying people off. If some people decide by themselves to take a month off (there call) then that's still a better situation than shutting down a plant and not employing workers who do want to work.
There are places that do organize like this currently, particularly a lot of software companies.
Oh boy. I work in software. This could not be further from the truth.
I definitely agree with you that things are fucked up, but radical solutions are not what's needed to solve society's ills, and often come with a whole host of unexpected problems. Capitalism is really good at one thing, keeping people honest. By honest I mean honest exchange of value. The problems in our system is twofold; one, we subsidize risk for whole industries, second we don't have a "social" system of community that binds us together. For all its problems, church has always been really good about fostering social connections. Getting a proper community and social safety net is a priority that we should be looking to combine with capitalism, not replace.
Move meat plant workers to freelancers.. sort of. I don't care what their actual employment designation is. The problem is the old fashioned way of scheduling a worker to come in or be fired creates a moral hazard in the presence of a pandemic when not only could an employee get sick, but their family might too. The acknowledgement of this moral hazard is what has lead to plants being shut down.
If instead you give employees unpaid time off at will and scheduling someone is more of an invitation to come in rather than a requirement under threat of penalty, then it is the employee's choice and the moral hazard is removed. Some people call that freelancing. Some would call it employment with an open door work policy. I don't care what you call it, it solves the problem.
It also would be an amazing shift in the way employment works. I'm coming in because I want to come in and I want to make money, not because I'll be screwed if I don't.
Yes, that would require restructuring the way a lot of offices do work, and would require more employee cross training, which is good for employers anyway.
But the alternative in the face of a pandemic is shutting down an entire site or facing lawsuits.
Why do you want to be 100% dependent on one person being there? Doesn't that end up fucking you over frequently anyway? What if an emergency happens? Do you want your company to be shut down every time any one of your employees has a personal emergency? Haven't they had them in the past and you didn't actually shut down? You can survive not having an employee there. You have before. And if you can't that's due to your own mismanagement. Switching to at will leave would get us to full commit to abandoning the idea of only having one person trained to do some task. And it may be needed for the pandemic, legally. If you are already slow and have too much staff because of the pandemic what will it hurt anyway. Now is a great time to make the switch and you might save some money when a few stay home a day and you might prevent a few layoffs from the saved money. It's equivalent to hiring fewer people while not actually firing anyone.