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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • The mill I work in is already set up with shift work…they work 1st shift (week 1), 2nd shift (week 2), 3rd shift (week 3), and then go on long weekend 4 days off. My department runs 21 turns (we are the plant bottleneck by design), meaning 3 shifts of 8 hours, 7 days a week. Most people dont work 7 days straight unwillingly, but regardless of that fact, you need to keep running. Not running is losing money, losing money gets corporate to shut you down, getting shut down means you have no job and the company doesn’t care either way

    There is a trade off when dealing with continuous operations. You run into the issue of, “Not running costs more money than running and paying people overtime.” Moving to a 4 day week just means you would likely get forced more into overtime so we can keep steel flowing, not that you get more free time.

    Also from the salary side of things, I just spoke to 4 other process engineers and all of us immediately agreed that we cannot get the work done required of us + do the extras of being a floor process engineer in only 4 days. We could get our “requirements” done, but then all of the extra work that we perform would cease. It would actively hurt the company and its profitability, which in turn hurts our job stability. Its really not as cut and dry as people want to make it seem in all instances


  • Also to your other part about “it’s not that hard”

    It actually is. We cannot get enough bodies in the mill to not work everyone at full time. We pay 18 year olds 6 figures to operate a mill and we still cannot get enough bodies to come anywhere close to working a 4 day week.

    It straight up doesn’t work that simply when you’re running enormous 24/7 operations in critical industry. Thats like all the football fans on the couch yelling at the coach “JUST DO X”. Really easy to say “do X” but the application becomes extremely difficult. Yeah in an office, sure…in a refinery where you create base stock products that allow hundreds of other major plants to run to produce all the basic products you use every single day? Not gonna work that way

    This isn’t some machinist shop that takes orders. it’s a multi billion dollar full rip steel mill/refinery/plant/etc. that loses LOTS of money when it’s not at full capacity. That has lasting knock on effects on other industries for example when base manufacturing can’t keep up


  • You have salary workers like process engineers for example. Working less than 5 days regularly just isn’t acceptable. I would not be effective in my job if I only had 4 days a week to get everything done. Also someone always has weekend coverage on “off” days for salary or holidays. So you’re still “working”

    Also many plants have minimum hour requirements in their union contracts where we have to run X days minimum a week or we still pay. There is more to the puzzle than just the office sector.

    You have shifts and shift workers yes but again, the mill basically needs to run 24/7. so lots of people get forced for OT, or willingly take it

    Edit: I love the downvotes with no refutement. I am not talking from no experience here. I actively work as a process engineer in a steel mill and actively deal with these problems DAILY. Moving to a 4 day week changes nothing in 24/7 operations. You have to run all of the time, end of sentence (or your mill is getting shut down, and you all lose your jobs…nobody in the mill wins there). The compensation is through the roof and most people end up pulling in tons of overtime. I dont know many other jobs that an 18 year old can pull in an EASY 6 figures with no form of education past high school. The hourly guys make WAY more than any of us salary folk (me and other engineers have spoken candidly with guys on the floor, and they pull in well over 100,000 with no overtime), and on top of that, there are guys who get legitimately pissed when they can’t get enough overtime or work more hours cuz they want that money



  • I mean you’re right, what I am saying is how does a digital copy of a film draw suspicion? Unless they find the actual torrent files, they have no grounds to even claim you’re doing something. I do not know of any countries outside of North Korea where content cannot be carried around digitally.

    I feel like if they singled you out to dredge your computer/hard drive that you have on you at the border. Then use that search to claim you were transporting pirated content, they likely had you in their sights before hand. The chain of events of finding say a digital movie, and them accusing you of piracy (without torrent files, just the existence of a movie/show digitally) just does not logically compute to me. Id be suspicious they were attempting to target me prior, and that was all they could find “to get something”



  • Also, many developed countries tout EVs as “AMAZING” for the environment. Meanwhile that is solely because none of the lithium mining and processing occurs in their nice countries. While they get their nice “green” batteries, China and South American countries destroy their environment strip mining and processing lithium ore. That shit is TERRIBLE for the environment, and there is no economic incentive to clean up the process. The news, media, politicians, CEOs, etc. never speak about this because it paints the reality of the picture. You’re shifting the carbon footprint to something else, not really even reducing it.

    I actually am very interested in the new solid state batteries Toyota is talking about. Using polymer based batteries can allow for longer lasting, less impactful energy storage to help make electric/H-fuel cell cars genuinely green/a great step from combustion vehicles