Everyone is abusing everything. We've seen time and time again companies abusing employees with hard work, long schedules, unsafe environments and skimping on safety, which is why we have laws for safe working environments now.
Sometimes work is physically hard, and the effect of that type of work usually doesn't show until you've done it for a longer time. So not only should you get money for the time and effort you spend, you should also get money for how hard the work was on your body. Pension and other benefits help with this.
That's not so much an effect of years of hard work as it is that as you get older your capacity for hard work declines. Also we already have government pensions. So why should a company have to provide them? The economic effect of this is that workers have to wait years for some of their pay instead of getting it right now.
As programmers or office based workforce, the worst hazards might be carpal tunnel syndrome, bad back from bad posture and maybe an upset stomach from a bad coffee.
I have known plenty of young guys in the UK who went on these fly in fly out jobs on gas or oil platforms in Australia, as it's a relatively uncomplicated way to get a well paid job (the only good thing about it) due to easy access to Australia, being commonwealth etc.
Some of them turned into literal cripples within 2-3 years, others half cripples requiring re education or placement in a less physically demanding job.
It's not the same doing this once for a weekend and then classify it as "not so hard" and go out there, work in 100 deg heat or sub freezing temperatures every day, rain, wind etc.
It grinds down a body slowly.
> That's not so much an effect of years of hard work as it is that as you get older your capacity for hard work declines
Sure, if you're a programmer this might be true, but for most of physical jobs out in the world, the physicality of the job is literally tearing down peoples bodies one way or another.
> Also we already have government pensions
Yeah, so not "A job should trade work for cash and no more" but "A job should trade work for cash + pension" as pension is a social benefit.
> The economic effect of this is that workers have to wait years for some of their pay instead of getting it right now
No, the economic effect of this is that workers get paid for their work now, and the effect of that work in the future.
To be honest if there was government provided universal healthcare, basic income, and housing guarantees I would totally agree. It would create a ton more mobility, and take a lot of power away from employers.
That's what I'm talking about though. The government thinks people should have these things but doesn't have the political will to implement them so they demand that employers provide them rather than just paying cash. This is the reason that the category 'employee' exists in the first place.
‘so they demand that employers provide them..’
Yes, that’s the situation in the US, yes, not sure how relevant it’s to this discussion, though. In many European countries healthcare is funded through a payroll tax and provided by the government/a public agency.
That comes from a privileged point of view. People with little skills will be coerced to give up these things and the cost will be shifted on other people.
sadly, that is not how capitalism works in practice.
employers have a vastly higher amount of leverage at the negotiation table compared to employees.
Dutch society (and most of western Europe) has made an explicit choice to create a social contract in which employees and employers are bound by the law of the government in question. and that law contains rules about employment.
mind you these rules exists because of the risk of the threat of violent uprisings in the 1850's.
the revolutions of 1848 are a result of working in the way you just stated. it leads to massive unrest and instability.
You can include southern and eastern Europe as well, it's just bit different there.
When society was still less mobile and many jobs were meant to be forever(when I started to work, this was coming to an end slowly), workers took their jobs very seriously(none of that we are family messaging on intranets like these days) and everyone knew their place, workers respected a managers authority and I have seen on more than one occasions how attempted manager power play was shut down right on the spot, often with let's say credible promises of sever aggression.
Some parts of Europe have a population that's a bit short tempered, such things like some coked up Uber manager touching someone's gf or wife would be dealt with swiftly and personally.
There are many such social contracts, written, unwritten and I am proud that Europe has them and is keeping them.
Interestingly, having spent plenty of time in LATAM, many people consider themselves leftists, but it's very, very different, the social system is bad due to lack of money, or impractical allocation of funds, but the will and spirit is there.
