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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

> On the other end of the spectrum you have Amazon drivers pissing in bottles--something that a steel mill laborer would never have had to do.

Are you really suggesting that laboring at a steel mill decades ago was a more comfortable job than being an Amazon worker? That's incredibly out of touch.

Even modern steel mills, with all of our technology and safety regulations, are difficult jobs. That's why they pay more than being an Amazon warehouse employees or drivers.

Older steel mill jobs were absolutely hellish. The struggles at modern Amazon jobs have been greatly exaggerated or cherry-picked in the news. There's no comparison between the two.

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My grandfather worked in a steel mill. It absolutely broke his body down. Died in this late forties.

So, did my grandfather. He also went on strike and got shot at by Pinkertons.

However, working in a modern steel mill is a far cry from that. Even back in the 1970s (which is several decades ago please note), "Get the book" (operating manual which specified procedures, training, safety equipment, how many men were required, etc.) was a standard retort when managers ordered you to do something dumb. And the union protected you when you told the manager to go pound sand because it was outside the manual.

Amazon warehouse workers are schlepping around heavy stuff--just like many old school manufacturing jobs. And get crushed, injured, etc. just like many old school manufacturing jobs. However, they have zero protection and not much training and no backup to tell managers to get stuffed.

Now, would I trade a programming job for a steel mill one? Absolutely not. Would I trade an Amazon warehouse job for a steel mill one? That's not as clear to me.

> several decades

You spelled "half a century" wrong (:

I'd take driving a truck and having to piss in a bottle over working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of 100.

Not sure about how the situation is in the States but the people driving those quick delivery vans over here in Eastern Europe (and over much of Western Europe, too, my country is in the EU so their companies can send them anywhere from Varna to close to Gibraltar at a moment's notice) have a very, very tough life, with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints. Apart of the huge stress that entails and the accompanying health conditions many of them also get into fatal road accidents because of said overwork and tiredness.

Fortunately the work of drivers driving big lorries is more tightly regulated with the worker's wellbeing also taken into consideration so that there's a fixed time interval per day you are allowed to drive, after which you have to literally stop at the first parking spot at the side of the road, no matter what the boss screams in your phone from half-way across the continent.

> with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints

Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers?

From https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/...:

"Daily driving period shall not exceed 9 hours, with an exemption of twice a week when it can be extended to 10 hours."

> Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers?

Unfortunately not for the smaller vans. In your link they mention:

> road haulage and passenger transport vehicles,

which "road haulage" I'm pretty sure means the regular big lorries we all think about. But when driving a Mercedes Sprinter [1] the same rules don't apply. You can actually drive that Sprinter with a regular driver's license, while for a regular lorry you need to take additional exams so that you can get into the "you can drive a lorry/big truck" category.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/20...

If you're driving an 18-wheeler truck, sure.

But a lot of door-to-door delivery these days uses "independent contractors" who use their personal vehicles and fuel, and get paid e.g. £120 for 180 deliveries.

Nobody's enforcing digital tacho cards for people's personal vehicles.

> Older steel mill jobs were absolutely hellish. The struggles at modern Amazon jobs have been greatly exaggerated or cherry-picked in the news.

This might be true but the comparison is profoundly misleading.

We should instead contrast the improvement in quality of working life with the improvement of other jobs and society in general.

Humanity (and US especially) has amassed an incredible amount of wealth, knowledge and technology in the last decades.

Switching from employment to "gigs" is as huge step backward and the quality of life is dropping for many people.

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