[jackfischer]

Why is this a government issue at all? It was unclear from the article why some contingent that doesn't like their relationship with their employer ought to be able to inflict their solution on everyone in Michigan via politics as the mechanism instead of the market

[rainsford]

Government regulation around conditions of employment has a very long history, because "the market" has a long history of producing things like Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire when it's allowed to.

While in theory the market punishes bad employers by making people not want to work for them, the reality is that for all but the most in-demand individuals, the power asymmetry between an individual and their employer is such that some level of government regulation is probably needed to maintain reasonable working conditions. You could certainly argue whether regulating this particular thing is a good idea or not of course.

[jackfischer]

Broadly agreed. But the triangle shirtwaist factory is about as far from "my boss calls me and it's stressful" as one can get! I'm disappointed that a some activists can inflict their preference for comfort on all of us.

[Henchman21]

Government is meant, in part, to give some amount of power & push-back to the least among us. Representative government is the solution we arrived at after we decided it was kinda shitty to just kill each other.

Why are you trying to deny people the representation they deserve and prevent the government from doing something people might want? Seems like some ideologically-based bullshit to me.

[jackfischer]

_Some_ people _might_ want - and a very privileged something at that! This is not west virginia coal wars. Why do a handful of ideologues get to insert themselves in the employee employer relationship for something so tame?

[Henchman21]

Because that is the form of government we have. We seek redress to our grievances in the way these folks have acted. Your POV is essentially “shut up and take it” or “find a new job”. Neither of these addresses the issue being raised. Nor does the idea that this is somehow “too tame” — that’s just dismissive.

Again I ask why you seek to deny others their rights?

[quadrifoliate]

> Why is this a government issue at all?

For the same reason anything is a government issue, i.e. that we regulate acceptable and unacceptable behaviors as a society, and periodically adjust what we find acceptable?

If your employer starts dumping large amounts of trash on your property tomorrow and says "oh that's just part of our relationship with you", I bet you'll want to get the government involved real quick because you never agreed to this.

[jackfischer]

The line of what rises to the level of "solve it with force", eg solve it with legal intervention, is understandably blurry. But in the trash example, if you indeed never agreed to it, that's already a legal issue and rightly so. This OTOH is a private aspect of the employee employer relationship and not exactly a human rights abuse like some of the pearl clutching comments here suggest FWIW writing as someone who went through and goes through very intense on call and all hours availability and firefighting for weeks on end, something I chose voluntarily. I don't want anyone interfering with my ability to choose that and accomplish what we accomplished.

[quadrifoliate]

If you signed a contract to do all-hours firefighting, this still doesn't affect that.

> But in the trash example, if you indeed never agreed to it, that's already a legal issue and rightly so.

That's exactly what this legislation is doing. All it's saying is, if you want off-hours work, make it explicit rather than implicit. If you fire people by expecting firefighting when it's not specified in the contract, you will break the law.

[yusefnapora]

The proposed bill would still allow you to choose to be on-call. Your boss just has to compensate you for your time explicitly when it falls outside of agreed hours, instead of getting an implicit claim to your entire life by virtue of your employment agreement.