What's an industry that's known to treat its workers very well?

78 comments

One with a union.
- This is the right answer. Any industry is garbage if they can freely exploit the labor of their workers.
  
  Absolutely. Look at the solidarity of WGA, SAG, and the Teamsters today. They're standing up to the real 'landed gentry' – corporations trying to strip away job protections and replace workers with generative AI.
- Or in qualified workers shortage.
  
  nurses angrily enter the chat
- This is the only answer.
  
  My man be careful you are not constructing yourself an overly simplistic world view where everyone is a goodie or a baddie.
- Not all the time. I worked for a company that treated me pretty well around the union, but the union would protect the workers who screwed up and would get them back, even when the screw up was a major one that violated booze laws. And since it was seasonal work, they didn't really have a good method for helping find work out of the season.. I really think the company would still act the same without the union.

Law Enforcement. They can literally get away with murder and they will be protected by their coworkers and bosses.
- Believe it or not it's also a terrible job. You see a lot of bad shit. Car wrecks, death, abused kids. And even if you do your job the right way most the people you interact with won't like you.
  
  most the people you interact with won’t like you.
  Yeah... because you're a corrupt and murderous goon that's above the law. What's not to dislike?
- They can literally get away with murder and they will be protected by their coworkers and bosses.
  It's not just their bosses and coworkers that protects them - the entire media machine and political establishment protects them as well.
  We don't say ACAB for nothing.

I'm not sure if this applies in general, but government sectors probably. My brother works in engineering for infrastructure and stuff, and he always brags about how much time off he gets and work life balance etc. Of course not when some environmental disaster happens, then there are lots of shit (sometimes literally) for him to deal with
- That is very, very, very much not the case in general. Your brother works at a unicorn office.
  
  Yeah could be. It could probably be also more to do with them having a union.
- I am a civil engineer in local government. Your brother is lucky. While there are some good things (pension, vacation, benefits, paid overtime), we are underpaid, have little flexibility on schedule, and are not permitted to WFH, except in d course for on our own time
  
  Yeah when I read the question, "construction" is definitely not one of the things that came to my mind. The work is simply too demanding, so many people involved, deadlines, work under the sun, in general I think building is hard work. I can see a structural engineer or consultant having a nice life-balance tho.
- Guess it depends on the country.
  Right now, UK public sector is absolutely dire. A lot of us are wildly overworked and underpaid. I've honestly considered going back to the private sector because I could be earning about £10-15k/pa more, but at least in my specific sector I have guaranteed job security and some (largely false at this point) sense of making a positive contribution to the society I live in.
  Job progression isn't easy, especially now because of cuts and recruitment freezes. There's no benefits other than always getting public holidays off. Our pensions were wrecked in 2015 and won't even compensate for it.

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Software engineering and website development.
- Not sure I agree there, these are jobs where you can be in a company with "crunch culture", crazy deadlines, overtime expected, etc.
  
  Very much an industry of two halves. Some companies absolutely do not care about you and will drive you to do more with less and for longer hours until you burn out, and then replace you with the next poor sucker. Offers will bend over backwards to look after their people and maintain a working environment where everyone gets a say and is happy and able to be at their best. Which one you get can be a total coin flip, and even sat talking to them in a job interview it's sometimes easy to mistake one for the other.
- I’m treated well as a software engineer, I’m the envy of my friends of family. But I have friends who are treated like crap in software dev too. So I guess it goes both ways.
  
  Your friends who are treated like crap, are they in a company where software is the main product, or in a company where software is a support department (and their actually money earner is some other product/service)?
- not in india. most companies treat you like trash because it's so easy to replace you here with some other poor dude who is ready to take it. good programmers demand a good salary and most orgs dont offer that.. that's why most software developed here is trash.
- Definitely not everywhere. Speaking from experiences
- I work at a place (state government) that has very flexible hours, lets people step out for a few hours to take care of errands, gives you time off with no questions asked, etc. Having said that, I feel very fortunate, as I have heard some horror stories about other places.
- For now lol.
  
  It'll definitely change if AI puts a bunch of us out of work, but I don't think it's something to laugh about. I worked my ass off to get into this career, self-educating for a decade until I finally broke into the cushy jobs. I have no idea what I would do if my career goes away. There's nothing else that I'm as good at as I am at programming.

I don’t think it’s simple enough to lump entire work sectors as good or bad. I would argue that that kind of macro look will gloss over the people you will work for.
The company reputation and turnover is what is really worth looking into. If a company has low turnover and its employees speak highly of their work environment are one’s worth looking into. The only exception to that would be if there was higher turnover but those people leaving move to bigger things or don’t look back on their time poorly.
- I completely agree with this. It depends on the company’s leaders and the culture.

Law enforcement and union busting. There is a lot of overlap but they’re separate enough.

Depends on what you mean by being treated well. The tech industry typically has fantastic office spaces, benefits and pay, but generally speaking they get overworked and under appreciated.
Social work, public health, education and that kind of “good for the world” work (not sure how to lump it all together) typically has bad pay, long hours, and unpleasant work spaces, but a really high degree of appreciation by their coworkers, superiors and clients.
Just some examples I’m familiar with
- All the social workers I know do way too much work for way too little pay, and often care more and end up bringing their work home mentally.
- By good for the world work, you mean "Noble Professions"?
  
  Thanks. Is that a term?
- I don't agree on the office spaces in tech. They are good looking for sure, but they still have open space mostly. We need real offices back. Like one maximum 2 people per office. A company that offers that is a good company. I haven't found one yrt that pays decently and offer real offices
  
  Different personal preferences I guess!

I'm a software engineer, and I don't experience any of the issues that are commonly complained about in other industries. I get paid well, I get 6% 401k matching, I never have to do overtime, my company frequently pays for social events during work hours (instead of working that day), everyone I work with is easy to get along with. I work from home (I recently started going in one day a week, but it isn't required, and I won't get in trouble or anything if I don't come in), I can take long lunches, I can stop working early if I finish all my work, I get 3 months paid parental leave if I have a baby, I get 5 weeks PTO a year, all my work expenses are paid for. I could go on and on. I literally don't have a single thing to complain about regarding my job. And I felt the same way about my last job until we got bought out by another company. It took me only one application to get a new job when I decided that I didn't like the new company that took over. I even found my first job within a month of graduating college, and that was with one week of that being Christmas/New Years.
- Which company is this? I'd love to apply if there is a position there.
  
  Facemicrogooglazon?

I think you got your answer. Fuck industry
- The fuck industry? You talking about porn?
  
  I hear they are treated badly and paid little for amount of work they do.
  
  It’s hard work but pays handsomely.

Congressman
- Big name airlines treat their workers pretty well

My mailman says USPS is still a good path; federal job with pension. He likes being a carrier, but says he's trying to get his kids to look at other roles within the Postal Service, like mechanic/technician or logistics or IT.
I do think any federal job that doesn't get dragged into politics too much would be pretty solid.

Politics (provided you reach high office).

Insurance, at least in my experience.

One where decisions are made within horizontal power structures between the producers and consumers, where workers have a democratic control of their work, and consumers have a say on what needs to be produced, necessarily uniting the producer and consumer relationship.
Where any industry concentrates its power to only the owners of the means of production, no power will flow naturally to the workers, and thus will most likely treat their workers like expendables. Under capitalism, every industry functions like this as the power structure needs to be vertical for the owners of industry to continue their shenanigans.
Basically none today.

There isn’t one. Industry is inherently counter to fairness. The whole point is to get yourself enough advantages to be able to stop competing. Accept that capitalism is inherently incompatible with compassion & empathy.
- Exactly. Once you can be exchanged easily there is no need to treat you well. Then it is more up to the character and motivation of your superior. Working in IT development (google or Apple) can sometimes been seen as good working conditions, but this is more because they know they need not only someone who studied IT, but is also knowledgeable and highly motivated, which narrows down the potential candidates a lot.

Check the B Corp certified list. It helps.
- My own experience is it can be even worse because then the labor exploitation comes with a side of moral guilt complex. It's not just corporate "we're a family" bs but that plus "we're saving the earth" x1000
  
  I don't know if B corp has to do with the environment, but I know one of the possible benefit of being certified MAYBE guaranteed maternity leave for several months instead of zero like most US companies.
  But this is not always the case since the certification is flexible based on a point system.
  Still, having SOME basic standard is a step forward... Just a very small step .. like the size of a pebble.

78 comments