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OT: Hell, I worked with people like this for 30 years

purplefaithful
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This job in Sweden has just two requirements: Clock in and clock out. The rest is up to the employeeTitled "Eternal Employment," the project is both a social experiment and a serious political statement.

By Antonia Noori Farzan Washington PostMarch 7, 2019 — 4:04pm
Imagine: For the rest of your life, you are assigned no tasks at work. You can watch movies, read books, work on creative projects or just sleep. In fact, the only thing that you have to do is clock in and out every day. Since the position is permanent, you’ll never need to worry about getting another job again.
Starting in 2026, this will be one lucky (or extremely bored) worker’s everyday reality, thanks to a government-funded conceptual art project in Gothenburg, Sweden. The employee in question will report to Korsvägen, a train station under construction in the city, and will receive a salary of about $2,320 a month in U.S. dollars, plus annual wage increases, vacation time off and a pension for retirement. While the artists behind the project won’t be taking applications until 2025, when the station will be closer to opening, a draft of the help-wanted ad is already available online.
The job’s requirements couldn’t be more simple: An employee shows up to the train station each morning and punches the time clock. That, in turn, illuminates an extra bank of fluorescent lights over the platform, letting travelers know that the otherwise functionless employee is on the job. At the end of the day, the worker clocks out. In between, they can do whatever they want, aside from work at another paying job.
“The position holds no duties or responsibilities, other than that it should be carried out at Korsvägen,” the job description states. “Whatever the employee chooses to do constitutes the work.”
Titled “Eternal Employment,” the project is both a social experiment and a serious political statement. In early 2017, Public Art Agency Sweden and the Swedish Transport Administration announced an international competition for artists interested in contributing to the new station’s design. The winner would get 7 million Swedish krona, the equivalent of around $750,000. Swedish artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby entered and suggested eschewing the typical murals and sculptures that adorn most transit hubs.
Instead, they wrote, they would use the prize money to pay one worker’s salary and give them absolutely nothing to do all day.
“In the face of mass automation and artificial intelligence, the impending threat/promise is that we will all become productively superfluous,” their proposal said. “We will all be ‘employed at Korsvägen,’ as it were.”
Goldin and Senneby predicted that by creating a foundation to prevent the prize money from being taxed, then investing it in the market, they would be able to keep paying that employee’s salary for “eternity” — which they defined as 120 years.
Deeming the idea to be humorous, innovative and “an artistic expression of great quality,” the jury that had been convened to judge the competition decided to award them the prize. There was an “uproar” in Sweden in October when officials announced that Goldin and Senneby’s proposal had won, wrote Brian Kuan Wood, a board member for the Eternal Employment foundation.
In their own writing, Goldin and Senneby acknowledge that paying someone to show up at a train station twice a day and punch a time clock is unproductive and thoroughly worthless. That’s the idea. Many people believe that art is supposed to be useless, they point out.

Hurry-up Vikings, we ain't getting any younger! 

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#1 · Mar 8, 6:40 AM
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@"Bullazin" said:
@"StickyBun" said:
@"Bullazin" said:
@"StickyBun" said: We have those here in the U.S., they are called union jobs. 


Union workers actually work.  


LOL. Good one! .......Oh you are serious?



You know any cops unions?
firefighters?
how about taconite miners?
coal miners

Yes i know im too damn serious



I know carpenters unions, millwrights, auto, teamsters, etc. Unions are a great way for people to have a protected job and not work. I like the idea of why unions came to be, they were necessary. Today? With some exceptions, they are a travesty. But can't paint with too wide a brush here as with anything else. Obviously, not every union worker is shirking their duties.

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#22 · Mar 8, 2:17 PM
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@"StickyBun" said:
@"Bullazin" said:
@"StickyBun" said:
@"Bullazin" said:
@"StickyBun" said: We have those here in the U.S., they are called union jobs. 


Union workers actually work.  


LOL. Good one! .......Oh you are serious?



You know any cops unions?
firefighters?
how about taconite miners?
coal miners

Yes i know im too damn serious



I know carpenters unions, millwrights, auto, teamsters, etc. Unions are a great way for people to have a protected job and not work. I like the idea of why unions came to be, they were necessary. Today? With some exceptions, they are a travesty. But can't paint with too wide a brush here as with anything else. Obviously, not every union worker is shirking their duties.


https://youtu.be/KEWkeXLqiAM?t=11

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#23 · Mar 8, 2:28 PM
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@"StickyBun" said: We have those here in the U.S., they are called union jobs. 


Save your vacation time.

I'll hire you this summer, see if you can keep up for a couple weeks!!!

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#24 · Mar 8, 2:30 PM
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@"StickyBun" said:
@"Bullazin" said:
@"StickyBun" said:
@"Bullazin" said:
@"StickyBun" said: We have those here in the U.S., they are called union jobs. 


Union workers actually work.  


LOL. Good one! .......Oh you are serious?



You know any cops unions?
firefighters?
how about taconite miners?
coal miners

Yes i know im too damn serious



I know carpenters unions, millwrights, auto, teamsters, etc. Unions are a great way for people to have a protected job and not work. I like the idea of why unions came to be, they were necessary. Today? With some exceptions, they are a travesty. But can't paint with too wide a brush here as with anything else. Obviously, not every union worker is shirking their duties.


I strongly disagree with some of your sentiments, but i apologize for a comment i made earlier

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#25 · Mar 8, 2:32 PM
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@"ThunderGod" said: Basically early retirement with a pension for one employee.  Don't see where this is any experiment.  Just B.S.
It sounds like it is one person too. Definitely not an experiment with only one person.
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#26 · Mar 8, 3:16 PM
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The problem with unions is they create jobs when one wasn't needed. For example.  I was a project manager/inspector on a large bridge construction project.  One of the Carpenters was cutting a plywood form. When he finished I was trying to help him out and grabbed a broom and shovel to clean up the sawdust and wood scraps.  It was only a couple of shovel loads and would have taken 2 minutes.  He told me to leave it and that I'm taking work away from a laborer.  Well in my mind that company had one too many laborers if I had to leave 2 minutes of work for him.  These were the type of jobs that were created in the past when jobs were scarce and they tried to employ as many as possible.  Those times are locked gone.  The unemployment rate is 4% and there are jobs out there for a person to get without a unions help unlike in the past. 

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#27 · Mar 8, 3:55 PM
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@"Purple Haze" said: The problem with unions is they create jobs when one wasn't needed. For example.  I was a project manager/inspector on a large bridge construction project.  One of the Carpenters was cutting a plywood form. When he finished I was trying to help him out and grabbed a broom and shovel to clean up the sawdust and wood scraps.  It was only a couple of shovel loads and would have taken 2 minutes.  He told me to leave it and that I'm taking work away from a laborer.  Well in my mind that company had one too many laborers if I had to leave 2 minutes of work for him.  These were the type of jobs that were created in the past when jobs were scarce and they tried to employ as many as possible.  Those times are locked gone.  The unemployment rate is 4% and there are jobs out there for a person to get without a unions help unlike in the past. 
When his employer/company bid the job, the laborer was in the bid. Unless it ended up being a Time and Material job ( I doubt) Bridge work probably had some minority % clause in it. federal and/or state funding. Being a project manager I assume you are aware of these couple things I mentioned, there are many more rules and hoops employers have to jump through to meet the laws.

I assume the company doing the work was the low bidder?????????

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#28 · Mar 8, 4:20 PM
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@"JimmyinSD" said:
@"Caactorvike" said:
@"StickyBun" said: We have those here in the U.S., they are called union jobs. 

trying to make a joke I’m sure, but way off base.  Without unions you wouldnt have  weekends, a 40 hour work week,a minimum wage and safe and sanitary workplace provisions. Bullizin is right.  Of course abuses can exist, on both sides but who do you trust to protect you, the corporation or your fellow workers?



thanks to those "fellow workers"  (ahem..cough...mobsters... cough) and their looking out for the fellow worker a lot of those evil corporations went bankrupt or those jobs left the country.   as far as the rest of that shit... those things would have come around without unions,  there are plenty of places around the world that dont have organized labor and have shorter work weeks and better working conditions than in our organized shops here.  they had their time and place but that was long ago.


Jimmie,”those things would have come about without the unions”. WTF?  you gotta be joking.  I’ve  negotiated a number of union contracts with producers and believe me, NO gains are made without fighting for them.  As far as “plenty of places around the world dont have organized unions etc”. Sure, but they have governments that set limits on coorporations in order to protect workers.  And as far as “mobsters” go—thats a long outmoded cliche.  CEOs now earn tens of millions of dollars a year while cutting worker pensions, while threatening to leave the country if they dont get what they want.  who’s the mobster in that scenerio?  Of course there are good employers too—ones who know a union gives them a single bargining partner who can help to work out a comprimise that keep both workers and management happy.  There is a place for both at the bargaining table.

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#29 · Mar 8, 7:05 PM
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@"Bullazin" said:
@"StickyBun" said:
@"Bullazin" said:
@"StickyBun" said:
@"Bullazin" said:
@"StickyBun" said: We have those here in the U.S., they are called union jobs. 


Union workers actually work.  


LOL. Good one! .......Oh you are serious?



You know any cops unions?
firefighters?
how about taconite miners?
coal miners

Yes i know im too damn serious



I know carpenters unions, millwrights, auto, teamsters, etc. Unions are a great way for people to have a protected job and not work. I like the idea of why unions came to be, they were necessary. Today? With some exceptions, they are a travesty. But can't paint with too wide a brush here as with anything else. Obviously, not every union worker is shirking their duties.


I strongly disagree with some of your sentiments, but i apologize for a comment i made earlier


No need to apologize, its all good with me. 

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#30 · Mar 9, 6:28 AM
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