> Seems like everyone, everywhere is overworked, underpaid, and under supported. How much longer can we frogs survive the boiling?

I'm Australian. In Australia, if you are forced to work overtime the rate of pay goes up, by 50% or if it's extreme, double. As a consequence "underpaid" isn't a common complaint of people working lots of overtime.

This has some negative consequences of course. If labour is plentiful you can have lots of people on hand and pay them on an hours-worked basis. The same deal applies - if you go beyond 40 hours a week their rate of pay goes up, but that shouldn't happen if labour is plentiful and management is on the ball.

But if, as in this case labour isn't plentiful, then they are going to have to fix it some other way - like paying to train more staff. What the employers can't do is offload the problem entirely onto their employees, so there are forces compelling them to get their act together.

The OP makes it sound like the dynamic is very different in the US.

That's true, but there are not that many jobs that have so many lives on the line as ATC.

True, few people managing lots of airplanes at the same time...

The point of the frogs boiling metaphor is the frogs in fact do not survive.

Lots of people are overpaid and underworked too. Or in bullshit jobs, or both.

Not at all, the ATC situation is different. It doesn't help to try to jam a general (and wrong!) societal comment here, just diffuses responsibility.

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As long as we're desperate for a job and we need to finance our lifestyle to impress the Johnsons.

It's simple... AI and automation will be gradually replacing everyone's job. The reason people are overworked is because they can't afford to lose their job.

I wrote this 12 years ago and it's even more true today: https://magarshak.com/blog/stop-wasting-our-time/