5 ms·

The biggest protection a worker has is his ability to quit and find another employer. All other "protections" usually end up costing you someway or another. Ma

by dkopi 10y ago

The biggest protection a worker has is his ability to quit and find another employer. All other "protections" usually end up costing you someway or another. Mandatory vacation days are converted to lower salaries. Maternity leave makes it more difficult for young married women to find a job. Mandatory Insurances and Pensions are simply calculated in to the "cost of employment", reducing the actual salary. Not being able to fire a worker means much higher hiring standards, and make it a lot more difficult for inexperienced workers to find a job.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
All true, every protection has a cost. However its also true that the most vulnerable workers suffer grievously. Some protections are needed.
masklinn 10y ago
> The biggest protection a worker has is his ability to quit and find another employer. That's only ever a protection as long as your skills are valued and in high demand. Which means it's only a temporary protection, and only for a minority of the population. > All other "protections" usually end up costing you someway or another. The "other" is misplaced here, if all you have is the ability to quit, you have no stability[0], you have limited bargaining power (and are pretty systematically in a position of weakness), and the cooperative incentives with coworkers are very different, and arguably lower. [0] and things get worse if you own property (now your "protection" is tied to property markets), a partner (now your "protection" may be tied to fucking them over) or dependents
- segmondy 10y ago
  > That's only ever a protection as long as your skills are valued and in high demand. Which means it's only a temporary protection, and only for a minority of the population. What's wrong with that? If your skills are not valued or in high demand, you don't deserve any protection. Retool and equip yourself with valuable and skills that are in demand. Should I be protected because I dug my head deep into MSDOS or APL and refused to catch up to the modern day ubiquitous Unix systems and C++?
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    > Retool and equip yourself with valuable and skills that are in demand. So precisely how does the US allow people to do that? Which programs are available which will keep a family of 4 fed, sheltered and clothed while the parents retool because their jobs are shitty and probably doing illegal things, and they know for a fact that the second they call their company out they're going to get fired? No, you shouldn't be protected from your job actually disappearing (past getting paid off) - but you should be protected from your employer being awful.
    - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
      And of course there aren't any programs. Suppose you don't have a good education, and your only job is janitor. Should you make minimum wage for the rest of your life? Pretty much the only way for someone like that to make more money is get together with other janitors. Suppose someone is 20 years old, maybe they have time to go to night school. But if you are 45 years old, a couple of kids. It's going to be almost impossible. Suppose that janitor can't find a job with health insurance because there's no minimum protection. They get sick, and they just die? I don't see how this works out for someone like that without some group negotiation - they are too weak otherwise.
      - bduerst 10y ago
        Why do you think healthcare is in such a terrible state? The U.S. and Canadian unions in the early 20th century are a great comparison. In Canada, they pushed the government to provide healthcare. In the U.S., they pushed the corporations to provide it. Fast forward 80 years, and as unions are being depowered, the healthcare options get worse for U.S. employees because they're not guaranteed by law.
vidarh 10y ago
> The biggest protection a worker has is his ability to quit and find another employer. Which works out great for the top few percent of workers who are sufficient sought after to be able to dictate terms. Not so great for the vast majority that are easy to replace. History has demonstrated pretty clearly that this is utter nonsense. Here's an example of the type of things that motivated unionisation in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi... 146 people dead because employers at the time saw it as perfectly acceptable to lock people in to prevent unauthorised breaks. The 8 hour working day too - it took about a century to get it widespread - and numerous dead. Frankly, that statement is deeply insulting to the more of the many people who have died to secure the labour rights we have today. > Mandatory vacation days are converted to lower salaries. I've yet to work anywhere with mandatory vacation days in the sense that I can not give them up. What I have always had, however, is the right to a certain minimum number of days. Even in Norway, which from a US point of view probably would seem quite extreme when it comes to the level of workers protections, if I truly wanted to work more I generally would be able to give up most of my vacation days. The big difference is that the defaults in employment law in Norway provide terms that people spent decades fighting for, and to deviate from that requires explicit consideration. You can write a Norwegian employment contract in about two paragraphs. In fact, most of my Norwegian employment contracts were about that length. But if you want to, you can find ways of deviating most protections as long as your employee is willing to pay for it. As it happens, it turns out that most employees do not value "buying" fewer vacation days or shorter notice periods, or other abrogations of established workers rights, at nearly enough money for most of them to be willing to write it into employment contracts. The reality is that while you may be right that salaries could be higher without some of these protections, they appear to be systematically valued higher by employees than employers once employees have actually experienced them. > Maternity leave makes it more difficult for young married women to find a job. Women leave employment in droves to have children whether or not they get paid maternity leave, and as such I see little reason to believe that providing right to maternity leave or paid maternity leave is likely to have a major additional impact. One of the reasons why so many women end up leaving the workforce, often for good, on having children in many countries is that many can't afford childcare. E.g. I'm in the UK, and childcare for a single child here can easily reach 1000 pounds/month until your kids reach school age (with some recent improvements in provision of part time government paid care). If you have a two pre-school children with care costs like that, you need a salary well above average before it is economical for both parents to work. Even if you have cheaper options available some places, you need a relatively decent paying job to be able to pay for child care for more than one child and have anything left. And this provides an easy solution to reducing the impact of maternity leave: Provide more subsidised childcare. As it happens, that will tend to do more to bring more women into employment than maternity leave does to counteract it. In Norway, improvements to maternity pay/leave and childcare provisions have always gone in near lock-step for exactly this reason (on top of that, there has in recent years been a paternity leave provision to further reduce the disparity). > Mandatory Insurances and Pensions are simply calculated in to the "cost of employment", reducing the actual salary. Mandatory insurances and pensions are not about workers protections per se most places I'm aware of, but a side effect of welfare systems where the state will ultimately pay for the welfare of those who don't make their own contributions. This creates a strong public incentive for ensuring that as far as possible people contribute to insurances when they are in employment, which often makes employee contributions to things like pensions extremely tax beneficial, and thus a central point of negotiations. E.g. in the UK, the Conservative government has been one of the drivers for more compulsory workplace pension plans as an explicit mechanism to shift more of the pensions burden off the government and basically using it as a way of undoing parts of the socialized nature of the UK pensions system. > Not being able to fire a worker means much higher hiring standards, and make it a lot more difficult for inexperienced workers to find a job. Not being able to fire a worker is not a common feature of workers protections anywhere.
uola 10y ago
"All other "protections" usually end up costing you someway or another." That's not really how you calculate compensation. You have to look at the salaries plus benefits. Usually people undervalue what the company can pay for them so more benefits usually means greater compensation. There's plenty of people in the US who accept salaries where they can't gracefully handle getting sick, unemployed or having a family. "Mandatory vacation days are converted to lower salaries." You can usually get this as cash compensation instead, they just can't force you to do so. In contrast to "unlimited vacation" that some startups have where you don't get anything if you work more. "Maternity leave makes it more difficult for young married women to find a job." This is a much longer conversation, but more than anything I would say that it's cultural. I know many women who have both successful careers and had maternity leave. But then maternity leave is usually paid by the government. "Mandatory Insurances and Pensions are simply calculated in to the "cost of employment", reducing the actual salary." Usually get more for the money. "Not being able to fire a worker means much higher hiring standards, and make it a lot more difficult for inexperienced workers to find a job." You can still usually be fired during a grace period, something like six months, or you can work as a contractor.
JetSetWilly 10y ago
Even if all workers have equal bargaining power regardless of their skills and location, that only applies to the private sector. Teachers or Firemen or whoever else mostly only have one employer - the state - which can collectively bargain on behalf of the citizenry, so the only reasonable response by employees is to collectively bargain as well.
- burfog 10y ago
  The state is special. It can not normally go out of business, and it has the power of taxation by force. There is thus nothing to restrain the union. The state normally also has elections. Because unions are allowed to fund election campaigns, the union effectively gets to sit on both sides of the bargaining table. The government "opposition" is a push-over.
  - JetSetWilly 10y ago
    There is nothing to restrain the union? You just described how the state can not go out of business, can use force, and can set laws how it likes. Certainly in my country the state has spent much time and effort using these powers to restrain and curtail unions. If unions are unrestricted it sure is odd how all the teachers I know have poor conditions and poor pay.
    - burfog 10y ago
      Because a company can go out of business, a normal union must resist demands which will cause this. If the union asks for too much, then everybody will be unemployed. With the state, there is no such worry. The union can demand retirement at age 30, $200 per hour, 15-hour work weeks, and a pension that is 110% of normal working pay. Why not? The state can pay it; all they have to do is seize assets from the citizens. They simply raise taxes. The police will use guns to deal with any who refuse. (see Puerto Rico and Greece) When the state is in control of currency, there is also the option to just print money. (see Venezuela and Zimbabwe) This too steals from the people.
      - 10y ago
serge2k 10y ago
This is all the "weird" pro-business stuff that pops up when Americans start talking about unions (or worker rights).

by dkopi 10y ago

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

All true, every protection has a cost. However its also true that the most vulnerable workers suffer grievously. Some protections are needed.

masklinn 10y ago

> The biggest protection a worker has is his ability to quit and find another employer. That's only ever a protection as long as your skills are valued and in high demand. Which means it's only a temporary protection, and only for a minority of the population. > All other "protections" usually end up costing you someway or another. The "other" is misplaced here, if all you have is the ability to quit, you have no stability[0], you have limited bargaining power (and are pretty systematically in a position of weakness), and the cooperative incentives with coworkers are very different, and arguably lower. [0] and things get worse if you own property (now your "protection" is tied to property markets), a partner (now your "protection" may be tied to fucking them over) or dependents

segmondy 10y ago
> That's only ever a protection as long as your skills are valued and in high demand. Which means it's only a temporary protection, and only for a minority of the population. What's wrong with that? If your skills are not valued or in high demand, you don't deserve any protection. Retool and equip yourself with valuable and skills that are in demand. Should I be protected because I dug my head deep into MSDOS or APL and refused to catch up to the modern day ubiquitous Unix systems and C++?
- vertex-four 10y ago
  > Retool and equip yourself with valuable and skills that are in demand. So precisely how does the US allow people to do that? Which programs are available which will keep a family of 4 fed, sheltered and clothed while the parents retool because their jobs are shitty and probably doing illegal things, and they know for a fact that the second they call their company out they're going to get fired? No, you shouldn't be protected from your job actually disappearing (past getting paid off) - but you should be protected from your employer being awful.
  - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
    And of course there aren't any programs. Suppose you don't have a good education, and your only job is janitor. Should you make minimum wage for the rest of your life? Pretty much the only way for someone like that to make more money is get together with other janitors. Suppose someone is 20 years old, maybe they have time to go to night school. But if you are 45 years old, a couple of kids. It's going to be almost impossible. Suppose that janitor can't find a job with health insurance because there's no minimum protection. They get sick, and they just die? I don't see how this works out for someone like that without some group negotiation - they are too weak otherwise.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Why do you think healthcare is in such a terrible state? The U.S. and Canadian unions in the early 20th century are a great comparison. In Canada, they pushed the government to provide healthcare. In the U.S., they pushed the corporations to provide it. Fast forward 80 years, and as unions are being depowered, the healthcare options get worse for U.S. employees because they're not guaranteed by law.

vidarh 10y ago

> The biggest protection a worker has is his ability to quit and find another employer. Which works out great for the top few percent of workers who are sufficient sought after to be able to dictate terms. Not so great for the vast majority that are easy to replace. History has demonstrated pretty clearly that this is utter nonsense. Here's an example of the type of things that motivated unionisation in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi... 146 people dead because employers at the time saw it as perfectly acceptable to lock people in to prevent unauthorised breaks. The 8 hour working day too - it took about a century to get it widespread - and numerous dead. Frankly, that statement is deeply insulting to the more of the many people who have died to secure the labour rights we have today. > Mandatory vacation days are converted to lower salaries. I've yet to work anywhere with mandatory vacation days in the sense that I can not give them up. What I have always had, however, is the right to a certain minimum number of days. Even in Norway, which from a US point of view probably would seem quite extreme when it comes to the level of workers protections, if I truly wanted to work more I generally would be able to give up most of my vacation days. The big difference is that the defaults in employment law in Norway provide terms that people spent decades fighting for, and to deviate from that requires explicit consideration. You can write a Norwegian employment contract in about two paragraphs. In fact, most of my Norwegian employment contracts were about that length. But if you want to, you can find ways of deviating most protections as long as your employee is willing to pay for it. As it happens, it turns out that most employees do not value "buying" fewer vacation days or shorter notice periods, or other abrogations of established workers rights, at nearly enough money for most of them to be willing to write it into employment contracts. The reality is that while you may be right that salaries could be higher without some of these protections, they appear to be systematically valued higher by employees than employers once employees have actually experienced them. > Maternity leave makes it more difficult for young married women to find a job. Women leave employment in droves to have children whether or not they get paid maternity leave, and as such I see little reason to believe that providing right to maternity leave or paid maternity leave is likely to have a major additional impact. One of the reasons why so many women end up leaving the workforce, often for good, on having children in many countries is that many can't afford childcare. E.g. I'm in the UK, and childcare for a single child here can easily reach 1000 pounds/month until your kids reach school age (with some recent improvements in provision of part time government paid care). If you have a two pre-school children with care costs like that, you need a salary well above average before it is economical for both parents to work. Even if you have cheaper options available some places, you need a relatively decent paying job to be able to pay for child care for more than one child and have anything left. And this provides an easy solution to reducing the impact of maternity leave: Provide more subsidised childcare. As it happens, that will tend to do more to bring more women into employment than maternity leave does to counteract it. In Norway, improvements to maternity pay/leave and childcare provisions have always gone in near lock-step for exactly this reason (on top of that, there has in recent years been a paternity leave provision to further reduce the disparity). > Mandatory Insurances and Pensions are simply calculated in to the "cost of employment", reducing the actual salary. Mandatory insurances and pensions are not about workers protections per se most places I'm aware of, but a side effect of welfare systems where the state will ultimately pay for the welfare of those who don't make their own contributions. This creates a strong public incentive for ensuring that as far as possible people contribute to insurances when they are in employment, which often makes employee contributions to things like pensions extremely tax beneficial, and thus a central point of negotiations. E.g. in the UK, the Conservative government has been one of the drivers for more compulsory workplace pension plans as an explicit mechanism to shift more of the pensions burden off the government and basically using it as a way of undoing parts of the socialized nature of the UK pensions system. > Not being able to fire a worker means much higher hiring standards, and make it a lot more difficult for inexperienced workers to find a job. Not being able to fire a worker is not a common feature of workers protections anywhere.

uola 10y ago

"All other "protections" usually end up costing you someway or another." That's not really how you calculate compensation. You have to look at the salaries plus benefits. Usually people undervalue what the company can pay for them so more benefits usually means greater compensation. There's plenty of people in the US who accept salaries where they can't gracefully handle getting sick, unemployed or having a family. "Mandatory vacation days are converted to lower salaries." You can usually get this as cash compensation instead, they just can't force you to do so. In contrast to "unlimited vacation" that some startups have where you don't get anything if you work more. "Maternity leave makes it more difficult for young married women to find a job." This is a much longer conversation, but more than anything I would say that it's cultural. I know many women who have both successful careers and had maternity leave. But then maternity leave is usually paid by the government. "Mandatory Insurances and Pensions are simply calculated in to the "cost of employment", reducing the actual salary." Usually get more for the money. "Not being able to fire a worker means much higher hiring standards, and make it a lot more difficult for inexperienced workers to find a job." You can still usually be fired during a grace period, something like six months, or you can work as a contractor.

JetSetWilly 10y ago

Even if all workers have equal bargaining power regardless of their skills and location, that only applies to the private sector. Teachers or Firemen or whoever else mostly only have one employer - the state - which can collectively bargain on behalf of the citizenry, so the only reasonable response by employees is to collectively bargain as well.

burfog 10y ago
The state is special. It can not normally go out of business, and it has the power of taxation by force. There is thus nothing to restrain the union. The state normally also has elections. Because unions are allowed to fund election campaigns, the union effectively gets to sit on both sides of the bargaining table. The government "opposition" is a push-over.
- JetSetWilly 10y ago
  There is nothing to restrain the union? You just described how the state can not go out of business, can use force, and can set laws how it likes. Certainly in my country the state has spent much time and effort using these powers to restrain and curtail unions. If unions are unrestricted it sure is odd how all the teachers I know have poor conditions and poor pay.
  - burfog 10y ago
    Because a company can go out of business, a normal union must resist demands which will cause this. If the union asks for too much, then everybody will be unemployed. With the state, there is no such worry. The union can demand retirement at age 30, $200 per hour, 15-hour work weeks, and a pension that is 110% of normal working pay. Why not? The state can pay it; all they have to do is seize assets from the citizens. They simply raise taxes. The police will use guns to deal with any who refuse. (see Puerto Rico and Greece) When the state is in control of currency, there is also the option to just print money. (see Venezuela and Zimbabwe) This too steals from the people.
    - 10y ago

serge2k 10y ago

This is all the "weird" pro-business stuff that pops up when Americans start talking about unions (or worker rights).