5 ms·

Regarding Healthcare, this wikipedia entry sums it up pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_

by jagermo 10y ago

Regarding Healthcare, this wikipedia entry sums it up pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany Regarding the worker rights: Not only do you get a decent amount of holidays (around 30 in most companies, with additional free days for parents), but you can also take up to 14 months leave after childbirth (both father and mother, but combined not 14 months each and one person has to take at least 2 months to get the full amount). Your company has to offer you the job if you come back. You can't get fired on a whim if you didn't do anything wrong. Most jobs will have to give you a 3 to 6 months notice (depending on how long you were working there). Companies have to pay at least 8,50 Euro per hour. The law says that you are not allowed to work more than eight hours a day, however exceptions are possible to some extend.

Loic 10y ago
The 8h/day rule is an average per week if you are working 6 days a week, this is because the maximum work per week is 48h. Usually you work 5 days, so you fall in the rule that you must not be above 48h/week and a maximum of 10h/day. If you work in shifts, some other rules apply but at the end, you cannot go over the 48h/week on average and have special "recovery" days. But in Germany you have a lot of agreements for let say metal workers or people in the chemical industry. In some cases, the official week is only 37h or even 35h long.
- pluma 10y ago
  It's actually even more involved than that. For example there needs to be a 24 hour down period per week and there are mandatory breaks an employee is required to take by law (refusing to take a break, even voluntarily, puts the employer in violation with the law). I'd say that other than civil servants, people working in the "Handwerk" (a German concept that includes various industrial jobs and skilled crafts, literally "manual labour" but often implying specialised expertise) have it best as they typically work under union contracts and have fairly tight regulations. OTOH loan workers tend to have it worst: loan workers bypass a lot of the labour laws and often get all of the drawbacks of being self-employed without the benefits of actual free agency. They're often hired to replace permanent employees, so they're sometimes met with hostility from their colleagues and they have no job security and often no way to transfer to a permanent position (both because that's often exactly what they're there to replace and because they're often under non-compete contracts that forbid them from doing that). Agency work also tends to be pretty bad, especially for designers: you're often expected to work unpaid overtime and there is a lot of pressure keeping people from exercising their rights or asking for a raise. I've routinely seen designers work weekends and massive overtime (think 12 hours, not 10) for months on end. The worst story I heard was of a 32 hour day (working on a regular day until the next morning and then leaving "on time" the next day). Note that not every agency is like this, but they exist and it's taken for granted that you have to "eat dirt" if you really want to work in the industry. This especially used to be a problem with internships but thanks to some changes to a few laws interns have it pretty good these days (e.g. "voluntary" interns have to be paid minimum wage, making them a lot less cost efficient than they used to be). Also, of course, almost none of the labour protection laws apply to leadership roles (typically C-level jobs). The reasoning behind this probably being that if you run a company having to take time off can get in the way. Sadly this also means there are some strange corner cases for founders (e.g. you get almost none of the maternity protection).
kriro 10y ago
The getting fired part is a two sided sword though. I have to give notice up to 6 month in advance (I don't know the exact number it's a bit complicated). In theory I can dissolve my contract ("Auflösungsvertrag") on the spot but my employer has to agree to that. It's generally a good idea to have longer periods of job security but for someone who can (in theory) get rehired quickly the laws can get in the way, too. There's also inflexible stuff that gets in my way quite often. For example I have to rest for 11 hours before I can work again and can only work 11h/day without bureaucratic hassle. I get that it's meant to fight abuse but I'd prefer to have an easy way to waive these rights.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  "I get that it's meant to fight abuse but I'd prefer to have an easy way to waive these rights." An easy way to waive those rights would mean that effectively no one would have those rights. Quite frankly, it is better to err more on the side of caution in these things. Work will still be there tomorrow.
- foobar__ 10y ago
  I don't think this would be good idea. Then there would be the danger of employers pressuring their employees to waive their rights: "If you insist on working only 11h/day, we can hire someone else." I would totally expect this to happen for basically every minimum wage job if you could waive your rights like this.
- ambicapter 10y ago
  This is basically the obvious flipside of having these sort of rules. See also, "I wish my business didn't have to follow as many worker regulations so I could make more money faster".
  - kriro 10y ago
    I my case it's more a philosophical issue. I feel fairly uncomfortable working under those regulations (to the point of contemplating quitting an otherwise very interesting job every now and then) because I have a problem with unconditionally delegating my personal decision making to some elites that "know best what's good for me" without a chance to conditionally opt out. I do understand the general concerns and that some middle ground is needed to fight abuse but personally I favor hefty fines for employers that abusing the system and good whistle blower laws/infrastructure. I think some of this could be solved with different regulations for different kinds of jobs. More "thinky" jobs probably need a lot less regulation than say manual labor.
mahyarm 10y ago
I've heard in practice it's near impossible to fire badly performing employees in Germany as a result, even if you're a small company. Or firing a bad employee becomes very expensive which is even worse for small companies. It's probably hindered a bunch of people from starting companies in the region and makes getting a job much harder because employers have to be extra careful.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  "It's probably hindered a bunch of people from starting companies in the region" I very much doubt it. If you were really wanting to start a company, you're not thinking, "I'd do this totally awesome thing! If only it wasn't so hard to fire people!"
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    You start a company with a few small people in germany somewhere. You quickly realize that because of investment money and running a company, that running it in germany isn't that great and you move the company to the USA. It happens more than you think.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  > I've heard in practice it's near impossible to fire badly performing employees in Germany as a result, even if you're a small company. Or firing a bad employee becomes very expensive which is even worse for small companies. By tradition, first 6 months of employment are on probation ("Probezeit"), with 2 weeks' notice possible on both sides. Companies can opt out of probation time, though, if they want.

by jagermo 10y ago

Loic 10y ago

The 8h/day rule is an average per week if you are working 6 days a week, this is because the maximum work per week is 48h. Usually you work 5 days, so you fall in the rule that you must not be above 48h/week and a maximum of 10h/day. If you work in shifts, some other rules apply but at the end, you cannot go over the 48h/week on average and have special "recovery" days. But in Germany you have a lot of agreements for let say metal workers or people in the chemical industry. In some cases, the official week is only 37h or even 35h long.

pluma 10y ago
It's actually even more involved than that. For example there needs to be a 24 hour down period per week and there are mandatory breaks an employee is required to take by law (refusing to take a break, even voluntarily, puts the employer in violation with the law). I'd say that other than civil servants, people working in the "Handwerk" (a German concept that includes various industrial jobs and skilled crafts, literally "manual labour" but often implying specialised expertise) have it best as they typically work under union contracts and have fairly tight regulations. OTOH loan workers tend to have it worst: loan workers bypass a lot of the labour laws and often get all of the drawbacks of being self-employed without the benefits of actual free agency. They're often hired to replace permanent employees, so they're sometimes met with hostility from their colleagues and they have no job security and often no way to transfer to a permanent position (both because that's often exactly what they're there to replace and because they're often under non-compete contracts that forbid them from doing that). Agency work also tends to be pretty bad, especially for designers: you're often expected to work unpaid overtime and there is a lot of pressure keeping people from exercising their rights or asking for a raise. I've routinely seen designers work weekends and massive overtime (think 12 hours, not 10) for months on end. The worst story I heard was of a 32 hour day (working on a regular day until the next morning and then leaving "on time" the next day). Note that not every agency is like this, but they exist and it's taken for granted that you have to "eat dirt" if you really want to work in the industry. This especially used to be a problem with internships but thanks to some changes to a few laws interns have it pretty good these days (e.g. "voluntary" interns have to be paid minimum wage, making them a lot less cost efficient than they used to be). Also, of course, almost none of the labour protection laws apply to leadership roles (typically C-level jobs). The reasoning behind this probably being that if you run a company having to take time off can get in the way. Sadly this also means there are some strange corner cases for founders (e.g. you get almost none of the maternity protection).

kriro 10y ago

The getting fired part is a two sided sword though. I have to give notice up to 6 month in advance (I don't know the exact number it's a bit complicated). In theory I can dissolve my contract ("Auflösungsvertrag") on the spot but my employer has to agree to that. It's generally a good idea to have longer periods of job security but for someone who can (in theory) get rehired quickly the laws can get in the way, too. There's also inflexible stuff that gets in my way quite often. For example I have to rest for 11 hours before I can work again and can only work 11h/day without bureaucratic hassle. I get that it's meant to fight abuse but I'd prefer to have an easy way to waive these rights.

st3v3r 10y ago
"I get that it's meant to fight abuse but I'd prefer to have an easy way to waive these rights." An easy way to waive those rights would mean that effectively no one would have those rights. Quite frankly, it is better to err more on the side of caution in these things. Work will still be there tomorrow.
foobar__ 10y ago
I don't think this would be good idea. Then there would be the danger of employers pressuring their employees to waive their rights: "If you insist on working only 11h/day, we can hire someone else." I would totally expect this to happen for basically every minimum wage job if you could waive your rights like this.
ambicapter 10y ago
This is basically the obvious flipside of having these sort of rules. See also, "I wish my business didn't have to follow as many worker regulations so I could make more money faster".
- kriro 10y ago
  I my case it's more a philosophical issue. I feel fairly uncomfortable working under those regulations (to the point of contemplating quitting an otherwise very interesting job every now and then) because I have a problem with unconditionally delegating my personal decision making to some elites that "know best what's good for me" without a chance to conditionally opt out. I do understand the general concerns and that some middle ground is needed to fight abuse but personally I favor hefty fines for employers that abusing the system and good whistle blower laws/infrastructure. I think some of this could be solved with different regulations for different kinds of jobs. More "thinky" jobs probably need a lot less regulation than say manual labor.

mahyarm 10y ago

I've heard in practice it's near impossible to fire badly performing employees in Germany as a result, even if you're a small company. Or firing a bad employee becomes very expensive which is even worse for small companies. It's probably hindered a bunch of people from starting companies in the region and makes getting a job much harder because employers have to be extra careful.

st3v3r 10y ago
"It's probably hindered a bunch of people from starting companies in the region" I very much doubt it. If you were really wanting to start a company, you're not thinking, "I'd do this totally awesome thing! If only it wasn't so hard to fire people!"
- mahyarm 10y ago
  You start a company with a few small people in germany somewhere. You quickly realize that because of investment money and running a company, that running it in germany isn't that great and you move the company to the USA. It happens more than you think.
mschuster91 10y ago
> I've heard in practice it's near impossible to fire badly performing employees in Germany as a result, even if you're a small company. Or firing a bad employee becomes very expensive which is even worse for small companies. By tradition, first 6 months of employment are on probation ("Probezeit"), with 2 weeks' notice possible on both sides. Companies can opt out of probation time, though, if they want.