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It's because, absent that protection, workers on the weaker end tend to get squeezed down to very low PTO whether they want that or not. [EDIT] weaker end in t

It's because, absent that protection, workers on the weaker end tend to get squeezed down to very low PTO whether they want that or not. [EDIT] weaker end in terms of ability to negotiate—so, the vast majority of workers.

bko 7y ago
Unfortunately what often happens is that this law applies only to full time workers at some cutoff (e.g. 30+ hours a week). If the cost of full time is too high (e.g. 7 weeks paid vacation for a low skilled job), the employer would be more likely to hire more part time workers. And you would see people working multiple part time jobs rather that a full time job. Some of those workers would likely be willing to forgo a generous benefit like 7 week vacation for the opportunity to work one job.
- shantly 7y ago
  There must be a lot more people who think the law's helping them than harming them, or it'd be changed. Might take time, but those sorts of laws have been common all over Europe for quite a while and I don't see any especially strong movements to repeal them, or even reduce the days off per year, despite incentives for businesses to attempt to drum up or encourage (at least, surely, not to oppose) such a movement, if possible, which one would expect to make such movements significantly easier to start and grow, if they had much popular support at all.
  - bko 7y ago
    I agree that it's not a popular opinion, but with these sorts of things the unintended consequences are not very visible. The people working part time may not realize it may be due to this affect. It's also interesting to look at percentage of workers that work part time by country. US is relatively low at 22% while countries with a more generous welfare state are higher (France 39%, Norway 48%) But there are a million other things going on as well so I'm not sure if it's related to that or something else https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.PART.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.PART.ZS?most_rec...

bko 7y ago

Unfortunately what often happens is that this law applies only to full time workers at some cutoff (e.g. 30+ hours a week). If the cost of full time is too high (e.g. 7 weeks paid vacation for a low skilled job), the employer would be more likely to hire more part time workers. And you would see people working multiple part time jobs rather that a full time job. Some of those workers would likely be willing to forgo a generous benefit like 7 week vacation for the opportunity to work one job.

shantly 7y ago
There must be a lot more people who think the law's helping them than harming them, or it'd be changed. Might take time, but those sorts of laws have been common all over Europe for quite a while and I don't see any especially strong movements to repeal them, or even reduce the days off per year, despite incentives for businesses to attempt to drum up or encourage (at least, surely, not to oppose) such a movement, if possible, which one would expect to make such movements significantly easier to start and grow, if they had much popular support at all.
- bko 7y ago
  I agree that it's not a popular opinion, but with these sorts of things the unintended consequences are not very visible. The people working part time may not realize it may be due to this affect. It's also interesting to look at percentage of workers that work part time by country. US is relatively low at 22% while countries with a more generous welfare state are higher (France 39%, Norway 48%) But there are a million other things going on as well so I'm not sure if it's related to that or something else https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.PART.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.PART.ZS?most_rec...