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There are better ways to establish a social safety net than forcing companies to employ workers they don't want or need. Look at the results of the law--not th

by learc83 15y ago

There are better ways to establish a social safety net than forcing companies to employ workers they don't want or need. Look at the results of the law--not the intentions. The article says France has 2.4 times as many companies with 49 employees than with 50. This labor code is preventing companies from expanding, and encouraging companies to create new jobs in other countries rather than in France. The effect it is having is to protect existing jobs at the expense of new ones, and is an overall net drain on the economy. If they, as a society, have decided they want a social safety net, why not work on something like a guaranteed minimum income or a negative income tax system instead? Give them the money directly so the costs are transparent instead of this roundabout regulatory nonsense.

briandon 15y ago
No, the labor code is not preventing companies from expanding. The greed of the company owners/directors/management is preventing them from expanding. They don't want to share profits with their employees or have to rub shoulders with them and pretend for even a few minutes once a week that they are equal. The can't-shed-employees meat of the article is: Software maker Viveo Group, an arm of Geneva-based Temenos Group, began the required talks with the workers’ council in February 2010 because it wanted to cut about a third of its 180-member staff, according to court records. Viveo offered employees a voluntary departure plan in June of that year as the council dragged its feet on evaluating the earlier proposal, court records show. The workers’ council then went to court to block the cuts. It won a ruling against the original plan in January 2011 on the grounds that Viveo was forecasting an 18 percent increase in sales, meaning its future didn’t depend on the layoffs. France’s highest appeals court is reviewing the decision and is expected to rule on May 3. “What holds back hiring in France is the lack of clarity on how to legally cut jobs,” says Déborah David, a labor lawyer at Jeantet Associés in Paris who has followed the case. If the decision is upheld, Viveo will have to take back the workers and hand over two and a half years in back pay, she says. You have a company that shed a third of its workers. A workers' council fought for and managed to win a more favorable layoffs scheme for them than the employer would have liked but they were still layoffs. ["voluntary departure plan" is a terribly Orwellian name for a layoffs scheme] The company seems to have justified the layoffs as a matter of economic survival rather than claiming that a third of the workers that had been carefully screened, interviewed, and hired were actually no-good bums. It turns out that sales are now up 18%. If they were great, skilled employees regretfully laid off out of economic necessity then why not hire them back now that business has taken a turn for the better? The answer would seem to be that the company was not honest about their reasons for the layoffs. Either they used an excuse to rid themselves of undesirables and low-performers or they used the economy as an excuse to fire otherwise fine workers.
- wlievens 15y ago
  I don't see anything wrong with laying someone off for any reason if it's under a fair and generous severance package. It happened to me and I have no hard feelings about it at all.
  - briandon 15y ago
    The severance package that those workers got was fought for by their workers' council (the institution that terrified Haan, another businessperson quoted in the same article). Without the requirement that 49-worker-plus enterprises have worker councils, most employers would squash them if at all possible, and there would be no one to negotiate humane layoff terms for the people being jettisoned.
    - wlievens 15y ago
      That looks like a giant fault in employment law to me. I don't understand why a severance package should be something subject to negotiation. Write a law with a very simple function of years of service, pay and age and let that spit out a number. Done. No time and money wasted negotiating, employers and employees know what they're getting. When I was let off in 2009, I basically wasted 4 or 5 months at my old job waiting to get fired because the law required that much time for a collective termination. The outcome of that "negotiation" was not different than it was at day one, so I just don't get it.
- learc83 15y ago
  >The greed of the company owners/directors/management is preventing them from expanding. Obviously the law is producing unintended consequences if France is full of 49 person companies who only exist to skirt some regulation. This is why I say the effects matter not the intent. The effect is--companies are expanding less and hiring less workers. Whether that is caused by greed or not is moot. If the law didn't exist the companies would expand, since it does exist they won't. The motives of the company are irrelevant. The end result of this law will be less economic growth for France. If the desire is to build a social safety net, why not tax some of the extra economic gain that will result from fewer labor regulations and give the money to the people directly?

by learc83 15y ago

briandon 15y ago

No, the labor code is not preventing companies from expanding. The greed of the company owners/directors/management is preventing them from expanding. They don't want to share profits with their employees or have to rub shoulders with them and pretend for even a few minutes once a week that they are equal. The can't-shed-employees meat of the article is: Software maker Viveo Group, an arm of Geneva-based Temenos Group, began the required talks with the workers’ council in February 2010 because it wanted to cut about a third of its 180-member staff, according to court records. Viveo offered employees a voluntary departure plan in June of that year as the council dragged its feet on evaluating the earlier proposal, court records show. The workers’ council then went to court to block the cuts. It won a ruling against the original plan in January 2011 on the grounds that Viveo was forecasting an 18 percent increase in sales, meaning its future didn’t depend on the layoffs. France’s highest appeals court is reviewing the decision and is expected to rule on May 3. “What holds back hiring in France is the lack of clarity on how to legally cut jobs,” says Déborah David, a labor lawyer at Jeantet Associés in Paris who has followed the case. If the decision is upheld, Viveo will have to take back the workers and hand over two and a half years in back pay, she says. You have a company that shed a third of its workers. A workers' council fought for and managed to win a more favorable layoffs scheme for them than the employer would have liked but they were still layoffs. ["voluntary departure plan" is a terribly Orwellian name for a layoffs scheme] The company seems to have justified the layoffs as a matter of economic survival rather than claiming that a third of the workers that had been carefully screened, interviewed, and hired were actually no-good bums. It turns out that sales are now up 18%. If they were great, skilled employees regretfully laid off out of economic necessity then why not hire them back now that business has taken a turn for the better? The answer would seem to be that the company was not honest about their reasons for the layoffs. Either they used an excuse to rid themselves of undesirables and low-performers or they used the economy as an excuse to fire otherwise fine workers.

wlievens 15y ago
I don't see anything wrong with laying someone off for any reason if it's under a fair and generous severance package. It happened to me and I have no hard feelings about it at all.
- briandon 15y ago
  The severance package that those workers got was fought for by their workers' council (the institution that terrified Haan, another businessperson quoted in the same article). Without the requirement that 49-worker-plus enterprises have worker councils, most employers would squash them if at all possible, and there would be no one to negotiate humane layoff terms for the people being jettisoned.
  - wlievens 15y ago
    That looks like a giant fault in employment law to me. I don't understand why a severance package should be something subject to negotiation. Write a law with a very simple function of years of service, pay and age and let that spit out a number. Done. No time and money wasted negotiating, employers and employees know what they're getting. When I was let off in 2009, I basically wasted 4 or 5 months at my old job waiting to get fired because the law required that much time for a collective termination. The outcome of that "negotiation" was not different than it was at day one, so I just don't get it.
learc83 15y ago
>The greed of the company owners/directors/management is preventing them from expanding. Obviously the law is producing unintended consequences if France is full of 49 person companies who only exist to skirt some regulation. This is why I say the effects matter not the intent. The effect is--companies are expanding less and hiring less workers. Whether that is caused by greed or not is moot. If the law didn't exist the companies would expand, since it does exist they won't. The motives of the company are irrelevant. The end result of this law will be less economic growth for France. If the desire is to build a social safety net, why not tax some of the extra economic gain that will result from fewer labor regulations and give the money to the people directly?