Umm… which country would that be. Here in England, we get a statutory minimum of 23 days holiday. That statutory minimum actually includes public holidays, though most employers make it in addition. Not too far off the American 14 days plus public holidays.
State pensions here are a joke, and anyone subsisting on the state pension is in trouble. The government is putting back the retirement age too.
If you get made redundant, the payoff is usually one week’s or one-and-a-half week’s wages for every year of employment, but only if you’ve worked there for over two years. And if you’re a contractor, you’re your own boss and get no notice, and no redundancy.
As for the NHS, it’s very good for emergency care, but very patchy for other stuff. For instance, I had impacting wisdom teeth, and would have had to wait a year just to get an initial appointment.
And a 35-hour week? I should be so lucky. It’s a very good week when I do only 40 hours.
As for working in America, I think many Europeans would jump at the chance.
‘The grass is always greener on the other side.’
Perhaps Garius as a recent transplantee could comment?
“Losing your job” whether due to being fired or lay-off is a fact of life and the ability for employers to adjust their workforce is neccesary.
However it can be “bad” if it is done for other than performance reasons (ex. based solely on seniority or for purely personal reasons to hurt someone or advance someone else).
As for a “safety net” … is our’s really that bad? It’s not (or shouldn’t be) designed to immediately take the place of your own efforts to take care of yourself and your family.
JR has an agenda he is pushing-- he’s not objective journalist. You do know that, don’t you?
But look, there is nothing preventing Americans from voting for European style politicians who would install European style social services in the US, or in any particular state that wants them. Besides, last I checked there was a net inflow of Europeans to the US, not a net outflow of Americans to Europe.
You’re lumping a bunch of stuff in with “firing people” that really has nothing to do with the issue.
In Canada we have government health insurance and you can get a YEAR of maternity leave. But you can sure as hell fire someone without giving them some ridiculous amount of severance.
Something like a year of protected maternity leave really isn’t that big a problem for a business - in fact, I’ve heard business owners says it’s a good thing because they can get good employees back who might otherwise have just given up working altogether. It’s a hassle to get a temp, but it’s not really that bad. Same with our health insurance system; is it really any better for anyone to have to pay an HMO a giant pile of money?
But making it impossible to fire someone? Ridiculous.
What “14 days”? And, unless you’re a government worker, your USA employer can have you work on holidays without any extra pay. Thus, the “statutory” minimum of paid days off here is ZERO, 23 days less than there.
Sure, surgeons recognize that the “violence” they do the body when they work on it is dangerous. They make every effort to minimize the pain and suffering of the patient. They cut carefully, minimally, doing the least invasive work possible. They recognize that doing the work clumsily may do the whole body harm, not just the offending organ, digit or what-have-you. They minimize the effect of their violence wherever they can.
I don’t see much interest in minimizing the violence of firing here on the Dope, in fact, I’ve seen several people come pretty close to arguing that the violence in firing is a good thing.
The one place where the analogy doesn’t work is this: when surgeons throw away (or sometimes, save for biopsy) the portion of the body that has been removed, the body part’s role is over. It will not be seeking other bodies to attach itself to. It will not be needing platelets, white cells and so forth to maintain itself if it cannot find another body to attach itself to.
Fired people do not vanish into the aether, collectively, they represent a social problem which we can deal with well or badly, like any other social problem.
My analogy, which is in danger of being stretched to death at this point, was to contrast violence and surgery, not to set up surgery as a specific subset of violence. Violence is a firing performed badly, or for bad reasons. Surgery is a firing performed for good reasons. Surgery is what anyone should be aiming for.
Why doesn’t the employer get any credit for having kept that person from being a social problem for as long as they have? It seems like you’re positing a situation where the default is that everyone’s employed, and when they’re not employed that’s a disruption to the norm. Whereas the actual norm, from what I can tell, is that there’s always a subset of the population that’s unemployed, for whatever reason.
I also would note that, if someone is fired because of performance issues, the company will be taking someone out of the pool of the unemployed and putting them back to work. Why is it that you focus exclusively on the firing, and not on the subsequent hiring? It seems to me, from a societal perspective, the company comes out karmically balanced.
I am not arguing that people should be cast aside when fired, whatever the reason. I am arguing that it’s not an employer’s responsibility to be someone’s safety net. Work should be a mutually beneficial relationship. Obviously, that’s not always the case, but it’s the ideal.
I don’t think this point can be emphasized strongly enough. If society as a whole wants to provide a safety net for people without work, that’s fine. Society, as whole, should go ahead and provide that net. That means all of us, not just “employers”. If I can’t fire someone, I’m going to be extremely heistant to hire anyone in the first place. That latter situation is much more detrimental to scoiety than firing someone.
Becuase when I say “firing” I mean it like CA labor law means it- “firing with cause”- that is no Unemployemnt, no severance benefits, and in some case the Company can tell future employers why. Thus, I agree with CA law in that the “cause” should be not trvial, and generall (unless for crimes like stealing assault etc in the workplace) should be with several warnings and attempts to get the employee to get their act straightened out. “Fired” usually means that the employee is a bad employee overall. Stealing company funds is a common and excellent reason for “fired for cause” without warning. Insubordination is a reason for firing WITH warnings.
On the other hand “laid off” is generally purely an ecomonic decision on the part of the company- either they no longer need as many workers, or that particular worker just isn’t pulling their own weight (which can also mean that that worker is causing minor workplace dispruption which lowers productivity). Laid off workers get Unemployment, their referal is at worse nuetral, and they can get severance benefits. “Laid off” means that the employee is just not a good employee* for that company*- and could well be an effective employee elsewhere- or not.
In the PIT thread that started this thread, Maureen found that she had to spend far too much of her Manager resources on one “Joan”. Too much time, too much stress on Maureen, that employee was also causing minor disruptions. Thus, my feeling is that Maureen was perfectly justified in “laying off” Joan, but not firing Joan.
Thus- IMHO- if an employee is “just not working out”- then fine. The company made a msitake, that employee just isn’t a good fit with that companies culture, work ethic, etc. Realize that you- as the employER also are partly responsible as you picked that employee. Let them go with dignity- and with some small benefits.
But to “fire” an employee- that employee should either have commited criminal acts vs the company, or have been given a reasonable chance to change their ways.
I am the owner of a business. It is brought to my attention that the manager, whom I employ, has been firing good employees willy-nilly, for no discernable reasons. When I ask him about his personnel decisions, his justifications are weak (though certainly not illegal, this being an at-will state). He also tells me the great glee he took in rendering people destitute. He is, in other words, the precise evil monster that you assume most members of management are.
Question: Should I fire him?
Evil Captor, despite what we see on TV and in the movies, bosses do not just scream, “YOU’RE FIRED!!! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” For the most part, firing has to be done very carefully, and as politely and professionally as possible.
You assume incorrectly. I have seen Mr. Rifkin in a guest appearance on some TV show or another, and I don’t think I’ll be searching out his book.
I’ll try that. In the meantime, is it your premise that Sally Secretary or Mike Mechanic would improve her/his quality of life by moving from America to Europe and taking a similar job over there? We don’t see a lot of that.
I suppose you may be technically correct, as relates to “statutory”. However, most employers in the U.S. do give permanent employees national holidays off with pay, and generally a minimum of two weeks paid vacation.
Except in Maureen’s case, Joan had been put on a performance plan at least once. She’d also been suspended without pay three times in the past. Now Maureen’s behavior may, to you, be trival. But she could be accused of sexual harrassment (calling spouse regarding imagined affairs, possessive behavior regarding the boss), suspected but unconfirmed religious harrassment, incompetence (paying a bill late enough that the company was paid a penalty), implying a medical certification she didn’t have, and insubordination. Some of these are far from trivial and represent real liability issues to Maureen’s company. And moreover, anyone whose behavior impacts the productivity of others - even if its just morale, is far from trivial.
Had Joan taken the hint with any one of the previous measures, she would have had her resume out and had been looking for a job after each one of them. And she may have been able to quit with dignity. Joan seems to me to be the type of person for whom there is no dignified exit. Had she quit it would have been with “see you later suckers, I’m out of here.” Had she been laid off it would have been with threats to call lawyers on seniority or age/gender discrimination issues (whatever she could come up with).
Firing people who are unneeded or who performs badly and hiring someone else who does better, is good for society – and sometimes good for the fired people themselves, as they get a chance to seek to where their talents are better utilised.
So if I’m following correctly, your arguement is that getting rid of someone who is difficult or not doing their jobs should be a last resort, but getting rid of people who, presumably are doing a good job should not be? Now I am making that assumption because you said that it was a *purely *economic decision and so I am assuming you did not mean that the people are being laid off because of poor performance. Of course you do change from purely economic to including people who aren’t pulling their weight or are being disruptive, but by the way, laid off does not mean (at least in Pennsylvania):
nor does it mean
It does not preclude those definitions, but if I lay off a worker, I cannot replace him (at least in Pennsylvania.) A lay off means that his position is no longer needed. If I want to replace him I need to fire him.
I would argue the opposite. Keeping good people should be your first priority. In the book “Good To Great” Jim Collins makes the point that the old saying that
should be amended to
Laying off should be a last ditch effort (to save money.) Getting rid of bad people should not be. As has been stated many times, your obligation as a company is to all the employees and owners, not to an individual who won’t do his job or is causing trouble.
Yes, businesses do pay unemployment taxes. That much is true. But I don’t know of any state where being fired for cause will get you unemplyment benefits. So in the case of such firings, unemployment taxes are a moot point. Furthermore, much of the folderol that precedes a firing – write-ups, performance plans, etc.: exist not out of the pure goodness of corporate types’ hearts, but because they know that if they do such things they’ll have a paper trail to demonstrate that a firing was for cause, and hence can dispute unemployment insurance claims. In fact, there are risk management services that will set up such procedures that will let a business fire anyone for any reason, so long as they have the paper trail down right, and then will dispute any unemployment claim made by the dismissed employee.
Massive layouts, of course, are very different animals from firings. However, once again it is $$$ that prompts services like resume counselors and bringing headhunters onsite. Under an RIF, it’s rare that a biz will be able to successfully contest an unemployment insurance claim, so it’s very much to the businesses’ advantage that their employee get employed … and off unemployment insurance … as soon as possible.
Y’know, back when we were debating offshoring, the conservative and libertarian pro-biz types were saying that the threat that offshoring represents to US jobs was VASTLY over-rated – that for a number of reasons unrelated to cost, most jobs in the US were safe from offshoring. Now you present offshoring as a clear and present danger to anyone who would dare think to impose even the teeniest, tiniest burden on US businesses. Geez, it’s like you guys (not necessarily you in particular, Dangerosa) are being disingenuous: if we protest offshoring as a race to the bottom leading to economic ruin for US workers, offshoring is a minimal thing, hardly worth worrying about. If we even think about proposing any kind of limitation on how businesses work, offshoring is a huge bogeyman. Leaves me feeling kinda cynical, donchaknow.
I’m not looking at it from the firee’s position, or the firer’s position, I’m looking at it from society in general’s perspective … how best can we deal with this issue for all concerned. ISTM that most who support firing are looking at it from the firer’s position only, a much more limited viewpoint.
I’m not looking at it from the firee’s position, or the firer’s position, I’m looking at it from society in general’s perspective … how best can we deal with this issue for all concerned. ISTM that most who support firing are looking at it from the firer’s position only, a much more limited viewpoint.