Worker Rights Extend To Facebook, Says NLRB

wjousts writes "American Medical Response of Connecticut had a policy that barred employees from depicting the company 'in any way' on Facebook or other social media. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that this policy runs afoul of the National Labor Relations Act, which gives employees the right to form unions and prohibits employers from punishing workers for discussing working conditions."

Comments

Freedom of speech

[JeffSpudrinski]

Sure...you can say/write whatever you want.

If you write that you hate your boss...in a public forum...with your name...don't expect your boss to buy your lunch for you. ...and don't expect them to forget about that when it comes time to pick employees for layoffs.

You can say/write whatever you want...just be ready to accept the consequences.

-JJS

Re:Freedom of speech

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Exactly. Same applies if an employee points out a safety issue or some illegal practice by upper management. Expect to be first against the wall when the next 'downsize' happens. The right to be screwed over by your employer is an American ideal handed to us by God. We should cherish it.

Re:Freedom of speech

[wjousts]

Wrong. There are laws to protect whistle blowers. If you blow the whistle and are later downsized, you may have a case for a lawsuit unless the company has documentation to show your consistent poor performance made downsizing you more logical than downsizing somebody else.

Re:Freedom of speech

[bigstrat2003]

I believe that he cannot actually hold that against you (at least, not openly). He can ask you to refrain from expressing your political views at the workplace, and he will probably be looking for a good legal way to get rid of you, but I seem to recall that it's illegal to discriminate based upon political beliefs.

Re:Freedom of speech

[delinear]

There are generally exceptions where the role requires some specific attribute. For instance, if you're casting an acting role for a young, able bodied male to be the lead in a movie you're shooting, an old, disabled female couldn't take action because, although you are actively discriminating against her for reasons that would usually be illegal, those attributes are integral to the role. I don't know enough about US employment law to know if political views are protected, but if they are there may be exceptions where one's views are pivotal to the job.

Re:Freedom of speech

[demonlapin]

The EEOC on the matter. If you're a government civil-service employee, you're generally safe, but no such rule applies to private workplaces.

Re:Freedom of speech

[demonlapin]

To the epsilon-minus that modded me troll: The EEOC on the matter. If you're a government civil-service employee, you're generally safe, but no such rule applies to private workplaces.

Re:Freedom of speech

[bigstrat2003]

Quoting from the page which you linked to:

The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) contains a number of prohibitions, known as prohibited personnel practices, which are designed to promote overall fairness in federal personnel actions. 5 U.S.C. 2302. The CSRA prohibits any employee who has authority to take certain personnel actions from discriminating for or against employees or applicants for employment on the bases of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age or disability. It also provides that certain personnel actions can not be based on attributes or conduct that do not adversely affect employee performance, such as marital status and political affiliation.

Note: Many states and municipalities also have enacted protections against discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation, status as a parent, marital status and political affiliation. For information, please contact the EEOC District Office nearest you.

So, based upon this, not only does federal law prohibit discrimination upon political matters, but various local laws do as well.

Re:Freedom of speech

[demonlapin]

Learn to read carefully.

overall fairness in federal personnel actions

[emphasis mine] The CSRA doesn't apply to private employers. Your local laws may apply, but I'd wager that most of those again only affect civil-service employees of governments.

Re:Freedom of speech

[stewbacca]

No, but if Karl Rove worked at my work and then said he votes Republican, my work can't fire him for that.

Re:Freedom of speech

[bigstrat2003]

You're right, I didn't read carefully enough. However, I would not wager that local laws have the same restriction. I also think it's only a matter of time until a federal law is in place.

Also, for some people, politics is like their religion, so that law may apply. ;)

Re:Freedom of speech

[MoonBuggy]

Interesting document. I find it odd that religious beliefs are protected but political ones are not.

Re:Freedom of speech

[demonlapin]

YMMV based on state and local laws. However - and while the site is definitely not authoritative, it does at least link to the relevant laws - they are not widespread, though they do exist in CA and NY. Link

Re:Freedom of speech

[s73v3r]

And yet, it takes how many years for a suit like that to carry out? And in the mean time, you still have to maintain your expenses, like your mortgage, or car payment. You'd probably also have to pay your lawyer too.

Re:Freedom of speech

[Hyppy]

I believe that government agencies generally file suit on behalf of whistleblowers, discrimination victims, et cetera if they believe that the case has merit. You're still up the fecal river if you need immediate cash, though.

Re:Freedom of speech

[yuhong]

Personally, I think direct response is a better idea, but of course you must check this is present before taking advantage of it.

Oh look

[sakdoctor]

Another slashdot story that takes an established event/concept/thing and makes a big deal about it because somehow facebook/twitter/social-net-dujour is involved.

I always wonder if these stories have organic origins, or bubbled up from some PR department.

Re:Oh look

[T Murphy]

It's not Slashdot that is giving Facebook-related stories undue weight, the ambulance service in the story specifically had a rule about Facebook and social networking (the article is unclear if they added 'Facebook' or if the rule explicitly mentions it). It seems people out there (making dumb rules) really do think something is exceptional because it happened on social networking sites.

It is often mentioned how rules and laws have to catch up with technology, but in the case of social networking, the old rules generally apply perfectly fine- except it seems people don't understand that. If anything, Slashdot's angle here isn't "it's interesting because it's on Facebook", but interest in how society has trouble adapting to technology.

Re:Oh look

[wjousts]

Sheeze, did somebody unfriend you on Facebook or something?

Re:Oh look

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's important. Don't you get it? Companies routinely like to throw their weight around and establish policies as they see fit. This is an article about a federal act that precludes a particular company from randomly controlling the free expression of it's employees. The fact that its facebook or some other social networking site is a random occurrence and has nothing to do with the gist of the story.

Re:Oh look

[stewbacca]

Exactly. If I hung a poster on my house that said "My Boss Sucks", is that really any different than me posting "My Boss Sucks" as my Facebook status?

The medium is different, but the message is the same (and should be treated, i.e. protected, the same).

Re:Oh look

[DerekLyons]

If anything, Slashdot's angle here isn't "it's interesting because it's on Facebook", but interest in how society has trouble adapting to technology.

That's Slashdot's angle. The OP was coming from the "oh look, it's popular with the masses and as a Slashdotter I'm too cool for stuff popular with the masses" angle. The Slashdot hivemind positively loathes anything popular with the unwashed, uncool, ungeeky masses.
 
The Slashdot editors are correct in posting these stories, because Facebook (and MySpace, and Live Journal, and other such sites) are part and parcel of the 'net and are technology... The OP is an idiot.

Re:Oh look

[KhabaLox]

It seems people out there ... really do think something is exceptional because it happened on social networking sites.

And rightly so, in my opinion. It is far easier for a meme to gain traction on Facebook or YouTube than on someone's personal blog or [insert other low-traffic web site].

Re:Oh look

[YodaYid]

I think you mean washed, cool, ungeeky masses.

Re:Oh look

[DerekLyons]

LOL ;)

US Employment Rights

[Manip]

Frankly I'm a little surprised - since in my experience employees are more or less slaves in the US. The entire legal structure seems set up for whatever is easiest and cheapest for employers to do whatever they wish. Employees can sue, and that is often the de-facto suggestion whenever anyone in the US has a problem, but frankly a lot of situations could be avoided if they had a strong legal framework like every other developed country.

No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Corbets]

No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US.

Spoken like someone who's never worked somewhere better.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

Excuse me.
I live in a third world country.
We have mandatory minimum leave. We have a limit on hours worked (40 hours per week, max of 5 hours overtime - it's ILLEGAL to allow more, and if it happens you have to give the time back as time off in the SAME week to compensate), we have mandated 1-hour lunch breaks and mandated 15-minute coffee breaks at least once per 4 hours, we have complete health and safety coverage including a law that states that in the event of *any* injury on duty no matter how minor or severe the employer is legally liable for any and all direct and indirect medical expenses resulting from said injury (hence most employers have IOD insurance), employers are not allowed to discriminate (among other things this bans the creation of any rule that only applies to one gender, race etc), you aren't allowed to fire anybody unless they've had three written warnings, written warnings can only be issued after a hearing where the employee has the right to council...

Sorry - but the US is actually WORSE than at least some third world countries when it comes to workers rights.

Oh and in case you were wondering, our economy is growing and our corporations do just fine despite these laws.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Barefoot Monkey]

Frankly I'm a little surprised - since in my experience employees are more or less slaves in the US. The entire legal structure seems set up for whatever is easiest and cheapest for employers to do whatever they wish. Employees can sue, and that is often the de-facto suggestion whenever anyone in the US has a problem, but frankly a lot of situations could be avoided if they had a strong legal framework like every other developed country. No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

Actually, here in the third world employees are guaranteed a certain amount of holiday time, sick leave and maternity leave. Firing employees requires giving them 3 month notice with full pay (although it is possible to hire with a temporary probation period, which IIRC is at most 6 months) and is subject to appeal at labour court if disputed. Oh, and don't even think about discriminating (unless it is to comply with employment equity regulations).

Re:US Employment Rights

[biryokumaru]

I kinda like it because if I'm not an incompetent moron, most of those things are none of my concern. I have all the stuff you listed, it's pretty much in my contract. Ultimately, I like to think that this just means that my tax dollars aren't wasted carrying along people who are too lazy to get good jobs.

But then, Europeans never seem to complain about "welfare moms," so maybe their system eliminates people feeding off the government? Also, instead of my tax dollars going to feed and shelter the poor (which is still something I don't think tax dollars should be wasted on) they go to bomb and pillage the poor somewhere else on the planet (which is hardly a defensible act). So, tax money is wasted either way, but at least it's mostly wasted giving hard working folk a (largely pointless) job.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Few health and safety regulations? Have you ever even heard of OSHA? They are so strict it's ridiculous, $10,000 per rung for the ladder you're standing at the very top of, oh yes, no regulations you say. Also there are mandated breaks and work hour restrictions enforced by the Department of Labor, however some jobs fall into categories that have exceptions to the common rules, most don't. And if you need mandated sick leave, may I suggest perhaps showing the fuck up to work once in a while? Not getting paid is an incentive to bring your sorry ass back.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

Dude, you want to pull that head out of your ass?

No holiday time, no sick leave

I'll give you the sick leave, but that's because almost everyone blows it on 3-day weekends, and never gets used for the intended purpose.

no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations

FMLA + OSHA, I'll let you look up those two. There are restrictions on hours worked and mandated breaks for non-exempt employees.

can be fired without notice or reason

Yeah, this sucks, and it's called at-will employment, but not all states are like this.

can legally discriminate

Really? REALLY? Just because it happens and people can get away with it doesn't mean it's legal.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

Huh? I live and work in the US. Never heard of anyone not getting holiday time or maternity leave. Sick time, I'm not as sure about.Agreeing to the hours worked and what you'll get paid for them is part of the hiring process. There are mandated breaks where unions are involved, outside of that, everywhere I've seen or heard of no one cares if you go out and take a smoke break or grab some water at the cooler or whatever once in a while. You're combining laying off with firing (which do have different legal implications, though I'm not sure exactly what they are, except that firing is far worse to have on your record). They cannot legally discriminate. Health and safety regulations are significantly higher than the third world, hence why so many companies want to outsource to India, China, etc. I mean, sure, maybe if you're working part time pushing baskets at the supermarket (or working through a contract in Michigan, like me), your benefits are going to suck. But "suck" is not the same as "You are forced to work 14 hours a day for almost no pay with no benefits at all ever!"

Health insurance is screwed up here. Health care is fine, in fact, excellent, as long as you don't go to Dr. Bob's Illegal Corner Surgery or something. Costs are high, yes, but that's partially because of idiots abusing the system, and partially to help pay for the medical research and advancements that help the health care to be good enough to keep everyone living a long time despite the obesity and stupidity epidemics among the general populous.

Re:US Employment Rights

[RobertLTux]

it depends on the exact job but most of what you are claiming is in fact false
No holiday time,: Most jobs will have some vacation time after a year or so
no sick leave, : Most jobs have a block of "personal days"
no maternity leave,: Its unpaid but required by the Family Medical Leave Act http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/index.htm
it unpaid but present
no restrictions on hours worked,: this gets a bit squishy but in an hourly job everything above 40 hours in a week gets paid time and a half and there is some stuff related to salaried jobs
no mandated breaks,: most states will have either custom or actual law on this point
few health and safety regulations, : ever hear of something called OSHA?? (this may hook into the break thing also)

Re:US Employment Rights

[zigziggityzoo]

No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

Check (10 days off/year), Check (15 days off/year, 6 months extended sick leave which renews every 5 years), Check (Paternity leave, counts as sick time), True (but if I'm over 40 hours I get overtime - knew I was on call taking this job), True (no mandated breaks, but my work environment allows for them whenever), No safety issues to worry about here, True (I'm not a "right to work" state, I'm in an "at will" state), and Discriminate? ooohkay. Come to the states sometime. See what it's really like.

Re:US Employment Rights

[thijsh]

Let's see:
- Is an employee considered property, or an 'asset'?
- Can an employee be forced to do labor?
- Does an employee who does not want to do said labor walk away?

And now consider these questions knowing that the majority of people can't just quit his/her job (the ob(li)vious answer)... If 'running away' and living on the street is your only escape you are a slave by my definition.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

>Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US.

Yes we foreigners know that you get to try and negotiate such things in contracts - and if you're lucky enough to be going for a rare job you may get decent ones. We also know what it's like to have sane levels of these things set out in LAW, and negotiate for extras ON TOP OF that.
My country requires every employer to give employees at least 14 days a year of holiday time. But I have 21 - I got to start negotiating above that, but even the factory janitor can at least get his 14 days.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

Sounds like we're in the same third world country :p - I actually forgot about the 3-month notice rules and the appeal court (and heck I've fought and won a case in that court once - got another 6 months pay in a settlement because I could prove the dismissal was unfair and both me and the employer agreed I wouldn't really want to go back).

Re:US Employment Rights

[yacc143]

Well, actually comparing US to EU employers (loosely spoken, as I always work as a contractor, so I've got basically no legal rights anywhere anyway), US employers tend to care about their "employees" way more than European ones. Guess that might not apply to somebody easily replaceable, and n=1 is a slight small probe for statistics.

Furthermore, I'd not call the US free of workplace rules, it's just that beyond the federal one, many states have their own regulations on top. Btw, it's quite similar to the EU, where there might be EU directives specifying standards, but the actual laws are enacted by the member countries. That's why in many areas most countries in the EU have their own laws that tend to be aweful similar to each other.
 

Re:US Employment Rights

[The Terminator]

Could you please specify of which "Paradise" you are talking?

Re:US Employment Rights

[martas]

WTF kind of 3rd world country is this? It sounds like France, for christ's sake! Seriously, if you have all that, maybe it's time to re-classify that country? I've lived in a third world country, and I've seen two kinds of relationships between employers and employees: family members, or slave-owner/slave.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Kokuyo]

This sounds rather good. Better than Switzerland, at any rate. Where do you live?

Re:US Employment Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

- Is an employee considered property, or an 'asset'?

An asset. They cannot sell me to a different company without my consent.

- Can an employee be forced to do labor?

If it's part of their contract and "forced" here means "or you'll be fired"? Yes. It's called being expected to do the job you were hired to do. Not a difficult concept.

- Does an employee who does not want to do said labor walk away?

They can. But part of real life is sometimes having to do things you don't want to do.

And now consider these questions knowing that the majority of people can't just quit his/her job (the ob(li)vious answer)... If 'running away' and living on the street is your only escape you are a slave by my definition.

Everyone can "just quit" their job. Many choose not to because they need the money. Those who do not like their job? They search for a new job, and when they find one, quit their old job and move on. Seriously, what the heck do you want from a job? The ability to do whatever the crap you want, regardless of your contract? Sounds like you either want to live off the welfare system or in the auto worker's union.

Also, while we're at it, a definition of slave:

Slavery (also called thralldom) is a form of forced labour in which people are considered to be the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand wages.

If I have to explain why that doesn't apply to employees, you're hopeless.

Re:US Employment Rights

[BenEnglishAtHome]

In the U.S., to actually have all that stuff within a framework of written rules and procedures that are actually adhered to by all in your workplace, you must have some sort of contract. So I expect a few people will poke their heads in here and say that they have all that stuff because it's all in the contract they negotiated before they took their job. Bully for them. For most middle-and-below-class workers, negotiating a contract is something they don't get to do. If they don't like the deal, they can get out.

No, the only really large groups of secretaries, clerks, IT wonks, odd-job specialists and other mid-to-low end salary earners who get all those things in the U.S. are the folks who belong to unions or work in shops where unions stuck up for them sometime in the past.

Cue the irrational slashdot union-haters. But I contend that for all their mis-steps (e.g. public unions at the *state* level who have gotten excessive retirement benefits, autoworker unions who pushed for too much in general, etc.), labor unions do more good than harm.

Good examples? The biggest federal govt worker unions have managed to get good pay and benefits for the folks at the bottom of the jobs ladder without too much disruption (mostly because they're ultimately neutered by being unable to strike) to the work processes involved.

Now cue the irrational slashdot government-worker-haters.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

What the hell are you on about ?
How is labour laws that protect workers from exploitation (the ones who don't get those things in their contracts because there are plenty of other people who can do the job) equated to wellfare ?

There are NO tax dollars spent on ANY of those things. Nobody is giving the poor money here. What we ARE doing is making sure that those people who do their jobs get a fair and decent wage, decent safety conditions, holidays (which ARE a health and safety issue) etc. by making laws that employers are required to comply with.
If anything - those laws ENCOURAGE people to work. If your welfare check is better than the janitor job which is all you can get - of course you'll take wellfare. If the law makes sure that janitor job is better - then most people will take the job.

It's easy to say only "lazy" people can't get "Good jobs" - right - would you like to live in a country where there are no janitors at all ? No factory workers ? Where all the MacDonalds' have closed because there is nobody left who would possibly want to flip burgers to feed their kids ?

Sorry -but those people can't get your kind of benefits from negotiation - they have zero negotiating power, but they are still human beings and they deserve to have their human rights and human dignity protected by the state -that's the ONLY valid purpose the state has in fact ! This includes protecting those rights from unscrupulous employers. It also makes sound economic sense to establish labor laws that ensure employees will always be better off than welfare cases as it reduces your welfare burden.

How sad it must be to live in a country with such a narrowminded selfish culture that you honestly seem to believe that a law saying if you do your job you MUST be given at least 2 weeks holiday and if they fire you a fair hearing with council and a notice period with pay to find another job in so you don't lose your house and end up on the streets unable to ever do so... that laws like this are indistinguishable from WELLFARE to you

Re:US Employment Rights

[Kokuyo]

But then, Europeans never seem to complain about "welfare moms,"

Oh, don't you worry, we have those too.

Re:US Employment Rights

[91degrees]

But then, Europeans never seem to complain about "welfare moms,"

That's likely because you're loooking for the wrong term. In Britain, the term is "benefits". Unemployment benefit, housing benefit etc. If you goodle for "benefits scroungers" you'll get plenty of British tabloids complaining about them. I'm sure the rest of Europer has its own term.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

This would be the Republic of South Africa.

What makes it a third world country is this: 43% unemployment, 76% illiteracy, 82% of the population living below the official poverty line (that is below taxable income, with welfare sustainance from the other 18% - who earn salaries comparable to Europe - in fact most of us work for European countries who find they can pay us solid market related salaries and still save truckloads of money because of the favorable exchange rate).

We have massive poverty, massive problems of all sorts to deal with. But our government relies for it's vote massively on the unions who include most of that 82% poor people as members, if the unions ever tell their members to vote for the opposition - this government couldn't possibly survive an election.
Result: damn good labour laws, regardless of whether you are in the rich 18% or the poor 82%

Re:US Employment Rights

[RsG]

Going by the .za TLD his homepage links to, he's either South African or uses a service provider located there. And SA is considered a developing nation by the HDI last I checked.

Re:US Employment Rights

[node_chomsky]

But then, Europeans never seem to complain about "welfare moms,"

Because they know 'welfare moms' are basically a myth. People like that do exist, but it is extremely rare (as in much smaller than a minority), even among people who are forced to live off of welfare because the circumstances of their life were not as ideal as that of others. I work with disadvantaged children, and I meet lot of people that tea-baggers and mean-spirited conservatives would instantly describe as 'welfare mothers' because they are poor, and may even live off welfare. But among them, I have never met one who seemed to think welfare was something they wanted out of life, and when you have 3 children with severe disabilities due to birth defects or post-natal factors (like an auto accident), you hardly have time to take care of your children, much less hold down gainful employment in one of the coldest and most professionally unforgiving nations in the world. Welfare isn't the source of any problems, it is a symptom of a much bigger problem. It's not that a person having disadvantages is owed anything by anyone who didn't contribute to those problems, it's that being big boys and girls means that we have to use a metric that involves more than our own comfort as standard. Basically, people who think the biggest waste of tax-money is social welfare need to grow up, because the logic behind their reasons for that is typically something found on a pre-school playground more so than in a college level class.

Re:US Employment Rights

[MickyTheIdiot]

But but but but but REGULATIONS ARE KILLING INDUSTRY!

At least that's what my rep. says when I write to him about making sure that Corporations follow the rules....

Re:US Employment Rights

[RsG]

Damn, I need to start refreshing the page before I post, the post immediately above mine confirms what I thought.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

South Africa.
Sadly our maternity laws aren't as nice as Switzerland or Denmark's. We do have very good labor laws though - a natural side effect of a government that is utterly dependent on union support to get votes.

Make no mistake this is no paradise. We have one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world, massive government corruption, a current major attempt to steamroller through massive anti-free-press laws, huge poverty problems, massive service-delivery issues, - it's got a lot of problems indeed, but at least out labor laws are good and that's what is relevant to the discussion.

Re:US Employment Rights

[vlm]

- Is an employee considered property, or an 'asset'?

An asset. They cannot sell me to a different company without my consent.

You are mostly correct, with this exception that I LOLed at. With very few exceptions, no employee consent is ever required as part of a merger/sale/takeover/bankruptcy.

Re:US Employment Rights

[biryokumaru]

If employers have to provide more benefits to lower-level employees, that means they are spending less elsewhere. That displacement will likely come out of taxable commercial expenses, thus both taking tax money from the government and damaging the growth potential of that organization (reducing future taxable income).

Jobs like janitor/fry cook/night stocker are all great jobs for teens and college kids. They're terrible places to find yourself at 40. I wouldn't want to be part of society that encouraged people to spend 40 hours a week doing such menial labor when they're older.

Lastly, severance benefits in the US typically amount to unemployment pay. I personally know people in the US who have been living off of unemployment for over 2 years. This is exactly the kind of thing you are arguing in favor of here, and the kind of "welfare mom" I feel is an unnecessary burden on the government.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Richard_at_work]

Bollocks, none of what you have said is true. An employer cannot simply sell you to another company as an asset (without selling the entire company to new owners, so the asset here is again not you). An employer cannot force you to do any labour, you can refuse at will - depending on the terms of your contract, that could even mean your employer has no recourse if the work he is requiring you to do sits outside that of your defined role (I as a web developer cannot be made to clean the toilets, I could refuse and if my employer took any action against me whatever then a tribuneral would rule in my favour and award me damages, my position back and other things). An employee who walks away could be sued for breach of contract, but this would take a particularly vindictive employer, and in any case the employer would be highly unlikely to win if the work requested falls outside that of the job you are employed to do.

Your last statement is the most ludicrous of all - just because you cannot walk into another job and thus are unwilling to quit your current one does not remove that option from you, and thus you are not a slave.

Re:US Employment Rights

[dkleinsc]

Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US

... in a white-collar office job like yours.

If you want a significantly different picture from your own employment experience, read about what was going on in the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia before the big accident. Or the many workers who are killed or maimed in preventable industrial accidents. Or the retail workers forced to work longer than the hours they put on their time card. Or the workers fired for trying to unionize. Or the workers fired for complaining about safety regulation violations. Or even better, get to know some blue-collar folks and hear about their life on the job.

Assuming you're a techie of some sort, your job probably involves sitting comfortably in an office thinking, typing, and discussing. Most jobs are nothing like that.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

>If employers have to provide more benefits to lower-level employees, that means they are spending less elsewhere. That displacement will likely come out of taxable commercial expenses, thus both taking tax money from the government and damaging the growth potential of that organization (reducing future taxable income).

I've heard this argument advanced and I have two problems with it. Problem one: you are thinking like a typical American who believes the purpose of the economy is wealthy corporations. It's not. The purpose of economy is wealthy citizens. Now let's see what is the average country ratio of employers to employees ? 1 to 1000 doesn't sound unreasonable - which group should the government be protecting here ?
Secondly - it's a false argument anyway. It's wrong on two levels. Firstly there is the mistake that if companies spend more on employees that's bad for the economy - it's not, it's not even bad for the company (except in the very short term) - increasing the buying power of employees means you have increased buying, consumption, purchasing- when all companies do that, they all benefit from each others employees buying their products more. Henry Ford understood that, and took it further making it a corporate policy to ensure that every single employee he has (including the damn janitor) can afford to buy his product. Result -damn near all of them did, that alone meant enough sales to cover the costs of those higher salaries, every sale there-after was a bonus. Sadly FORD forgot that lesson. The other reason is this: most of these other benefits are scientifically proven to increase overall productivity so in fact, they don't cost the employers anything, they all pay for themselves in increased production. Sadly that reimbursement doesn't show up on a balance sheet -well it is there but it's very nearly impossible to quantify and prove, which is why shortsighted management tends to ignore it. After all - by the time the productivity and morale hits an all-time low due to horrible working conditions, the employees are unionizing and you end up giving it to them anyway to stay in business, I won't be CEO anymore anyway - I'll have long since retired with more money than God.

>Jobs like janitor/fry cook/night stocker are all great jobs for teens and college kids. They're terrible places to find yourself at 40.

Not it's not -but not everybody is smart enough to get better. Like it or not - we don't all have the talents to be anything more than menial laborers, even if we did - education cost money - if your parents didn't have it, chances are you aren't going to have it either.

> I wouldn't want to be part of society that encouraged people to spend 40 hours a week doing such menial labor when they're older.

Of course it's good to encourage and promote education and reduce the number of people in that position - but a significant number of people will never have the option - they just aren't that smart. How would you reach this panacea you dream off ? Some kind of final solution to the idiot problem ?!?!?!

>Lastly, severance benefits in the US typically amount to unemployment pay. I personally know people in the US who have been living off of unemployment for over 2 years. This is exactly the kind of thing you are arguing in favor of here, and the kind of "welfare mom" I feel is an unnecessary burden on the government.

That happens here too - but why on earth are you taking ONE SINGLE labor law and then dismissing ALL labor laws because of the problems with that one ? How is making sure a pregnant woman can take maternity leave and have a job to come back to not GOOD for keeping people employed? How is making sure that if your child gets sick you can take time off to care for him in the same category ? How is making sure that before you're fired over bullshit you get a chance to explain your actions with council and a fair hearing remotely similar ?
You're just throwing the baby out with the bathwater now.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Schadrach]

My employer had a simple solution to the misuse of sick leave -- sick leave is only intended for extended illness, so the first X days you are out "sick" come from vacation, after that from a relatively generous amount of paid sick leave (something like a month) then unpaid excused absence (as in they aren't paying you, but they aren't holding it against you) but only if you can provide signed documentation from a doctor certifying your condition (otherwise it's vacation then unexcused absence, which they are relatively unkind about). They then contact the doctor to verify.

Re:US Employment Rights

[bigstrat2003]

That's not what he means, though. He means that companies can't sell individual employees to each other (well, sports teams can with their players, who are technically employees, so I guess there's that). A merger/etc is different.

Re:US Employment Rights

[wjousts]

- Is an employee considered property, or an 'asset'?

No, they are a (human) "resource".

Re:US Employment Rights

[Twanfox]

Unless my memory is faulty, holiday time and sick leave is an optional benefit that a company MAY provide, but is not required to. I'm not sure if maternity leave is codified into law, but there is the FMLA which allows for some UNPAID time off. To be honest, there really isn't any restriction on time worked. If your hourly, the company doesn't want to pay you overtime, but you could work it if they paid it (or if they're breaking the law and requesting it off-hours). Salaried folk I don't believe have an upper limit, and this is routinely exploited by employers. I was going to say mandatory breaks are set into law, but just a quick google search tells me that it isn't federal if it is, so it may just be my state. That and my state is an 'at-will' state of employment, which pretty much means yes, I could get fired for any reason (except for the rare case where you can prove discrimination).

I hate to say it, but most of those points are actually accurate. Most of those things are not law, just common practice to provide. If an employer desired not to offer them (usually for factory-style positions), then they won't be held accountable in court for doing so.

So did you actually work in the US too, or are you just assuming the benefits given to you are actually guaranteed, and not something nice the employer offered?

Re:US Employment Rights

[demonlapin]

You can only work 45 hours a week? Seriously? What about a young guy who wants to do a little overtime to make a little extra money? What about professionals, for heaven's sake?

Re:US Employment Rights

[Notquitecajun]

Seeing those labor laws, I bet it's rather a big factor in unemployment. I know SA has a ton of other issues that are going to take decades to get out of, but some of those rules would be a BIG headache for an entrepeneur who cannot afford the overhead.

Re:US Employment Rights

[BZ]

> No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no
> mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or
> reason, can legally discriminate, etc.

While there are no _federal_ laws covering some of those items, there are plenty of _state_ laws (e.g. a number of states have laws requiring paid maternity leave; several have required paid paternity leave as well). Further, there are federal laws requiring certain treatment of maternity leave (e.g. treating it at least as well as you treat any medical short-term disability). There are certainly federal laws against discriminating (though perhaps your definition of "discriminate" is different from the one in those laws?). Health and safety regulations clearly vary by field; I'd like to see your data on "few".

In quite a number of jobs there are legal requirements that anything past 40 hours a week be paid at overtime rates; while this may not be "restrictions on hours worked", it's not quite the same thing as "slavery" either.

At-will employment, I'll grant, for most employees. Bad for job security; possibly better for finding jobs in the first place. Hard to say.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Attila Dimedici]

No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks,...

I have yet to work anyplace in the U.S. that did not give at least 8 paid holidays to full time workers and holiday pay to those part time workers who were scheduled to work the holiday. Additionally, every place I have worked either gave a certain amount of sick time per length of tenure, or gave the employee sick time that accrued according to the number of hours worked. Finally, any U.S. company that does business across state lines must give breaks according to clearly laid out rules (it is more complicated for companies that do not do business across state lines, but as far as I know, only very small companies don't give breaks that follow the federal rules).

Re:US Employment Rights

[Notquitecajun]

You're overstating several issues. One, just about EVERY job in the US that is full time has vacation and sick leave that accrues, and you DON'T have to be union to get it. Unions only take up a small percentage of the workforce in the US now - they're a relatively outdated entity, mostly seeming to feed off of the 1950s model rather than something modern where a cooperative relationship would benefit more.

I debate your last statement because of the inability to fire from the government for incompetence/laziness, and the opposition of unions to merit pay in government service.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Notquitecajun]

Ummm...forced to do labor? What the heck am I getting paid for? Wait, not posting on slashdot...

Re:US Employment Rights

[nedlohs]

South Africa is in the G8+5, calling them "third world" is stupid. Yes they are an emerging economy, though in the top 5 of those.

And you don't think that those labour laws could have any impact on those unemployment numbers? If you could fire someone without resorting to three official hearings and warnings, nobody would take more risks at employing people who might turn out to be incompetent?

Re:US Employment Rights

[Attila Dimedici]

Others have addressed your other points. However, real slaves did not have the option of running away and living on the street. If a real slave ran away, the owner tracked them down and forcibly brought them back to suffer rather severe physical punishment.
Actually, now that I have typed that, I don't think you understand what "forced to do labor" means in the context of slavery. If a slave refused to do labor as directed by his/her owner (or the owner's designee), he/she was likely to suffer rather severe physical punishment (punishment that makes the "torture" people accused the Bush Administration of doing look like a garden party).

Re:US Employment Rights

[Twanfox]

Wow, what a totally 'me first' attitude. Let me guess, you own your own business and don't want to have to provide these things to your employees?

Let's go to the extreme. People getting murdered around you doesn't affect you if you're not an incompetent moron to get caught in that situation, no reason to make rules for that sort of thing, is there? Oh woe, if you made murder illegal, you'd have to spend money on police, and that'd just waste your taxes on something that gives you personally no benefit. Can't have that.

Much as we don't like to acknowledge it, the working class of the US is pretty much slave labor. We can't really live on our own without a job, so we are required to get one in order to live. If you happen to be a rare commodity and know something special, then maybe you can dictate terms. The majority cannot. Much of the work done in the US is menial in some way, shape, or form, and most positions are replaceable with a bit of training. This leaves us a conundrum about how to treat our workforce.

Worker's rights helps ensure the general welfare of our society. Not welfare like getting paid because you're poor, but welfare like you're healthy and well rested, able to think clearly, and so on. When people are stressed, all manner of bad thing happen. Products are made badly, people can't show up to work, that labor pool employers like to exploit becomes degraded and we all pay the price, and for what? So the employer can make a few more dollars that won't be passed back down to the people that gave it to them.

You really need to look at the larger picture and understand that short term gains may result in long term losses. Treating people with respect is generally the right way to go.

Re:US Employment Rights

[sgtrock]

No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

Bwuh? What version of the U.S. have you visited? What you describe hasn't existed since the 1930s.

Employee/employer relations is considered to be a state level issue. As the Bill of Rights states that all such issues are exempt from interference by the Federal government (see the 9th and 10th amendments), we've got a patchwork of laws in place. However, I can speak from personal experience of working in several different states that a typical set of laws and regulations looks something like this:

* 10-12 holidays mandated
* 2-4 weeks vacation
* 2-4 weeks sick leave
* 6-12 weeks maternity leave per parent (I personally used this for my kids, btw.)
* 40 hour work week considered standard for non-exempt employees. 2 15 minute breaks plus a half hour lunch usually included. Time and a half for overtime. (non-exempt means paid by the hour. Exempt receive an annual salary.)
* 'few health and safety regulations??????' This is so off base it's not even wrong. Ever heard of OSHA? The FDA? Department of Transportation? Look them up some time.
* 'Firing without reason' -- depends upon the state. There's a fair number with 'right to work' laws that establish a minimum set of ground rules for what grounds can be used for termination of employment. In fact, in some states it's really, REALLY hard to fire the incompetent. Generally speaking, though, companies which exercise this option freely don't stay in business too long. It's a direct reflection of a poorly run organization that people will avoid, even in this economy.
* Discrimination is most decidedly NOT legal, for any reason. People being people, that doesn't mean that we don't have scumbags who have found creative ways of ducking or breaking the law, though.

Health care, though, is a complete travesty and a national embarrassment. We spend far more per capita and get less for it than any other industrialized nation and many developing countries.

Re:US Employment Rights

[ptbarnett]

With very few exceptions, no employee consent is ever required as part of a merger/sale/takeover/bankruptcy.

If employees own a substantial percentage of the stock, it's required.

The purchasing company can also require that a high percentage of employees accept the offer to work for them before the sale is completed. And no, that's not hypothetical.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Twanfox]

There is a difference between having it offered as something to sweeten employment and being required to provide it in all jobs.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Darth_brooks]

South Africa is a third world country? Really? That's a bit disingenuous. That's like saying you live in Simi Valley, CA and talking about what it's like on the mean streets of Compton....

Re:US Employment Rights

[TarPitt]

No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US.

Spoken like an American who has never held one of the millions of low-paid jobs making up the bulk of the US workforce.

Re:US Employment Rights

[denzacar]

You do realize that those magical "taxable commercial expenses" are easily reduced to nothing or even shown as debt by little creative accounting?
And that everyone does that?

In fact... the more benefits you give to your employees, the more wiggle room you have to get creative.
Why doesn't everyone do that then? Because you must give money and power away NOW in order to be able to take back more LATER.

You know...
The same reason most employers will settle for second or third best employees at the fraction of what the first class educated and experienced employee might cost them.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Darth_brooks]

No holiday time,

-There are 10 Federal holidays, of which most employers will observe at least 6. Depends on your industry and employer.

no sick leave, no maternity leave,

-FMLA. 6 weeks unpaid leave, guaranteed. (though shitty employers can skirt this). Sick time varies from employer to employer.

no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks,

-Varies from state to state. Ostensibly the Federal government only regulates interstate commerce.

few health and safety regulations,

-http://osha.gov/

can be fired without notice or reason,

-In theory yes, in practice not so much. Wrongful termination suits are exceptionally easy to file.

can legally discriminate, etc.

-http://eeoc.gov/ No, they can't.

It is like working in the third world.

Hyperbole much? There are lots of things wrong with employment in the US, but I'm gonna wander out on a limb and say that since you're not engaging in actual serfdom or subsistence farming, you're just a tad bit better off.

No, there aren't federal laws mandating the protections you outline, but it's unfair to assume that since the protection doesn't exist, the benefit doesn't exist anywhere. Most of us that work full time have sick time, vacation time, health care, and are covered by some form of overtime law or comp time policy.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Twanfox]

How nice that your employer lets you take a vacation day when you have a migraine so bad that you can't even see the light of day. Tomorrow you'll be fine, but today, it's vacation. Get out and enjoy it!

The reason for doing that is because they know that people will sometimes be down with a day or two illness, but be fine later. If they can burn up that pool of vacation time then, then they won't have to worry about the employee taking that time off later. The net result? I'm sure you probably have more people in your workplace with contagious diseases than would otherwise be if they were allowed to stay home that day and not infect the rest of the workplace. Great call on the employer's part. Now, instead of being down one person for a day or two, now they'll be down several people for several days as the illness runs its course through their workforce.

While that scenario is overly simplified, it is probably far more common than to have someone need to take sick time for long enough that a doctor needs to be called.

My employer has a different simple solution. They call it sick/personal time. You can use it at your discretion, but if you use it for personal days and then get sick, you get to take it unpaid, and that's really no fun. It allows us employees to meter when we need to take a day for our mental welfare and become productive again. It also has that hefty drawback that we, as employees, try to avoid.

Re:US Employment Rights

[formfeed]

Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US.

- or like someone, who's worked somewhere else as well.
Six weeks unpaid maternity leave isn't quite 1st world standard.

Re:US Employment Rights

[nedlohs]

"most jobs" != "employment right".

If "holiday time" is an "employment right" then all jobs will have it, not just most.

I don't really have free speech unless all government agencies don't infringe upon it, most of them not doing so doesn't really cut it.

That doesn't say anything about whether the US model is better or worse of course.

Re:US Employment Rights

[compro01]

FMLA + OSHA, I'll let you look up those two. There are restrictions on hours worked and mandated breaks for non-exempt employees..

With exempt categories large enough to sail oil tankers through. Also, the OSHA is pretty toothless compared to other countries safety laws.

Really? REALLY? Just because it happens and people can get away with it doesn't mean it's legal.

The only things that are covered by federal law are race, sex, pregnancy, religion, national origin, age (if over 40, they can discriminate all they like under that.), military service (but can discriminate based on anything other than an honourable discharge), bankruptcy or bad debts, genetics, or citizenship status. Anything else is fair game barring state laws, which are pretty patchy.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Improv]

Screw those entepreneurs. The chance to use lower-cost workers may inspire them to hire people in poorer nations, but that should not be confused with allowing a race to the bottom when it comes to working standards. The whole world would be better off if rules like that were global. Let competition be over other things, with good standards for working conditions. Anyone, entepreneur or not, who runs a factory with inhumane working conditions belongs in jail.

Re:US Employment Rights

[delinear]

What, allowing your employees to take holidays and regular breaks, taking responsibility if they get injured on the job and not being able to arbitrarily fire them without demonstrating poor workmanship or behaviour on their part? Yes, that must be really onerous. Hate to tear down your strawman, but we have all those rules in the UK and we don't have 43% unemployment (the last time it even hit 10% was almost twenty years ago, during the recession). Treating your employees with some respect does not, contrary to what appears to be popular belief amongst certain people, lead to the downfall of society.

Re:US Employment Rights

[delinear]

In the UK we have similar rules (one verbal warning and two written warnings are required), but only after the first year - so you get a full 12 months to determine if someone can do their job. That's not unreasonable, if you decide you want them gone on month 13, it's probably not related to their ability to do the job they were hired for (or you're a poor manager for not spotting that earlier) and therefore only makes sense that there is a legal paper trail to make sure you're not just firing them for personal reasons. In fact, we have most of the same laws around holidays and breaks and our unemployment figures are not unreasonable (especially considering there's no real punishment if you don't find a job - you can continue to live on state benefit as an alternative, so I'd expect that to push unemployment slightly higher rather than slightly lower).

Re:US Employment Rights

[nedlohs]

6-12 weeks maternity leave per parent (I personally used this for my kids, btw.)

More than one parent qualifying for Maternity leave is going to be difficult biologically. Paternity leave, sure, the other one could have that.

I guess a lesbian couple could argue the case, depending on how you define maternal. But that seems like a pretty rare situation.

Re:US Employment Rights

[delinear]

Choosing to work some overtime to earn more money is one thing, but why should a professional have to work more than 45 hours per week? If you can't achieve all you need to do within that time, maybe your employer needs to consider hiring more people, not forcing his existing people to work themselves into an early grave.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Rockoon]

You keep saying "Worker's Rights" but I dont think you actually know what that means.

Restrictions are not Rights. You speak of "treating people with respect" but dont want to let them negotiate the full terms of their own employment. How is that treating anyone with respect? Thats the opposite of respect. Thats completely disrespectful.

You also speak of slave labor, and say its because "we can't really live on our own without a job" .. But if you remove jobs from the equation, people still cant live on their own without labor.

A job is just monetized labor. All you have done is state the obvious, but hidden it in such a way that it allows you to appeal to emotion. Heaven forbid people would have to perform labor in order to survive.

Someone who works in a fast food joint is performing less labor than they would have to in a world without society. Hunting is time-consuming, and lets not talk about how much effort is needed to plant, maintain, and harvest enough crops to feed a family. Yet amazingly, that fry cook or cashier in the United States makes more than enough in just a few hours to purchase food for their family for the day.

Sure, they wont be driving around in a shiny new SUV, but think about how much labor is required to build a shiny new SUV. First you must mine the ores... get the picture?

Business is business. If you work hard than you can negotiate better terms than those that don't work hard. Employers are all about the bottom line. You can request more compensation whenever you like, but you will only get it when it makes sense to do so.

All this "works rights" crap is about DEMANDING more compensation regardless of how much sense it makes to receive it, and that my friend, has nothing to do with "rights"

Re:US Employment Rights

[demonlapin]

Choosing to work some overtime to earn more money is one thing

But, per silentcoder, illegal.

Lots of professionals have bursty work - you do relatively little for a long period of time, then have enormous amounts of work to do in a relatively short period of time. (CPAs are the prime example of this.) Surgeons have to work until they've done all their surgeries. And so forth.

Re:US Employment Rights

[BenEnglishAtHome]

You bring up good points. The inability to fire dead weight really bugs me, too. However, in practical terms it's necessary.

We've seen what happens when government entities can fire people at will. A spoils system comes into being and the turnover defeats the ability of the government to steadily provide services. Look, for example, at the way lots of big-city machines worked 100 years ago. As soon as one guy got elected, he fired everybody that supported the other guy and handed out those jobs as rewards to the people who put him in power. The steady delivery of services, something that governments must provide above all else, is compromised. The same thing happens at every level of government if firing is too easy.

So we have the current system. Yes, dead weight gets to hang around. But it's more important that the bureaucracy continue to function and provide services (even if inefficiently) than to take a chance on the types of mis-steps that interrupt government services. When private industry concerns decide to run lean and efficient, they weigh risks and rewards. If they mis-judge, they go out of business. The formula for government services is weighted differently. When governments misjudge and can't provide vital services, they don't go out of business; some of their customers die.

So government is different. There's a much higher but absolutely necessary tolerance for inefficiency in the name of uninterrupted delivery. So we make firing hard. Nobody really likes it but, then again, nobody has come up with anything better where vital services are involved.

Now, the argument that government these days does lots of things that aren't vital is a completely different kettle of fish and you'll get not much static from me on that one.

As for the opposition of unions to merit pay, I'm with you in concept. In practice, I've seen "pay banding" and other salary schemes actually implemented and they tend to be a mess. I doubt a union would object too strongly if someone in management proposed a merit pay system that actually made sense instead of being just a buzzword-compliant, poorly disguised attempt to cut base pay and then set an impossible standard for getting any sort of bonus/merit/whatever compensation. I've never seen such a proposal.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Takichi]

The US isn't a dumptruck you can throw blanket assessments on; it's a series of states with their own laws that extend those set federally. Besides, I think the main issue isn't that there aren't laws setup to protect workers, it's that they are often poorly enforced. Enforcement is carried out by state and federal attourneys general, and by individual lawsuits initiated by the public. Perhaps other countries are better at enforcement, or maybe the public is less inclined to put up with unfair practices. But keep in mind, there is an active slave trade in all developed countries, so presuming the infallibility of a certain type of government or framework of law isn't realistic.

Re:US Employment Rights

[mcgrew]

If you want a significantly different picture from your own employment experience, read about what was going on in the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia before the big accident. Or the many workers who are killed or maimed in preventable industrial accidents. Or the retail workers forced to work longer than the hours they put on their time card. Or the workers fired for trying to unionize. Or the workers fired for complaining about safety regulation violations. Or even better, get to know some blue-collar folks and hear about their life on the job.

All those things are illegal, but the problem is the laws are laxly enforced when they're enforced at all.

The mine "accident" was caused by an action by the company they'd been repeatedly fined for. The corporations consider these fines just a cost of doing business.

Now, if a normal person breaks a law and someone dies as a result, they'll be charged with negligent homicide at the very least. I'm appalled that nobody in power at the mining company was criminally charged, but I'm not surprised.

Re:US Employment Rights

[geekoid]

He get holidays time, vacation, maternity leave, hours are restricted, we do have mandated breaks, many safety regulation. So while it could certainly be better, it's not sweat shop, yet.

Now people are just taking corporation word on stuff, and they think there in a ;grass roots' change that is actually support with corporate interests. If those people who believe sound bites continue to grow, then yeah, we will be sweat shop status in about 2 decades.

Re:US Employment Rights

[geekoid]

true, OTOH it means more people will be employed. I would rather have a million people employed at 60K a year, the 3/4 a million employed for 70K

Re:US Employment Rights

[erroneus]

I have always lived in "right to work" states. This means the state permits termination without cause or reason. I have always felt a bit of regret about that simply because I knew that such a position is pro-business and tips the power of negotiation against individuals. Everywhere I see, the "minimum requirements" are treated as the standard. Companies rarely if ever exceeds these "standards" and often compete in trying to seek ways in which to go below standards as much as possible. (For example, where I work, nearly everyone is "exempt" and there is no overtime. Per-diem and mileage for travellers have all been adjusted recently to favor the company as well, all while the cost of everything continues to rise.)

It is clear that the "free market" which we are all so proud of is not serving the purposes we defend it as serving. Without government regulation, the abuse would clearly be worse than it is -- demonstrably so. Without the requirement to do so, things will never get better. We see this with utilities commissions. We see this with other regulatory bodies in government. The horrible failed experiement that was deregulation has shown very consistently that when business is allowed to abuse and plunder, that is exactly what they will do. "Increased competition" actually results in competition among various businesses to see who can do the worst and get away with it.

Re:US Employment Rights

[geekoid]

An entrepreneur that can'tr treat it's employees well might as well be driving a slave ship for as far as I am concerned.

I have worked with many small entrepreneur , and with out exception that all renigged on promises, broke contracts, and in one case 'went out of business' moved to another state started a new corporation and then sold the technology 3 of us developed. He made millions.

So FUCK any entrepreneur that whines about having to treat employees like human beings.

For the record, if you have made a home loan i the past 12 years, watched a TV show or drive a car you have used technology I developed or was on the team the developed it. I have nothing to show for it.

So yeah, I took a job that is 40 hours, I get decent vacation and great insurance. It's nice to be treated as an equal and to have a life.

The American dream require that all parties be honest and upstanding.

Re:US Employment Rights

[mcgrew]

just because you cannot walk into another job and thus are unwilling to quit your current one does not remove that option from you

Just because you can't flap your arms and fly to the moon doesn't remove that option from you either, but in the real world, it does.

All these comments saying "you can quit" must be by people who never had to work for a living. There's a 10% unemployment rate; saying "you can just quit" is either disingenuous or incredibly ignorant.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

Really now... when we have entire towns that depend on a single communal tap - and some that have not even that!

Don't let the rich 20% of us in the cities fool you - 80% of us live on the equivalent of less than 10 USD a month.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

And South Africa allows trial employment periods during which you only need to give 24 hour notice, I think those are limited to six months or less, but enough time to check.

Anyway - South Africa's problem isn't labour laws, our problem is we have a massive overabundance of unschooled labour and a massive shortage of schooled labour. Part of why we get such good salaries for educated jobs is because we have a massive shortage of educated workers.

Re:US Employment Rights

[DragonWriter]

... in a white-collar office job like yours.

While white-collar office workers are often treated better than other workers in most respects, this is mostly due to the fact that they have rarer talents and jobs which require certain degrees of independence. The statements in GGP about lack of government-guaranteed legal rights are, in fact, more true of white-collar office workers (who are generally FLSA exempt workers, or at least treated as such even in cases where there is a very good argument available that that isn't the correct legal category) than of, e.g., blue-collar factory workers.

Re:US Employment Rights

[stewbacca]

How sad it must be to live in a country with such a narrowminded selfish culture

Uhhh, it's a big country. Blanket statements don't fit. I lived in England, and maybe it works there, but you can't pinpoint a single "culture" in the US.

Yes, we have stupid people. Yes, capitalism brings out the greediest bastards in society. No, we don't all agree with it just because we are American.

Otherwise, very nice post you made.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

Yes - there is nothing stopping that. The rules do allow for those cases - all you have to do is give them the time they worked over back again as time off, when it's quiet again in a few days time.

Besides that, do you really want to be operated on by a doctor who hasn't slept in 36 hours ? Do you really want to go to jail because the lawyer defending you was working of a deposition by a paralegal who had been suffering from sleep deprivation ?

These rules are to prevent continuous 80-hour weeks, not to make it impossible to do business - and acting like they are is thinking we're a lot more stupid than you imagine.

There's even a specific case exception that the maximum hours law doesn't apply to people in management positions. It's understood that
A) Managers are in a position to negotiate their own terms
B) Sometimes the owner of the company may have to work an 80 hour week if he's to keep the rest of the staff employed.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Monkeedude1212]

By and large, we don't have contracts. See, we're not slaves, we can quit at will, so as soon as a better employer pops up (for whatever definition of "better" you like) we can go there at the drop of a hat.

Competition works pretty well most of the time.

By and large, you DO have contracts, those are the papers you sign when you first start your job - that basically said "I've read the SOP manual and I'll do my job" and all that. Even Wal Mart Employees are on the contract.

Competition works well in some scenarios - but currently the US is in a situation where there's too much competition. Yeah, you can quit at will if a better employer pops up - but how often does one just "pop up"? You have to be actively searching of course. And if your boss finds out that you're searching for another job they'll find some grounds to ride you out.
You want an extra week vacation? There's usually someone else willing to work without it - they just got the job.

Competition means that the job goes to the lowest bidder. Which is NOT good for working conditions. In other developed nations - those basic perks are required by Law. I don't have to worry about someone undercutting me on that.

Re:US Employment Rights

[geekoid]

Your first paragraph is false. What they do is raise the price of goods. As it turns out, in many case that price increase is barely noticeable.

Your second paragraphs is a non-sequitur and a straw man. well done.

the 'welfare mom' is largely a myth. almost no one wan't to live on welfare. It's sustenance, no more. And wefare mm is far better then on the street mom.

Alomst everyone wudl rather have a job that pays well. And the tiny number of people who don't is a small price to pay so people can freaking eat.

For the record, I ahve used welfare as an adult. twice. The first time was after the tech bubble popped in California. May saving along with welfare and food stamps was the only way we survived the 9 months of unemployee ment. and again here in oreag when my employers unexpected sold the business and I hadn't recovered any savings.

Also, as a kid we used welfare so we could eat. It was only for a couple of months.

Not in one case did I suit around content to live off my 400 dollars a month. 400 in Oregon, 200 in CA, and as A kid it was like 50 bucks or some such. What it did allow me to do was maintain some food and basic resource so I could go out and get a good paying job. Sure, I could have got work at some fast food joint, but then I would have had time to fine a high paying software engineering job.

They are not a burden on the government.

Re:US Employment Rights

[MoonBuggy]

Your post assumes that workers with little to no holiday get more done in a year than those with some time to relax. I'd posit that this is not the case.

Re:US Employment Rights

[HappyUserPerson]

you aren't allowed to fire anybody unless they've had three written warnings, written warnings can only be issued after a hearing where the employee has the right to council...

This may sound good and make people who already have jobs difficult to fire. However, the devastating side effect is higher unemployment, especially among the youth and inexperienced. It makes it much riskier to hire if there are high hurdles for firing. Consider that an incompetent employee could do a lot of damage during 3 warnings while costing the employer a paycheck -- and a slick lawyer could keep them at the job. Hiring is critical for a developing economy which have large numbers of young and undereducated people. Policies like this (which are prevalent in third world countries), while well meaning, unfortunately contribute to a country's third world status.

Re:US Employment Rights

[DragonWriter]

You're overstating several issues. One, just about EVERY job in the US that is full time has vacation and sick leave that accrues,

Most private-sector (and many public sector) jobs I'm familiar with have gone to a single pool of leave (often called "annual leave" or "paid time off") that combines vacation and sick leave.

In many cases, public sector employers I am familiar with require non-represented employees to use "annual leave" (in amounts which are greater the amounts represented employees would have in either sick leave or vacation individually, but smaller than the combined total), while represented (unionized) employees have vacation + sick leave by default but may opt in to the annual leave program.

I debate your last statement because of the inability to fire from the government for incompetence/laziness

Its quite possible to fire government workers for failure to properly perform the duties of their position whether due to incompetence or laziness. As is not infrequently the case in large private employers (even those without civil service rules and unions, as even in states where employees can be dismissed for no cause, the risk of lawsuits alleging for dismissal for an illegal, discriminatory cause exists) documentation of objective failure to meet those requirements is generally essential.

OTOH, give how far public sector compensation (even pay and benefits combined) lags beyond the private sector, there's a pretty big risk that after spending the effort to document the nonperformance and fire the worker and go through the hiring process (if the authorities above don't decide to hold the position open to absorb the risk of future budget cuts, which seems to happen frequently in bad budget times, often resulting in the position being lost entirely) you won't have much better options when you try to replace the worker.

And the poor pay for public sector employees and the problem of attracting good people to fill those positions doesn't happen just at the line level, it goes the whole way up through management to the executive level. So that affects the decisions of when and how to use the existing authority (and, even, the accuracy of management's assessment of what authority they have.)

and the opposition of unions to merit pay in government service.

IME, unions only tend to be opposed to so-called merit pay when it is one of two things:
1. a code word for arbitrary pay unconnected to any meaningful assessment of merit, or
2. a code word for pay connected to an objective measure that is largely a function of something other than the employees performance.

Unions are, IME, supportive of merit pay proposals that aren't in those categories, such as the system of merit salary increases used in the California State civil service.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Archangel Michael]

Great Labor Laws and 43% unemployment ... coincidence? Sometimes the answer is staring you in the face.

Re:US Employment Rights

[DragonWriter]

No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc.

While much of that is true for certain classes of workers (essentially, those that are "exempt" under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which includes most white-collar workers), most of it is not true for most workers. "few health and safety regulations" is (compared to other advanced industrial democracies) probably the only one that is universally true.

Discrimination is restricted by Federal, and in many cases also State, employment laws, and certain degrees of sick and maternity/paternity leave are guaranteed in Federal and often State law (e.g., the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.) Though, compared to the related policies in most other modern industrial democracies, even these protections are rather weak.

There is a reason that the US has historically had the highest productivity per worker, while also being fairly low in productivity per worker-hour among first world states.

Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

While I haven't lived and worked in any first world country other than the US, that's pretty much what I hear from everyone who has done that and also worked in the US (whether they came from the US and then spent some time working abroad or vice versa.) Unsurprisingly, most people in the US aren't aware of how bad it is compared to other first world countries, nor, it seems, are most people who haven't worked here in other first-world countries. And part of that seems to be that the gulf in standards is so enormous that, on both sides, its very common for people who haven't experienced it to assume that it can't be as big as it is reported to be people who have experienced.

Re:US Employment Rights

[demonlapin]

I was thinking more of people like CPAs who work 60+ hour weeks for a couple of months at a go.

Re:US Employment Rights

[oshkrozz]

You would be surprised to learn how many labor laws there are in fact that mandate many of these things. Also the USA means the united STATES of America there are federal guidelines and then state laws. The federal laws set the minimum the states must do and then states can add onto that. (for example minimum wage and now mandated health insurance) States are mandated by law to provide certain benefits to workers this can change if you are full time or part time, if you are hourly or salaried. There are many health and safety regulations all of them covered by OSHA and this can vary if you work in an office or a mine ... for example an office would not be allowed to keep explosives in easy reach ... Yes you can be fired for no reason at all in some states (called right to work states) that also means you can leave a company for any reason at all by just not showing up and you can go and work for any company at all no matter what NDA they make you sign (you can staple it to your resignation letter with a yellow smiley on as you let them know you are going to the competitor). In the USA companies have to pay for unemployment benefits that means if they fire you for no reason they have to pay for you as you take a month vacation some place and start looking for a new job, thus in practice very few companies will fire for no reason they will make sure to have a mound of paperwork filled out so that when you try and file for the unemployment they can show cause. Also be aware that suing in the USA in most cases means going to a lawyer paying him $250 to draft a letter and sending it to the company, they will then settle because litigation is expensive for them also, the outcome is uncertain and if you really have a case they would rather not have a shareholder meeting about it. yes I am sure you can find cases that went on for years but then I am sure in any country you can find gross negligence and unfair labor practices because enough money went to the right people. I take you never heard of FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) that allows for both Maternity and Paternity leave for up to to 12 weeks in a calendar year (Is that great? no can it be better yes ... but we do have it). In addition many states add on to that amount.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Fulminata]

Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US.

Spoken like someone who's never worked outside of a state with more worker friendly laws. We live in a "right to work" state, and the conditions detailed above pretty much describe my wife's job. She gets extra pay on holidays, but she doesn't get off. She doesn't have sick leave. If she gets pregnant, not only won't she get maternity leave, but they'll simply fire her. She often works double shifts and works through breaks. There are health and safety regulations, but they mostly apply to protecting the customers not the employees. Laws in the US are, overall, incredibly employer friendly.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Duradin]

A simple solution that penalizes preventative measures.

I'd rather have sick people be able to stay home while contagious and doctor visits be feasible. It really sucks when everyone else is bringing in the horrible disease-du-jour courtesy of their school kids.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

This false idea has been addressed in numerous posts. We do allow a grace period where a 24-hour notice period without need for reason apply, it's as much to allow an employee to get out if he hates the job without a massive notice period while those other offers still exist as to allow an employer to get rid of a bad hire before he costs them a fortune.

A person who goes through 3 to 6 months without job security and does his job clearly *can* do the job. There is also allowance for summary dismissal in exceptional cases (e.g. where a person broke the law or showed truly fragrant disregard for the rules to the point where further employment wouldn't be possible) so it's not that big a deal (though those require a single hearing at least)

What it does do is mean that you can't frivolously make up an excuse to fire somebody just because you don't like his hairstyle. The paid notice period means if you're letting somebody go because of redundancy issues or because the market has shrunk... well at least he has a chance to find another job before his income disapears.

It's all about balance. You are so entirely on one-side of the scale in the US that you assume anybody who is in the middle must be on the other extreme - in fact the other extreme doesn't actually exist anywhere in the world because even politicians are never THAT stupid.

Re:US Employment Rights

[mcgrew]

But then, Europeans never seem to complain about "welfare moms," so maybe their system eliminates people feeding off the government?

I guess you missed PWORA. In 1996 the entitlement AFDC was replaced with TANF. TANF has a two year limit, and a five year lifetime limit. Recipients must be able to prove that they're actively looking for work, or getting an education. It's a hand up, not a handout. Its entire purpose is to get people employed, and IMO it's a good thing. I'd rather pay taxes than have some starving beggar break into my house.

Europe, IINM, does in fact have far more "welfare" and better safety nets than we do.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

>Great Labor Laws and 43% unemployment ... coincidence? Sometimes the answer is staring you in the face.

Yeah if you're an oversimplifying idiot. South Africa has a massive worker shortage. Our problem isn't the labor laws - it's education levels. The real answer staring you in the face was 72% illiteracy ! We have a massive oversupply of unschooled labor - three as much as our industries can employ. So About 30% of our people work in them. 20% Do school labour - the remainder are indirect employment they work as housekeepers and gardeners for the 20% of schooled workers.

In the schooled sectors of our economy there are massive shortages. By next year it's expected that more than 80% of all civil engineers in the country will be over 60 years old (that's 5 years from retirement) - we don't have people to replace them. The jobs section for IT is always filled with huge amounts of ads, the longest period I ever spent jobhunting was 1 week - and 4 days of that was spent comparing offers and deciding which company I liked best !

There is no problem finding work if you're educated, there are big problems if you can't read and write - we only have so much manual labor available. Yet oddly - the companies that work in those sectors also do well and we have many (mining is still among our top industries) - the labor laws clearly didn't put them out of business either - if anything politicians complain because they are still making huge profits and not treating workers well ENOUGH !

Re:US Employment Rights

[Animats]

Actually, US labor laws are reasonably good. But enforcement was gutted years ago. For several years, the NLRB couldn't function because of vacancies; Bush woudn't appoint anybody who wasn't anti-labor. That problem has been solved, the NLRB has a quorum again, and it's back in business.

This is an important decision, because it means that union organizing on Facebook is more likely to work.

Incidentally, if you're in the game industry, check out The Animation Guild, which represents computer graphics people at Disney, ILM, Dreamworks, etc.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Bigjeff5]

Wow, are you uninformed.

Take your ignorance elsewhere please.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

My ex girlfriend was a CPA - here they work around that.
Don't even go there, if you have so much work that you need 60 man hours per person per week you can damn well afford to hire more people. One more with the same skill and 3 people are back to 40 hours a week.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

This !
I said it more detailed in a previous post but exactly: healthy, happy, rested workers are significantly more productive, ultimately you make MORE money when all your employees take vacations.
Not to mention on vacations people spend more money - which is good for your other industries. The government isn't just concerned with employing people - it needs those people to be customers - so OTHER people can have jobs.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Bigjeff5]

40 hours per week, max of 5 hours overtime - it's ILLEGAL to allow more

God, not even the option to work more? That sucks.

I currently work 80 hours a week for two weeks straight, then take two full weeks off. My schedule (which is so freakin nice, I have half the year off) would be illegal in your country. If you were counting, that's 40 hours of over time every week. If I were working a 9-5 job, it would be like getting paid 50% more every other week.

Your country blows.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Bigjeff5]

All that stuff costs money. A lot of money, actually. In the US, with such "horrible slavelike labor conditions" (give me a break) benefits make up between 30-50% of the cost to employ someone. The more money an employer has to spend on each employee to get the same productivity the less he can spend on hiring new workers. It doesn't mean he will if he has the cash, but that's usually how companies grow - by adding more people.

The kinds of guarantees described would push every employee's cost up around 50% of their base salary, possibly even higher. Think about that. Without that 50% cost, for every two employees working now there could be an additional employee. That would theoretically cut unemployment down to about 15%. (in practice not as much, for various reasons, but you would definitely see more people being hired)

If you have all these rules then I'm sure you have a minimum wage as well, which further raises the costs of employment. In a highly productive society you can have these nice things, but if half the country is going hungry, don't you think it is more important that they be able to work instead of giving all these plush benefits to the few who can find a job?

Seems rather selfish and heartless to me.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Hyppy]

There are 10 Federal holidays, of which most employers will observe at least 6. Depends on your industry and employer.
-- The United States has no law mandating minimum paid vacation hours or holidays. We are one of only a handful of nations in the world that don't.
FMLA. 6 weeks unpaid leave, guaranteed.
-- Most other countries mandate paid maternity and sick leave. Almost no Americans have it, except for the top 5% or so. (Charging vacation hours for sick time doesn't count!)
In theory yes, in practice not so much. Wrongful termination suits are exceptionally easy to file.
-- At-will states (most of them) have a very high rejection rate for wrongful termination suits. At-will = "I can fire you for anything or for no reason at all", barring Title VII and other obvious exceptions.
http://eeoc.gov/ [eeoc.gov] No, they can't.
-- You've never heard of affirmative action and quota systems?
Hyperbole much?
-- Well, the legal protections for employees present in the U.S. are not comparable with the other first-world countries. I'd say it's closer to second-world, excluding China maybe.

Re:US Employment Rights

[KhabaLox]

no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks,

I'm not sure what, if anything, Federal law says on this, but in California you cannot work longer than 5 hours without taking at least a 1/2 hour meal break, and you must take two 10 minute breaks during each 8 hour shift. I don't think there are limits on number of hours worked, but after working 8 hours in one day (and/or 40 hours in one week) you must be paid 1.5 times your hourly wage. All of this applies only to hourly wage workers though

can legally discriminate,

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prevents employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It also prohibits discrimination against a person because of his/her interracial associations (e.g. marriage). However, Title VII does exempt members of the Communist Party of America (or associations required to register under the Subversive Activities Control Act) from protection.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

Mmm, shall we make a law to improve the life of a few rare edge cases (and we have even fewer) or to protect the massive amount of other people who would basically be slaves otherwise...

Funny these laws were demanded by unions - in other words, it's the most democratic laws in our country, made because the voters insisted they should be made. Clearly most of our people think it's YOUR country that blows. Sorry pal, but that's how democracy works - majority rules. It sucks when you're the minority, but there you have it.

Re:US Employment Rights

[ultranova]

The US isn't a dumptruck you can throw blanket assessments on; it's a series of

tubes, clogged with shit and badly overdue for maintenance because upkeeping infrastructure would require taxation for purposes other than corporate welfare and that would be communism!

You walked right into that one :).

Re:US Employment Rights

[Bigjeff5]

Exactly.

In my office, if you've got a cold, they don't want you there. Stay home. Don't spread it to everyone else.

One person missing a day is nowhere near as costly as half the office missing a day or more (some people recover more slowly).

Re:US Employment Rights

[KhabaLox]

Competition means that the job goes to the lowest bidder.

While I generally agree with the notion that employers hold the upper hand in non-union labor negotiations in the US (due to their monopsony status), that does not mean that the job goes to the lowest bidder. If that were true, then I would be an engineer at Google.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Bigjeff5]

The only things that are covered by federal law are race, sex, pregnancy, religion, national origin, age (if over 40, they can discriminate all they like under that.), military service (but can discriminate based on anything other than an honourable discharge), bankruptcy or bad debts, genetics, or citizenship status. Anything else is fair game barring state laws, which are pretty patchy.

What the hell is left to discriminate against? Ears that are too big?

Re:US Employment Rights

[Notquitecajun]

One, you underestimate the pay of public employees. There are many who are paid BETTER than their private sector counterparts.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-04-federal-pay_N.htm

You also have laid out several problems with the system that add to long-term inefficiencies when a goal - ie "more expensive" to replace - has a short-term outlook. I would debate that we need at MINIMUM a freeze on federal government hiring and allow a certain amount of attrition.

Sorry, I have several friends who work on an AFB who have particular issues with people that don't let them get work done.

Re:US Employment Rights

[s73v3r]

Most of that stuff isn't mandated like it is in other countries. Vacation time, for example. In Germany, you get something like 4 weeks off, by law. Here in the US, there is absolutely no requirement whatsoever that a company give you vacation time. Most do it because it is kinda expected. But if they wanted to make you work every day, every week, every month, technically they could.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Hyppy]

You're describing an at-will state, not a right to work state. Right to work means that you can't be forced to join a union as a condition of employment, with exceptions for some specific industries such as railroads. At-will means that the employer or employee can terminate a non-contracted employment relationship at any time, with or without cause.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Notquitecajun]

Here's the problem.

Would you rather no work, or low working standards? Most third-world economies don't exactly get the ability to start everyone in the middle class.

When a country is productive enough to install more humane measurements - which we are seeing in some sectors in places like China and India - they tend to do so because of international pressure.

Re:US Employment Rights

[stewbacca]

But the truth of the matter is that there are solid, logical, economic theories supporting the idea of eliminating social welfare (or at least reducing it by HUGE amounts). Talk to any unbiased economist who has learned the theory (I am not an economist).

Talk to an economist about social issues...right. Perhaps the economic policies are what are causing the sociological problems?

Talk to any sociologist and they'll tell you there are theories that prove that eliminating social welfare causes more crime and greater social upheaval.

The key is getting the right balance of taking care of society, and helping members of society learn to take care of themselves.

I think the problem with the economic and sociology theories is people confuse "eliminating minimum wage to stimulate higher wages all around" (an economics theory) with "take single mom with three kids' food stamps away and make her EARN it" (a sociology theory...well, an insensitive one, but still one).

Re:US Employment Rights

[Notquitecajun]

Adding to Bigjeff, the UK has also been a developed nation for several CENTURIES (relative to the rest of the world), with a buildup of capital and such.

Care to take a chunk out of your paycheck and send it to some developing third world fellow so he can see the dentist?

Re:US Employment Rights

[s73v3r]

The corporations consider these fines just a cost of doing business.

And that's the problem. If they don't want to do it, and if they can afford it, they just won't do it. Meanwhile, the workers suffer.

Re:US Employment Rights

[stewbacca]

OSHA sucks and is a good idea run amok by incompetent people seeking to save their own jobs.

$5,000 for the wrong shade of yellow on an elevator gate. $15,000 for a lawn mower on the receiving bay of a department store (forget the fact the lawn mower had no oil or gas in it and was less of a fire hazard than the billion cardboard boxes laying around). Yes, anecdotal, but they are MY anecdotes, damnit.

Or the worst OSHA offense I've been a part of...fining the Army for unsafe infractions....errr, first of all, you are suing yourself, and second of all, the Army is a dangerous profession, by definition.

Re:US Employment Rights

[s73v3r]

There is a little maternity leave coded into law, but I believe that is more in the interests of the health of the mother than allowing a family to spend time with their newborn child. And its much lower than anywhere else in the developed world.

Re:US Employment Rights

[ultranova]

I know SA has a ton of other issues that are going to take decades to get out of, but some of those rules would be a BIG headache for an entrepeneur who cannot afford the overhead.

If your business can't survive with this "overhead", then it never was profitable in the first place, except by shifting its externalities into the society at large - which made it a net loss for the economy, so good riddance. That's what this "overhad" is: the costs resulting from your business. It's only fair that you should pay it, and also a requirement for working markets.

Re:US Employment Rights

[s73v3r]

Compare all those "benefits" to pretty much everywhere else in the developed world. You'll find the US is sorely lacking.

Re:US Employment Rights

[stewbacca]

Dude, the FMLA in the US sucks. We seriously considered moving to Canada for that very reason. 6-weeks versus 52 weeks of paid leave. AND...FMLA is insurance that everyone pays into with every pay check, so it's not just a hand out. It should be much longer than it is, considering it isn't the burden to the employer that everyone wants to make it out to be (insurance company pays the wages, not the employer.)

Re:US Employment Rights

[stewbacca]

It illegal under HIPPA to require anybody to disclose their medical situation to anybody else for any reason. I'm willing to bet your employer has no legal basis for requiring a doctor's note.

They can NOT contact a doctor to verify, because the doctor can NOT legally be required to tell you anything about the medical condition of the patient.

Re:US Employment Rights

[s73v3r]

Sorry. Some people still haven't gotten over Apartheid.

Re:US Employment Rights

[stewbacca]

Health care is fine, in fact, excellent, as long as you don't go to Dr. Bob's Illegal Corner Surgery or something. Costs are high, yes, but that's partially because of idiots abusing the system, and partially to help pay for the medical research and advancements that help the health care to be good enough to keep everyone living a long time despite the obesity and stupidity epidemics among the general populous.

Almost, but it's actually the doctors working with the insurance that makes it such a racket. For example, my wife had an L2 spinal fusion. The bill was $150,000, but since we had insurance, the bill was "negotiated" to $70,000. So because Insurance Company pats Surgeon's back, and vice-versa, they can just arbitrarily drop $80k off the price of surgery. Niiiiiiiiiice.

Re:US Employment Rights

[s73v3r]

You know, I constantly hear this argument when talking about strengthening labor laws in the US. Fuck that shit. If you, as an entrepreneur, can't afford to give your workers adequate working conditions, then stay the fuck out of business.

Re:US Employment Rights

[stewbacca]

Spoken like somebody who has never worked in Germany and England as well as the US (which I have). Get some perspective. Our system suck in the US, relatively speaking. We tolerate it because of our resounding lack of perspective.

Re:US Employment Rights

[compro01]

Political views, for instance.

Also height, weight, martial status, family status, medical conditions, sexual orientation, legal use of drugs (for example, you might have a legal prescription for marijuana, but they can still fire you for failing a drug test for it), place of birth, and that's just off the top of my head.

Re:US Employment Rights

[mcgrew]

It's easy to say only "lazy" people can't get "Good jobs"

Well, it's only easy if you're ignorant or disingenuous. Most people don't have an easy time of finding work; it's been over 20 years since I was unemployed, but I spent eight hours a day looking for work for a whole year before I found a job.

Your comment should be modded up. The OP is ignorant; I suspect (s)he has never had to look for a job. Some people are blessed with the kind of connections that make getting a job easy, but most people aren't.

Re:US Employment Rights

[s73v3r]

Lack of restrictions doesn't mean you automatically have rights, either. Worker's Rights ensures freedom for the people. Removing those may increase freedom for the business owners, but typically removes freedom from the workers.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Fulminata]

You are correct, although they generally go together in states that have either.

Re:US Employment Rights

[sgtrock]

Right, right. In this state it's called "parental" leave, happily including those of us who happen to find child bearing difficult. :)

Re:US Employment Rights

[Twanfox]

When I refer to worker's rights, I don't refer to restrictions. I refer to minimums. A minimum of 15 minutes every 5 hours for breaks, for instance. Is that a restriction, or is that a guarantee that you will have at least time to get up, stretch, move a round, and do something personal every 2 hours (or so)? I don't know where you get restrictions from. As for letting potential employees negotiate the full terms of their own employment, often times what the employer has is far more valuable to the employee than the employee is to the employer. Hundreds of candidates may be viable for a particular job, but perhaps that potential employee only has that one job offer on the table. That is not a strong position to negotiate from as an employee, and I would imagine most employers are well aware of this fact by now. Ask for too much (or anything at all), and they simply move on to the next candidate who won't ask beyond the offer.

I also said nothing about being able to live without labor, but in modern society, there generally isn't enough land for everyone to produce enough food on their own to eat for a full month, let alone a full year. In order to survive, you need a job, monetized labor as you put it, in order to buy the aspects of survival that you need, and hopefully some luxuries that you want too. Because of this state, having a job isn't so much a want as a must have, and if you are forced into the job market to survive, you are, in effect, slave labor. You just aren't owned by any one company.

Workers rights are about balancing two opposing forces. The rights of workers to be free from abuse and indentured servitude, and the rights of business to 'contract' for labor. Right now, with nothing on the table protecting the workers, then business is allowed (and often does) trample over workers in their pursuit of profit. No significant rise in wages for the middle class in America for some time, despite rising costs. It's nice that employers offer benefits like time off, but that's only because if they didn't, others that did would gain more valuable employees.

Besides, it makes perfect sense to request, codified into law, time off for breaks and sick time, workplace protections, etc. When you have happy employees, you have productive employees. Employers tend to be stupid about seeking short term gains over long term. I suggest you review some of the atrocities of industry, lack of protections prior to things like OSHA. I'll give you one suggestion, "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. The employers don't care, and won't unless they are given good reason to.

Re:US Employment Rights

[demonlapin]

you can damn well afford to hire more people

What if you want the money instead? I suppose that would come under your "management" exception? Generally, partnership firms want to keep the partners' numbers small so as to maximize income. On the other end of the spectrum, though, overtime accounts for a lot of police officers' earnings in the US. Take it away and they're hurting pretty soon.

Re:US Employment Rights

[VJ42]

you aren't allowed to fire anybody unless they've had three written warnings, written warnings can only be issued after a hearing where the employee has the right to council...

This may sound good and make people who already have jobs difficult to fire. However, the devastating side effect is higher unemployment, especially among the youth and inexperienced. It makes it much riskier to hire if there are high hurdles for firing. Consider that an incompetent employee could do a lot of damage during 3 warnings while costing the employer a paycheck -- and a slick lawyer could keep them at the job. Hiring is critical for a developing economy which have large numbers of young and undereducated people. Policies like this (which are prevalent in third world countries), while well meaning, unfortunately contribute to a country's third world status.

BS. We have very similar laws here in the UK. We're certainly not a 3rd world country & firing total incompetents isn't hard because they tend to leave a lot of evidence. What's hard is firing people just because the boss happens not to like them etc.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Rockoon]

From U.S. Department of Labor..

The federal overtime provisions are contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Unless exempt, employees covered by the Act must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek at a rate not less than time and one-half their regular rates of pay.

(emphasis mine)

Where are my rights, here? This doesnt give me ANY rights. This is just a mandate. A restriction on both my employer and on me.

Maybe I want more hours and my employer wants me to work more hours, but he cannot justify overtime pay...

Where are my rights when the terms of my employment are dictated by the government?

Every championed 'Workers Rights' issue is exactly like this. A restriction that prevents me (and my union!) from fully negotiating the terms of my employment with the employer.

The only true 'Workers Rights' issues I know of are, in fact, about unionization. The right to collectively negotiate the terms of employment, but even unions are not exempt from these other bullshit 'Rights'

Re:US Employment Rights

[xero314]

I currently work 80 hours a week for two weeks straight, then take two full weeks off.

Unless you happen to work in a job where a larger portion of your reported hours is time spent resting (e.g. On Duty Emergency Services personnel), then who ever is paying you is making a huge mistake.

The 40 hour work week did not grow out of any workers rights movement, It came from a study in productivity. This initial study showed that productivity drop over the long run if employees worked greater than 36 hours a week. Since there have been many further studies showing that working higher number hours reduces productivity.

In your case (with the exception listed above) you are working at less than 70% efficiency and possibly as low as 50% efficiency. Meaning your employer (even if you are self employed) is getting no more than 56 hours of actual productive work for every 80 hours you work. If your hours were cut to 40 hours and a second employee was added who also worked 40 hours (assuming the task can be partitioned as such) your employer would get at least and additional 24 hours of productivity per week.

The situation gets far worse if you are a knowledge worker, such as an engineer, as you will actually reach negative productivity if your working long enough hours (You end up making costly mistakes rather than producing anything of value).

You can start here for reference.

Re:US Employment Rights

[hsbaker]

So, how will more laws will fix those companies that blatantly disregard the current laws?

Re:US Employment Rights

[Schadrach]

So, basically you get days that are no different than vacation, except that you don't have to announce ahead of time that you are using them?

I'm certain that if you had a medical condition that can be validated (as in written explanation from a doctor as to the nature of the condition) that has "attacks" like that, you'd get an exception to the rule.

You get a cold? Burn a vacation day or take an unpaid day.

You get injured? You'll burn two vacation/unpaid then sick leave until you are well enough to come back on light duty until a doctor validates that you can return to normal duties.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Improv]

That's a false choice (between no work and low working standards). It's harmful competition that leads those areas that insist on reasonable standards to lose out to those that don't. Solid rules on an international scale prevent that.

I don't expect everyone to start everyone in the middle class. That doesn't even make sense - even in the western world we don't have complete egality. What we do have is labour standards, won through difficult struggles by labour movements. These are not prizes we can afford to hoard for ourselves - they are inefficiencies that we treasure because they're the right thing to do, and by pushing other nations to adopt similar measures we both prevent them from hurting us in competition and better the lot of people everywhere.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Twanfox]

Yes, the net result for the very healthy people is that they are vacation days that do not demand significant announcement prior to use. The drawback is that if you need them later and have spent too many on 'I want a day off tomorrow', then you're taking vacation or no pay.

The migraine example was just that, an example. I've had illnesses that hit me hard, running a 104 degree fever, and the next day.. feeling well enough to go to work. I've had that only twice that I can recall so far, so where is the documentation required by my doctor?

Injury should be covered under Workman's comp or short term disability. Of course, that also depends on your role in the workforce.

My whole point about the parent's example was that use of vacation for 'short term illness' is not because that's what it should or shouldn't be used for, but to prevent the employee from using all the vacation time at once, and to prevent the use of sick time all together (unless you qualify for what would otherwise, in my jobs, be called short term disability). It is a net win for the employer (more worked hours for those paid) and loss for the employee (a benefit that is of no use is not a benefit). It has far less to do with actually preventing abuse of sick time off.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Archangel Michael]

http://www.southafrica.info/about/education/education.htm

At about 5.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) and 20% of total state expenditure, South Africa has one of the highest rates of public investment in education in the world.

Re:US Employment Rights

[slashqwerty]

Employers disregard the law because it is cheaper to pay the fine (when they get caught) than to fix the underlying problem. If the fine is increased to the point that it costs more than fixing the underlying problem the underlying problem will be fixed.

Re:US Employment Rights

[s73v3r]

We implement a 3 strikes policy.

Re:US Employment Rights

[s73v3r]

Where are my rights, here?

Your right to be worked to death by your employer.

Re:US Employment Rights

[exomondo]

But our government relies for it's vote massively on the unions who include most of that 82% poor people as members, if the unions ever tell their members to vote for the opposition - this government couldn't possibly survive an election.

So it's just another level of abstraction, essentially the union bosses run the country. They tell their members who to vote for so the government is answerable to them or it is ousted in favour of a more cooperative government.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

LOL I think the last thing anybody in this country gives a damn about is police officers earnings. They are more than good enough to supplement those with bribes already...

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

I didn't say we're not trying to *fix* the problem - the reality is though that you're looking at the federal budget but you're not seeing the ground level. Very little of that money ever gets where it is intended to go (corruption, mismanagement of funds etc. is rife), the vast majority of teachers are not just lazy but incredibly incompetent and a politicized curiculum doesn't help either. It's not unusual to find people who should be finishing high-school yet can't spell their own names right !
There are schools where the pass rate is literally ZERO.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

The good news is - that seems to be happening (though very slowly). You have to consider the ANC/COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) alliance goes back nearly 50 years, that cooperation was key to the appartheid struggle so their close relationship doesn't end easily. However COSATU has been ever more critical of the government in recent years and it's really spiked up in the last few months, their leader Zwelinzina Vavi has become extremely outspoken about the so-called tenderpreneur problem - this chafing is good, it may just reign the ANC in, or better yet, force a shift in power if it keeps going (I wouldn't hold my breath on that- the ANC has a nasty habit of giving cabinet posts to people who shake the cage in order to shut them up).

Re:US Employment Rights

[Notquitecajun]

No, it isn't. The South African example is proof of that. Companies cannot afford to open and then have all those benefits to give away particularly to an uneducated populace. They'll always go somewhere where they can truly afford to do business.

A man needs money in his pocket - which means he needs a job - far more than he needs to worry about vacation time or health benefits. Those come later as a matter of wealth, not rules.

Re:US Employment Rights

[Improv]

By enforcing international standards and locking people up who break them, we can stop the very process of their looking for places with the very least worker protections.

Re:US Employment Rights

[bhiestand]

South Africa is a third world country? Really? That's a bit disingenuous. That's like saying you live in Simi Valley, CA and talking about what it's like on the mean streets of Compton....

I know EXACTLY who you're talking about ;)

Re:US Employment Rights

[Archangel Michael]

Get rid of teachers ...

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

Children are natural learners, and we adults tend to get in the way.

Get rid of teachers, and save money which would be better used elsewhere. Except the "labor unions" would protest such a concept because labor laws aren't so much about protecting workers as they are about protecting political clout.

Re:US Employment Rights

[tompaulco]

Now let's see what is the average country ratio of employers to employees ? 1 to 1000 doesn't sound unreasonable - which group should the government be protecting here ?
There are over 31 million businesses in the U.S. That represents a less than 1 to 5 employer to employee ratio. The vast majority of these are small businesses. Small businesses make up 80% of our workforce and are the backbone of our economy. While many of the laws that are proposed seem good because they are going to stick it to the rich businessman, they real fact is that the rich businessman is largely insulated from most of these laws, and what the laws really do is hurt the small businessman, and therefore, hurt our economy.

Re:US Employment Rights

[silentcoder]

Funny -we could solve that easily using tiered laws. For example the employment equity act doesn't apply at all if you have less than 50 employees, some of the others only kick in if you have over 100 etc.

Re:US Employment Rights

[node_chomsky]

Basically, most people who think the biggest waste of tax-money is social welfare need to grow up, because the logic behind their reasons for that is typically something found on a pre-school playground more so than in a college level class.

Fixed that for you.

It was right the first time. Egocentric thought is egocentric thought. I generally would attach 'most' to statements like that, but in this case, selfishness is genuinely part of these people's weltanschauung, and as such, I will happily disqualify the entire philosophy. It's like trying to argue that National Socialism (i.e. the full name of NAZI-ism which has no philosophical connection to democratic socialism) has virtues. This may be true, the unemployment rate was low in NAZI Germany, but it hardly justifies the overarching philosophy behind it. Basically, Randian Objectivists are by many models of human development* still very much children in the way they think about others.

*Primarily the work of Kohlberg and his stages of moral development. Take note of level 1, Pre-Conventional, stage 2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development/p

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Freedom of speech...

[contra_mundi]

With that logic, North Korea has freedom of speech.

"You can say/write whatever you want...just be ready to accept the consequences."

The consequence just happens to be capital punishment or forced labor for years.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Kokuyo]

I think you're both right. One one hand, you can never truly speak your mind, unless you have absolute certainty, that no negative or positive consequences will follow.

On the other hand, there's a difference between being critical about your government or someone you have to work with on a daily basis. It must, in turn, be your bosses freedom to fire you, if the personal differences run too deeply, right?

Re:Freedom of speech...

[digitalchinky]

Speaking of consequences, I'm sure it was all high 5's, parades, hugs, and an extra sack of rice for the NK boys that sank the Cheonan - they'll live happily ever after.
What are the consequences for a government that routinely threatens various countries with annihilation if they don't get food aid or money?

Freedom of action does not always end with consequences.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, a British teen was banned from the US forever for calling the President a prick, go figure.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[RsG]

A distinction that's lost on many people is that "freedom of speech" in the US legal system applies to the government, not private entities. Put another way, North Korea is a bad point of comparison when talking about corporate policy.

Now, should the protection of freedom of speech apply to corporate policy? I would say yes. In my ideal world, basic human rights would be encoded into the law in such a way that they cannot be circumvented by private entities in any way. But the law in reality does not say that this is the case.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Richard_at_work]

Shouldn't the concept of consequence be part of the checks and balances involved in making the moral and ethical decision on whether or not you carry out the act of speech?

Re:Freedom of speech...

[IWannaBeAnAC]

In the end, what is the difference between state tyrrany and private tyrrany?

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Gerzel]

Indeed it is right to lose proportion because no attempt to keep proportion has been made in the first place.

It was simply stated that the boss would have right to do what he/she liked depending on what you said as a given without any proportion as a generalization.

In other words the previous poster was just pointing out the generalization and how overly broad it was.

I'm Captain Obvious and I'm here to serve!

Re:Freedom of speech...

[demonlapin]

Your company can't kill you legally?

Re:Freedom of speech...

[natehoy]

There's a very fine line, though, when you're talking about private organizations and their willfully-employed workforce.

Does my freedom of speech extend to, say, lying about something between myself and my employer in public? Selling or giving away their corporate databases? Detailing how cool our security system is including placement and models of cameras and door locking systems? Announcing that I had a really bad day and detailing the personal problems that someone else had that led to my bad day, including their name and phone number? Calling out customers who had late payments by name and including their phone numbers? I'd argue "no".

I'd say if you were experiencing unacceptable working conditions, the employer should not have the right to fire you for saying so in public if you can prove what you are saying. You'll get better traction reporting it to OSHA or someone who can do something about it, but whatever. Telling the truth should never have legal ramifications.

Similarly, just saying you had a bad day because you had a bad day doesn't really reflect negatively on your workplace, unless you make a habit of saying "[employer] sucks!" or something. It's work. You'll have bad days. We all do. Most of us refrain from saying it because, well, no one wants to read constant whining anyway, and we generally don't blame our employers and don't want to associate negativity with the companies that treat us well overall, but those who do should be able to freely as long as they don't make up stuff about their employer in the process or constantly bash their employer without any justification.

If what you say is completely unrelated to work, then there should be no work ramifications unless your personal reputation is somehow critical to the company (CEO, important sales reps or public-facing representatives, etc). "Man, did I get drunk last night, how many hookers did I bang again, and man that blow was good...?" might be enough to get you a serious write-up if you call in sick the next day and claim it was a cold, but abusing a single sick day is rarely a "termination" offense unless it's at the end of a long pattern of same. You might also be subject to a drug test, and you might lose your job if you fail it, but that's being terminated due to a violation of a clear policy, not because you yakked about it on MyFaceTweet. You offered up evidence of a violation of a policy, they followed up on the evidence you gave them. Don't like that idea? Then don't violate your company's policies, pick a company to work for that has policies you can live with, or at least shut the hell up about it in public.

You should have the freedom to speak your mind as long as you make it clear it's your opinion, and you should have the freedom to tell the truth all the time, but you don't have the right to violate any valid restrictions your employer might place in order to protect their reputation from damage (unless said damage is deserved), and their data from unauthorized distribution (ever), nor should any confessions you might make in public about your own wrongdoing be considered off-limits to your employer, as long as the wrongdoing directly affects your employment (admitting to getting drunk on a Friday night is not a work-related problem as long as you show up to work sober on Monday, admitting to getting drunk during a major sales meeting and losing a major contract as a result is most certainly one).

Re:Freedom of speech...

[contra_mundi]

Is that a rhetorical question? Can you clarify your position?

I guess it's good to think about it before you say it, whatever it is.

Are you implying that not all speech should be protected?
If that's case, I'd say that the best possible scenario exists somewhere in the middle: No shouting fire frivolously and no banning people from a country because of a drunken letter.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Attila Dimedici]

I hate to have to tell you this, but the First Amendment does not apply to your boss (unless he happens to work for the government).
The First Amendment reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Please note that it says "Congress shall make no law...", not "No one shall ...abridge the freedom of speech...". This is an important difference. It isn't until the Fourteenth Amendment that the First Amendment comes to apply to state and local governments.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

>>>With that logic, North Korea has freedom of speech.

The difference is that a government holds a Monopoly on power, so if you piss them off you will find yourself in jail. In contrast a corporation does not hold a monopoly. If your speech annoys ABC Company and you get fired, you can just move to one of the millions of other companies. It's the difference between Choice and non-choice.

Of course this is why Comcast's heavy-handed punishment against users is so dangerous. In many areas comcast holds a monopoly so if they suspend your internet access, you are permanently cutoof. So "monopoly", whether it's comcast or government, takes away individual freedom. Monopoly is the thing you truly need to fear.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

>>>You'll get better traction reporting it to OSHA or someone who can do something about it, but whatever. Telling the truth should never have legal ramifications.

Not really

I've had two employers Demand to see my birth certificate, which violates federal law (a drivers license + SSI card is sufficient to prove I-9 citizenship), but reporting it to OSHA or the Dept.of Labor didn't accomplish squat. They told me that I was right and the employer was wrong, but all I achieved was a threat by the security guard that I would be kicked-off campus if I did not comply and immediately produce a birth certificate, and this foreign business (Smiths Aerospace) continues to operate without punishment. And continues to demand birth certificates from its employees.

Man. I really hate corporations.
They get away with violating law w/o consequences.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[HaveNoMouth]

When it's private, it's not tyranny. In theory, your arrangement with your employer is voluntary on both sides. Either party can decide at any time to cancel the arrangement and you go your separate ways. The arrangement between you and your government, however, is much less voluntary. If your government puts you in jail, you can't just decide you don't like the food and leave. This is why the founders wrote the BofR to apply to the federal government and not to private entities. (The BofR didn't even apply to state governments until much later.) Of course in practice it might be very difficult to change your employer, but it's still easier than changing your government.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[mcgrew]

It must, in turn, be your bosses freedom to fire you, if the personal differences run too deeply, right?

There are in fact worker protection laws. You can't be fired (legally, at least) "just because". They have to have a valid reason.

Didn't anybody even read the summary??? The NLRB ruled that the boss can't fire you without just cause, and that trashing the boss on facebook isn't "just cause". They need a valid reason, like habitual lateness, no call no show, theft, drug use, etc.

That doesn't mean that the boss can't plant cocaine in your desk or child porn on your computer and have you arrested, then fire you. It just means he can't do it legally.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[IWannaBeAnAC]

In virtually all Western Democracies, the state can't legally kill you either.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[dwinks616]

You'd be lucky if all they did was harass you. They have been known to KILL people: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_McPherson

I could find other people they've killed, but I'm at work and have better things to do.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Of course in practice it might be very difficult to change your employer, but it's still easier than changing your government.

Is it? It seems like this is another case where theory and practice are quite different. How often does the government change compared with your employer?

I'm also glad that you have declared that "when it's private, it's not tyrrany". I'm sure the victims of all of the various private armies in history (through to the east india company, Blackwater, etc) will be very happy.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[demonlapin]

They can always change the law. And Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, and Finland still have conscription, at least per Wikipedia.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[dwinks616]

Yes, that's what the constitution says, but that doesn't mean either that it shouldn't be "no one" nor does it mean that anyone else should have the power to stifle free speech. In a modern society, one should have the freedom to say and do ANYTHING they want, UNTIL it imposes on the rights of others. If I want to post of facebook true and factual information about the working conditions at Acme Co, I should be able to do so. If I post truth, and the truth hurts Acme Co, then that's their problem, and they may take me to court over it and, having proved what I said is true, lose. If I post lies, I should be held liable for slander/libel and treated as such. Whether it's a private company owned by one person or a multi-national corporation, they should, in no way, be allowed to coerce, punish, or harm anyone, employee or not, for expressing opinions or stating factual information in a public setting.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[IWannaBeAnAC]

They have military service. Conscription is something different, that is brought in on an as-needs basis. The last time the USA brought it in was Vietnam. Early on there were questions about whether conscription would be needed in Iraq.

I don't see the relevance though. Your point is?

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate people who completely fail to understand what freedom of speech is. It means the government can't arrest you for your speech. It does NOT mean you are immune from the consequences of your speech by anyone else.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

The existence of "good" corporations and governments does not make me love them any more.

They are still dangerous to individuals, as the last 100 years of history prove. (~150 million citizens killed by their own governments) (~10 million workers/neighbors/customers killed by corporate spills or dangerous conditions or denial of medical insurance)

Re:Freedom of speech...

[demonlapin]

A state can compel you to risk your life for its benefit. That's all. My original comment was a brief articulation of the distinction between the state and any private actor: the state can use violence at will to force you to comply with its actions, while private actors cannot.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[srussia]

In contrast a corporation does not hold a monopoly. If your speech annoys ABC Company and you get fired, you can just move to one of the millions of other companies. [...] Monopoly is the thing you truly need to fear.

Actually, a company is a buyer of labor vis-à-vis employees, so what you need to be afraid of is a monopspony. And I think the case can be made that the labor market is an oligopsony.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[geekoid]

"A distinction that's lost on many people is that "freedom of speech" in the US legal system applies to the government, not private entities. "

That is a lie that has been propagated for years by people who don't want you to talk about your business.

Anyone who has bothered to study the subject and read the papers and letter of the foundered knows full well the intent was that all people* have freedom of reasonable speech at all times.

So study the fuck up before spreading that damn lie.

To some up: it's well within your rights to bitch about your boss.

*Yes, even people in other countries deserve to enjoy the freedoms outlined in the constitution. That is why rendition is a slap in the face to ALL Americans.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[greg_barton]

If the government wasn't there to stop them, yes they could.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[DragonWriter]

A distinction that's lost on many people is that "freedom of speech" in the US legal system applies to the government, not private entities.

A distinction that is lost on many people (including, all too often, the US courts) is that corporations are, in point of fact, creatures of government, not independently-existing private entities. The only independently-existing private

Re:Freedom of speech...

[stewbacca]

Hint: we regulate these so called "private relationships" through labor laws. Without them, the boss does all the trashing.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[demonlapin]

In the absence of government, "legal" isn't really a meaningful word. And the government won't stop them; it will just punish them after the fact.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[stewbacca]

Funny, if you make this same claim about what constitutes censorship, the slashdot hordes will claim ANYTHING is censorship, not just that which comes from the government.

I've lost track of how many times I've said "Apple doesn't censor anything, because they are not the US Government" only to be lectured that censorship isn't limited to the government.

So which is it, slashdot?

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Predius]

Depends on the state. Maine for example is an at will employment state. An employer can just decide "You're done" and you no longer have a job. There is no requirement for just cause. If you can prove it was due to something inappropriate you can bring a case, but the burden of proof is on the employee at that point.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[nedwidek]

You don't work in North Carolina, do you? In the US there is the concept of 'at will employment.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

As a business owner we are told that the best course is to give NO reason when we fire someone. Giving reason can potentially come back to bite you.

There are EEO protected classes, but that still doesn't stop people from being fired discrimination on these points. You need to bring a wrongful termination suit. You need to prove with evidence that you were fired for one of the protected reasons. If your case is a little weak, you can't even hope a jury trial will help. In NC, juries are largely unsympathetic with wrongful termination cases.

So yes, just about anywhere in the US you can be fired for 'just because.' In the south, doubly so.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Attila Dimedici]

Whether or not someone should do something is not the question, the question is, should it be illegal for them to do so? I do not believe that I should be obligated to continue paying someone who thinks that working for me is terrible. If you think that working for my company is terrible then you will probably not do a very good job.
I have worked at companies that were miserable to work for until the person who was constantly complaining about how bad things were quit. Amazingly enough when that person left, working conditions "miraculously" improved. Actually, conditions didn't change much at first, but since that person was no longer there constantly reminding everyone about the things they didn't like about the job, people stopped focusing on the bad things and started to enjoy their job more.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[oreaq]

Who went to jail for killing 11 people on Deep Horizon?

Re:Freedom of speech...

[countertrolling]

What does the law have to do with anything? Companies are like hookers and drug dealers. If they get run off, they just move to the next corner, city, state, country.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[lostmongoose]

Look up at-will employment. Yes, actually, they can fire you for w/e you want This is the case in Connecticut and the majority of other US states. The NLRB ruled that making it company policy that employees can't talk about the workplace outside of work was illegal, not that you can't be fired for w/e reason, including bashing your employer on Facebook. Just like Wal-Mart fires employees who so much as *mention* unions while at work. At-will employment is the backdoor through which employers sidestep employment laws and, no, it's not illegal.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[greg_barton]

Semantics, all of it.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Bigjeff5]

You totally misunderstand what Freedom of Speech is.

You can say whatever you want, but if your words cause harm to others you may be held accountable.

For the government it is a pretty high standard that they have to meet before they can punish someone (serious national security type stuff, that wikileaks bs wasn't quite good enough), among private individuals there is no standard you need to meet before you can terminate your relationship, but if you can show harm (from libel or slander) you can sue successfully. Also if your speech causes immediate harm to the public you will be held accountable. Companies are the same as individuals, with exceptions found in labor laws.

Thus, the story of the NLRB declaring restriction of Facebook usage by companies violates the labor laws.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[tompaulco]

In all of the states that I am aware of, the exact opposite is true. Most states are at-will and they can fire you for any reason or no reason. In fact, it makes more sense for them to fire you for NO reason. If they have a reason, then you might be able to take them to court and prove them wrong or sue them for discrimination.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[KhabaLox]

But the law in reality does not say that this is the case.

Actually, it does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Act The law "limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector [that engage in some "free speech" activities]."

Re:Freedom of speech...

[ultranova]

Just like Wal-Mart fires employees who so much as *mention* unions while at work.

Thus proving that unions are still a necessity, and that minimum-wage employees should form their own ASAP.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Hyppy]

How did this get modded insightful?
"That is a lie that has been propagated for years by people who don't want you to talk about your business."

The amendment begins with "Congress shall make no law". There is no restriction on businesses or individuals from retaliating against speech in a lawful manner. For example: CmdrTaco can ban you from this website for stating that you support free speech. You have no recourse other than throwing a bitchfit to the media or something to that effect. A private entity can do what it wants within the bounds of the law, you don't get some magical "I get to say whatever I want without consequences" shield.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[s73v3r]

When it's private, it's not tyranny.

This is why nobody takes Libertarianism seriously. Its that belief that no company could ever do bad things or deny people rights.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Hyppy]

The summary is wrong. They haven't really ruled anything, the NLRB is taking it to court and fighting it. Also, the NLRB is contesting it on the basis of a violation of firing in retaliation to protected speech, not for a lack of cause. If the speech is disloyal or not a discussion between employees, they don't really have a case through the NLRA.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Hyppy]

Censorship does not equal violation of the first amendment. They are two completely separate but related concepts.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Attila Dimedici]

If Apple censors something they are not violating the First Amendment. Censorship by a private institution is not a violation of the First Amendment (except in certain limited circumstances).
You are also making the mistake of thinking that I speak for slashdot. I do not speak for slashdot (either the website or the "community"), I speak for myself (although I amuse myself by believing that there is a significant number of people on slashdot who agree with me on many subjects...usually different people on different subjects)

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Tetsujin]

Of course in practice it might be very difficult to change your employer, but it's still easier than changing your government.

Is it? It seems like this is another case where theory and practice are quite different. How often does the government change compared with your employer?

Are you claiming the government changes with every election?

I'd say that while the individual members of the government may change with each election, it's still the same government that I've lived under all my life.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[JeffSpudrinski]

I didn't say it was right, but that's the way it is.

If you trash your boss or your workplace in a public forum, then they can find lots of "legal" reasons to let you go. Think about it...if your boss was looking for a reason to get rid of you, how many of you out there come in two or three minutes late, take a personal call at work, browse the web, etc... If you're on the boss' good side, he/she turns a blind eye...if they don't like you, then you get written up.

There's laws to protect workers, sure...but there's lots of ways for companies to still fire you, but stay within the confines of those laws.

Someone shouldn't realistically be surprised that the company will start watching them looking for a legit reason to get rid of them if they trash their boss or workplace publicly.

Again...doesn't make it right, but that's just the way it is.

Later,
-JJS

Re:Freedom of speech...

[davev2.0]

You don't seem to understand the difference between people not like what you say and the government punishing you for what you say.

You have the freedom to say pretty much anything you want. Other people have the right to not associate with you because of what you say. The government has a limited right to control what you say, such as if what you say endangers others (yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is the classic example). Basically, your statement is false dichotomy and there is nothing insightful about that.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

>>>Good to see you've finally admitted that you want anarchy.

I said nothing of the kind. What I want is a central government limited by the Constitution (i.e. limited to ~25 specific powers) rather than an unrestrained government that can do almost anything it desires. Basically I want to enforce the 9th and 10th Amendments.

As for corporations, I don't have a solution. Maybe a good first step is to say corporations have the same legal status as Buildings, not people, and therefore have revocable privileges not rights.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

>>>The amendment begins with "Congress shall make no law".

And the document begins with "We the People". Corporations are things not people, so the Bill of Rights applies to the People alone, and the Member States that made the original document. Corporations have no more rights than this Building I am sitting in, and are in fact an invention by government (via issuance of a Limited Liability) that do not exist in nature. Since corporations are not natural, they are not entitled to natural rights.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

Never heard that word before. I'm not sure why it's necessary to have a new one? "Monopoly on power" or "Monopoly on market" pretty much explains that problem. It means lack of choice for consumers or employees or sellers.

Like ebay for example. Although I do have other choices for selling my goods, none of them is effective. Ebay has a near-monopoly on the auction market.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

>>>they can find lots of "legal" reasons to let you go.

I lost my job because my boss said, "You eat too much food at lunchtime." Her argument was that because the company is supplying the food, and she received reports I was eating a lot of food, I broke the rules. I commented (1) I only weigh 130 pounds so obviously I'm not overeating and the report was fallacious, and (2) if you had simply ASKED me I would have brought a bag lunch instead of eating the company's lunch. No need for firing.

She didn't want to hear it. As you say, bosses can basically invent reasons to dump you.
In this case, as I later learned, my position was never refilled.
She was cutting costs by dumping people.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

P.S.

Don't ever work for Rockwell Collins. They eventually dumped the other contractors as well, for similarly stupid reasons. (Unless you want to be abused.)

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

>>>yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is the classic example

Which ironically comes from a war-time Supreme Court decision that upheld the Sedition Act, and was used to imprison people who criticized President Wilson, dared to say the US should not be involved in WW1, and the suffragettes trying to gain the right to vote. By indirectly citing that case, you effectively endorse the idea that a president or congress can jail people for saying things they don't like.

IMHO that case has as little validity as the Supreme Court case that said "separate but equal" segregation is acceptable.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

>>>if your words cause harm to others you may be held accountable.

Only if it can be proved your words caused physical or financial harm, and proving either of those is near impossible, so in effect free speech is unlimited except for a few rare cases. "You're a big poopy head" might hurt someone's feelings, but it is not grounds to silence the speaker.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[mug funky]

and yet they have them...

as a legal entity they have the same rights as a person.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Hyppy]

OOh, I love picking your posts apart.

And the document begins with "We the People". Corporations are things not people, so the Bill of Rights applies to the People alone, and the Member States that made the original document.
Point 1: Read further: "We the People ... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That sentence is stating that the people are establishing the constitution, not limits on who/what it applies to.
Point 2: Corporations are legal entities that have been ruled to have many of the same legal rights and protections as an individual. If you think otherwise, get yourself a seat on a court and change it.
Point 3: You state that it only applies to the "Member States" that made the original document. There were only twelve "Member States" when the Constitution was ratified in 1789. So sorry, the rest of you 38 states?

Corporations have no more rights than this Building I am sitting in
Yes they do. Go learn some corporate law. Here's a starting place, although you should probably delve into more authoritative sources

and are in fact an invention by government (via issuance of a Limited Liability) that do not exist in nature.
Yes, they are an invention of the government. So is criminal law. So is the Constitution. Neither of those exist in nature, do they? I haven't seen any Constitution trees in my parts.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

You're right.
I'm wrong.

The United States can do ANYTHING it wants, including rounding-up people it doesn't like (jews, japanese, fox news fans, whatever), and forcing them into gas chambers for "showers". Oh and YOU might as well take that Constitution in the Archives, and shred it with your own hands, since you think it has zero meaning.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[commodore64_love]

>>>Nice quote-mining there, Troll64.

Maybe if you posted under your USERID instead of hiding, I'd show you some respect. But since you choose to be a cowardly lion, hiding behind AC, I show about the same respect I show for someone like Glenn Beck.

Re:Freedom of speech...

[Hyppy]

Oh, the glory of hyperbole. Eh, Mr. Godwin?

Re:It Depends on the Forum

[buckadude]

I believe one of the aspects the NLRB is protecting here is the right to complain and collaborate via email or other electronic means. collaboration is key here. You would not be protected in speech based on saying something like "My boss John Doe is an incompetent asshole" because there is no collaboration there... its just a statement. I could be wrong here, but as I understand it, you would need to add in something to the effect of " my boss john doe is an incompetent asshole and would anyone like to start a group or get together and talk about it?" The reason goes back to some basic things like the right to form unions with out being fired, threatened or physically stopped (this used to be very common (Pinkertons)). This is not a groundbreaking decision here... any labor lawyer could tell you that... the real headline here is that this is how it should be and soon the Congress will most assuredly do everything they can (short of blowing up the NLRB) to stomp this out of existence.

Re:At-Will

[airos4]

To add on, we are NOT easily replaceable drones... this is a healthcare environment, at a high enough level to make it difficult to replace us.

Yes, they are.

[sethstorm]

- Is an employee considered property, or an 'asset'?

Disposable property unless C-level. See employment laws and attitudes towards compensation in the US in that matter.

- Can an employee be forced to do labor?

Yes. See the forced training of offshore replacements.

- Does an employee who does not want to do said labor walk away?

The cost is made high enough that they can't walk away. See our current economy.

Physical threats have become legal threats

[sethstorm]

The reason goes back to some basic things like the right to form unions with out being fired, threatened or physically stopped (this used to be very common (Pinkertons)).

These days, the physical threats are replaced with lawyer hit teams like The Burke Group, Jackson Lewis, and the like.

Get out of the South, and you ditch RTW.

[sethstorm]

All sounds very civil but that not how it works here (U.S.). Most states have Right To Work laws (look it up, it sucks - basically union busting/slow erosion)

Not if you live in the Free North.

Re:Get out of the South, and you ditch RTW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada?

Re:Get out of the South, and you ditch RTW.

[slyrat]

All sounds very civil but that not how it works here (U.S.). Most states have Right To Work laws (look it up, it sucks - basically union busting/slow erosion)

Not if you live in the Free North.

Not really, I live in Ohio which also has this. I would consider it to be the north (though I guess not northeast or northwest).

Re:It Depends on the Forum

[wjousts]

Somebody mod the parent as insightful.

This is how I understand it from discussions on the news this morning. I think the employee in question was protected because after bitching about her work, several co-workers chimed in with their opinions. That made it a collaborative discussion about working conditions and protected.

Re:It Depends on the Forum

[buckadude]

that is exactly correct. it is called a concerted protected activity!

A word of advice...

[denzacar]

If you gonna cite, then cite right.

Also, "stories" by samzenpus are actually random copy/pastes from digg done by a bot.
It is an experiment into mob sourcing.
Nobody checks validity of those stories before they are posted.

Seriously, the best article on a worker dismissal

[nedlohs]

in Connecticut is an Indonesian news source?

No, states North of the Mason-Dixon line.

[sethstorm]

N/T

Ohio doesn't have RTW, for now.

[sethstorm]

As another Ohioan:

Ohio doesn't have RTW, but if Head Banker-Elect Kasich has his way with the General Assembly, Ohio might just get that abomination.

+5 Insightful!

[contra_mundi]

I hate people who don't share my point of view too. :)

Perhaps you only define freedom of speech as a legal term (and only in the US legal system and only as it appears in the constitution) but you cannot deny that the concept is much bigger than that. Society can restrict freedom of speech in unlegislated ways.

Re:+5 Insightful!

[Bigjeff5]

Only if you conform to society.

But actions always have consequences. Denying it doesn't make it untrue.

Re:+5 Insightful!

[mug funky]

not conforming to society is like swimming upstream.

it can be done, but it takes a lot of energy and is a constant battle that others don't have to face.

i'm not sure what i'm saying here...

And pedestrians have the right of way...

[rgviza]

... in a cross walk. "... gives workers the right ..." Often pedestrians are dead right when they jaywalk into 40mph traffic and get hit, even though they have the right of way in the crosswalk. I've seen women pushing a baby carriage, simply walk into traffic because they have a right to, putting their child and themselves in a life threatening situation by jaywalking in front of 40mph traffic. All they need to do is wait for the light to change, but they don't. Sure they can sue, if they are still alive. Is it worth risking your kid's life to save 3 minutes waiting for the light to change? That's what this case reminds me of. Why fuck around? Is it really worth it to risk your job because you bitched about work on facebook? You have every right to express yourself after all.

Re:And pedestrians have the right of way...

[stewbacca]

If somebody is jay-walking, they aren't legally crossing the street. By definition if jay-walking, they don't have the right of way. Still, it's dumb to say "that car has to stop because they have to", with the consequence of them not stopping being you are right, but you are dead.

The employer thing is different. We have the right to say things away from work, as long as they aren't slanderous/libelous/ or give away trade secrets. Our boss has no right to muzzle our thoughts and speech away from the workplace by using the threat of termination. That's a slippery slope that leads to employers telling us what kind of cars we can drive and what hobbies we can partake in and which political parties we should vote for. Screw that world-view.

That applies to very few people, not all.

[sethstorm]

You might have no problem, but things are generally against the person who seeks work. For the rest of us, large problems exist in finding/keeping work.

The amount of people looking for work is used against both people at work and people looking for work.

Re:That applies to very few people, not all.

[Bigjeff5]

If you've got skills, you'll get paid regardless of the state of the economy. If you don't, you won't get paid unless the economy is really good.

That's life.

Doesn't have to be negotiated.

[wiredog]

In the US, if you're hourly (at least in the places I've worked) the employer is required to give you a 15 minute paid break in every 4 hour period, and a half hour (unpaid) meal break in every 8 hour period. Time off for vacation and medical may also have been mandated, but every place I've worked has given at least two weeks/year vacation + one week's worth of medical.

 

Re:Doesn't have to be negotiated.

[Hyppy]

Almost all of those protections disappear if you're categorized as an "independent contractor," which is quickly becoming the overwhelming trend among employers. It's not particularly legal, but it's a losing battle to try fight it and expect to still get another job in the same region/industry.

Oh no!

[countertrolling]

Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!

So did they move the Mason-Dixon line,

[NiteShaed]

or did New Jersey slide south, 'case pretty much everything the AC said seems to apply here. New York too afaik.

The law recognizes consequences to speech

[Infonaut]

There are boundaries to speech that involve direct legal consequences: libel, slander, trade secret laws, state secrecy laws, etc.

Re:The law recognizes consequences to speech

[Richard_at_work]

We aren't talking about legal consequences, we are talking about the law not stopping other people from enacting certain consequences.

For example, why shouldn't an employer be allowed to sack an employee that's bad mouthing the company publicly? That's precisely the issue at question here - if you badmouth someone, why should they continue to benefit you?

Re:The law recognizes consequences to speech

[s73v3r]

Well, to give the obvious example, if the employee is talking about unsafe working conditions, that could be considered "Badmouthing the company publicly." Yet, it has been law that employers cannot fire you for demanding safe working conditions (to the extent possible, some jobs will always have an inherent danger in them). Would it be right that the company could fire someone for saying that the company is unsafe? If so, then where is the pressure on the company to improve working conditions?

Re:The law recognizes consequences to speech

[Hyppy]

There is a distinction that is made. If you speak disloyally (defame the company without sufficient evidence or basis in fact), then you're on your own. If you act as a whistleblower and bring up legitimate complaints that are provable then you're generally "protected", whatever that's worth.

Re:Seriously, the best article on a worker dismiss

[wjousts]

No, Slashdot didn't like the original NY Times article I submitted because of the weird semi-sortof-paywall thing they have. The linked instead to a Jakarta paper that said essentially the same thing (and credits NY Times at the very bottom of the article).

Re:At-Will

[Bigjeff5]

they have to do something highly illegal to actually get sued for firing you.

You mean like firing you for participating in a collaborative discussion about your employment conditions? Yeah, that's protected under federal law. You may want to actually read the story and all that. If you were talking shit about your boss with other employees and they are trying to fire you, you can sue them.

Re:At-Will

[Bigjeff5]

Yeah you are. It's just expensive to replace you, that's all.

Re:Seriously, the best article on a worker dismiss

[stewbacca]

[Seriously, he best article on a worker dismissal] in Connecticut is an Indonesian news source?

Yes. Any US journalist would have been fired for writing about it.

Jakarta Globe? Really??

[Vegeta99]

So we're getting our news on the US National Labor Relations Board making a ruling about a dispute involving a US company's policy of prohibiting posting about work to another US company's website from an Indonesian news purveyor ... who quoted it from a US newspaper anyway??

Re:Jakarta Globe? Really??

[wjousts]

No, we're not. I submitted the NY Times article. Slashdot editors chose to link to the Jakarta Globe, probably because of the (semi) pay-wall thing the NY Times has.

Re:Jakarta Globe? Really??

[Vegeta99]

Ah, OK.

Well, at least we still use logic sometimes around here.