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Mandriva CEO: Employee Lawsuits Put Us Out of Business
Julie188 writes: As you probably heard by now, Linux company Mandriva has finally, officially gone out of business.
The CEO has opened up, telling his side of the story. He blames employee lawsuits after a layoff in 2013, the French labor laws and the courts. "Those court decisions forced the company to announce bankruptcy," he said.
The company was having trouble in 2013 so it laid off some employees
In 2014 the company started doing better
The employees who were laid off in 2013 sued and won
The cost of dealing with the lawsuit caused the company to again experience hardship. This time they closed there doors.
So it had nothing to do with a severance package. When the company started doing better they were forced to compensate employees that were fired when the company was doing badly.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Yes, we have the right not to have our employer's dick be firmly planted in our ass.
The company was having trouble in 2013 so it laid off some employees without compensating them as required by French law
Had they compensated the employees correctly there would have been no lawsuits and no judgement to pay.
The employees who were laid off in 2013 sued and won
Where is the evidence that the lawsuits were filed after 2014. If they were filed before 2014 the fact that the company did better in 2014 is irrelevant.
Had the company had compensated the employees according to law it would not have had to pay lawyers and probably court costs and may have survived.
the company was by law required to provide a severance package when laying off employees, which they did not. the employees sued for the severance package, and won.
First off, it's the fucking law that they have to pay severance. So, by law, they sure as hell do owe employees something ... your idiotic belief that workers should be grateful to a have a job and suck it up if they get fired is irrational libertarian drivel.
From what the article says, the CEO wasn't trying to get out of paying anything to the workers. The company was asking to be allowed to pay installments so they could avoid bankruptcy. The government either wasn't legally able to bend on this, or hoped investors would invest more money after they exhausted all other options. The investors decided not to put more money in, and the company filed for bankruptcy. So basically everyone loses, which sometimes happens in a game of chicken.
This is what happens when your labor laws are too heavily weighted towards the worker. It generally hurts overall GDP because companies suffer, but that is counterbalanced by the population's desire to give up a little GDP to have a better quality of life. I would like for my country (the U.S.) to give up a little GDP for better worker rights too (not as good as France though), but it is naive to think we can have these better worker rights without companies failing because companies cannot be as "agile".
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Hold on a second. The employees were looking after their own best interests, the shareholders decided to bail instead of pay their debts, and you are saying it is the fault of employee protection laws. How absurd. Pay your debts or go under. That is true for every human being. It is true for every corporation too in a sane society.
They had already gotten what they worked for. They were stamping their feet and demanding severance money from a company that didn't have the money, and not caring if they destroyed the company and the lives of the superior employees who still worked there. Nasty, stupid children acting just as expected.
They were demanding severance pay that was already owed them by the company and had not been paid. The financial condition of the company is of no consequence.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
They're typically defining "poverty" as less than 1/2 the median income. It's really a dumb way to compare poverty across countries.
The U.S median income for a household is much higher than in France, thus someone below the "poverty rate" in the Unites States can be much wealthier than someone above the "poverty rate" in France.
In France, even with purchasing power parity, the median household income is (depending on if you use Gallup or OECD numbers) 70-77% of what it is in the United States. Using Gallup numbers, the "poverty line" in the US would be $22K/year vs $16K/year in France. Remember, these number take into account purchasing power parity (PPP), so you can literally buy about the same things in each country.
To put that into perspective for variations within the United States, the median income in Maine or Hawaii is 65% of that of Virginia or Utah (adjusted for cost of living).
According to the OECD, the "poverty rate" in Mexico is about $2250, based on a PPP median income of $4500. By their measurement, a barely "poor" person in the U.S. ($22K) would be considered upper middle class in Mexico. I won't bring up the really poor countries in Africa and elsewhere, but the "poverty rate" they're talking about is virtually valueless across countries for comparison purposes.
Put another way, the median income and thus "poverty rate" of Mississippi is higher than that of France, so I know which country I'd rather live in...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.