Comment by paulojreis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulojreis | Hacker News Reader

I always had the struggles of the slightly older job seekers close to my heart. It's just something that employment policy doesn't address adequately.

My father is in that situation - which is why, obviously, I feel it so close. He's slightly above 50, with qualifications (B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering) and a lot of experience. However, he has been jobless since his last company closed, 6 years ago.

It's really a perfect shitstorm for people in his situation. He has a lot of experience, but in the manufacturing industry which, as we know, is being dislocated elsewhere (we live in Portugal). There's the competition of younger graduates, which are also unemployed. Of course, he's too young to retire. And he's been unemployed long enough, so state benefits expired; the last resort state benefit - for poverty, really - doesn't apply because my parents have a house (so, he'd have to sell the house to get the state benefit).

Luckily he has some money set aside, but - again - this is Portugal. You can save some money with our wages, but not nearly enough to support such a tremendous amount of time unemployed. And, well, luckily I'm employed but the same reasoning applies: I'm able (and happy) to help, but I don't make nearly enough to be able to do so and still save for a rainy day.

My first thought was: What is the education system like in Portugal? Your father has good maths and knowledge at a problem solving level of applied science, and the kind of communication skills that come in middle management/technical jobs.

Are there exams that teenagers have to take?

Do those exams include mathematics/science content?

Is there a market for 'coaches'? People who coach students in their home at an hourly rate?

Context: I'm a teacher in the UK where we have quite an industry in private tutoring. Needs patience, readiness to read the textbooks and think how to explain the content, and ability to work with teenagers (a skill set that successful parents may have mastered:)

My other thought was: how much do they actually need per month? Have they done a budget?

I'll be retiring sometime next year and my occupational pension isn't huge. I'll need to make around 7 to 8 thousand pounds on top of it. I have some plans to generate income around that figure while also having some time.

My father actually started his career as a math teacher, but he could also (obviously) teach chemistry. But private tutoring here is hell. Teachers are probably the most unemployed skilled professionals in Portugal. As you can imagine, one of the results (besides huge emigration) is a huge supply of private tutors and tutoring centres.

About your other question, they (both my parents) probably could live off € 700,00 per month. It doesn't sound like much, but with the wages here it's very hard to put aside enough money to keep you going for years without a job (even with the low-ish cost of life here)

Maybe I should give him a Breaking Bad box set :)

I suspected the situation you describe might be the case based on what we read here about Europe in the UK.

OK: my only other thought is perhaps a bit odd: are there other manufacturing/ science based companies that are closing down/disintegrating? If so some part time work staying with them until they close and managing all the health and safety, asset disposal and equipment sales might be viable.

I know a chap who did that in and around the Black Country (Midlands industrial belt near Birmingham and Wolverhampton) in the UK in the 80s when all the foundries were closing down and being sold to Bihar in India. I have no direct experience of that myself.

I'm not really well informed about this, but here - when a company "closes" - they're assigned (by the state) a insolvency manager. From that point on, the manager will hire whoever he sees fit to handle the spoils, so to speak. From what I know, the process is rather obscure (as in, corrupt). It typically ends up with employers pillaging the spoils before the insolvency guys come in. Very third-world, I know - I have a pocket microscope from the spoils, actually.

>what we read here about Europe in the UK.

Just out of curiosity, I get the vibe you don't consider the UK part of Europe, is this true?

Agghhhh ok I should have said "what we read here in the UK about the rest of Europe".

Best of luck to all in this situation.

No worries. I just asked because Brits have weird attitudes towards the mainland.

Thanks. I'm in that situation (kind of) though somewhat by choice.

Its usually just the politicians and the ones that have never left the country that have the wierd attitude.

PT employment laws are not helping either. I had a company there with employees and it all just is too protective of them. So you rather not employ someone. I thought the Netherlands was bad but PT and ES are far worse. And that is definitely hurting hiring.

That's something employers usually complain about. Portuguese legislation was mostly written in a socialist-led post-revolution period, so you certainly have a point.

But what was your biggest issue with employment laws, here? The compensation you'd eventually have to pay when firing someone?

If someone is really bad you have issues firing them. I mean if someone watches pr0n all day in NL you just collect proof and that's; in PT we had to pay for the guy even then. That is a perverse incentive for employees; just get through the trial and then jerk off. I am a left wing voter and I am for employee protection but you need to be able to punish abuse and as far as we found we could not in PT nor in ES.

Edit: and to make sure; if an employee is good we will do anything we can afford to keep her/him; we are not the employer frauders like Oracle is in Malaga you also encounter...

I agree. I haven't met such extreme cases, but I've seen situations where the employee simply did not have the competence nor the will to acquire it. Lack of a given competence is tolerable, but not trying to address that limitation, for me, is a big issue. In such cases, employee protection will certainly result in rather perverse effects - not only for the employer, but for all the other employees (which will have to deal with less than acceptable output from the problematic one). Even socially, it grinds my gears to know that someone like that is employed when there are some many people which truly want to work.

That being said, the employer still has some protection. You can hire someone for 3 or 6 months and then decide not to renew his contract. You can also use the experimental period clause to void the contract in the first two weeks up to three months, according to the contract duration. The latter is sometimes abused here: hire someone with a long-duration contract and then, just before the experimental period ends, send him away.

These were extreme cases we had in NL and PT. But also incompetence; that was an hiring snafu ofcourse but yes we had our fair share of people working hard during trial and then sitting back and basically drop the ball. No one was asking them to work like animals; 5-6 hrs a day. But we had many good experiences as well esp in Portugal. It is just the bad ones that make you scared...

I'm sorry you had to handle such situations. I always had the feeling that we (Portugal) are very good at producing engineers, but not so good at producing citizens.

I work for a rather big german company and they dislocated some stuff (software development, mostly) here. They're very happy with the overall result, but you can easily tell that there are guys which work around 1-2hrs per day. For the company it's OK-ish, they're still paying way below what they paid elsewhere. But for the other employees, it's somewhat shitty.

In general in the big part of WE countries (except UK) there were, luckily, everywhere protective laws towards employees.

It is a matter of preference, you have to decide if is better to protect the employer the most or the employees the most. Considering employees are the bigger part of the population, for me that I grown in this area, it seems most logic to protect them first.

Also consider in the last 3-4 years almost all countries had weakened them in part, hoping it would change the work crisis situation (short answer, it changed nothing at all... except now workers are even more in danger to lose their jobs).

I mean, luckily we have no madness like the "Fire at will" I heard a lot talking about in US, but the situation right now is starting to get unbalanced in favor of the employer, and I don't like that.

So you're not concerned about the possibility that more companies could afford to hire right now but won't for fear they will not be able to afford the employee in the future?

I am an employer (manufacturing) in Arizona USA, a "Fire-at-will" state. If I did not have this privilege, I would not take the risk hiring job candidates who interview poorly. I would be compelled to take the obvious best choice every time, and to never take a risk. Risks are too costly.

With Fire-at-Will I can take a chance on anyone. This is especially useful with lower lever, entry positions where they learn on the job. I have tried hiring all types; the results have been surprising. The sure thing employees aren't always, and the WTF employees sometimes surprise you.

The woman in charge of my accounting, was an 18 year old goth cosplayer, moved from the warehouse to the office as helper during a layoff. She is now 22 (still goth/cosplayer) and does her job like she has 20 years experience. I would never ever have hired her for that job if I could not fire her easily. But she is great.

This is the positive side of Fire-at-will. In practice, you never fire anyone on a whim because it destabilizes the rest of the employees. I only fire the people who need it, and by then most of the staff probably wants them gone anyway.

You wouldn't hire someone solely because of a nerdy hobby?

I would, I am in a "fire-at-will" state in the USA.

If the laws were written so that I could not fire that person, then I would be forced to hire the person that interviewed the best. The woman I mentioned above would have interviewed terribly, she is very shy. It turns out that this is her first job too, so she has almost zero interview experience.

I would do what any other rational person would do - look at all the candidates and pick the one I thought would be best. As for her nerdy hobbies, I included the description to paint a mental picture. I am fairly nerdy myself, cosplay would be a plus to me.

In Portugal you get 6 months where you can fire at will.

What happens later if the company is doing poorly and they need to reduce the workforce?

That will depend on how long the game has been rolling, workforce-wise.

For permanent employees, there's severance payment when firing someone. The amount depends on how long the employee has been in the company, as well as when the contract was signed (the legislation has changed and doesn't apply retroactively). This means paying the dismissed employee something between 12 to 30 days wages per each full year of service. Bear in mind that the value is capped via multiple factors, e.g. it can't be bigger than X times the minimum wage, it can't be bigger than Y times the monthly wage.

However, most contracts are fixed-term: for those, the company simply has to inform the employee that they don't intend to renew. There are also many, many people illegally hired as independent contractors, but working full-time on company premises; those are "fire at will".

There are alternatives [1], however:

* A collective dismissal procedure;

* Dismissal due to the termination of a job position;

* Dismissal due to the employee's incapability to adapt.

[1] http://us.practicallaw.com/6-503-4030?source=relatedcontent#...

Still possible but much harder.

For the first six months of a permanent contract you can for anyone at any time for no reason.

I agree with you on most counts; I believe in employee protection but again not without limits. If you have a video of an employee sleeping or watching porn or facebooking most of the time for a month you should be able to fire without benefits if you have a dossier. In that case the state should pick up the bill to takw care of the person not the company. In general I think the state should pick up the tab from our tax money anyway, not the company as it does prevent people from hiring. It did not actually help much weakening the laws because they are still way too strong. If the state would just pick up the tab it is solved on all counts. But then again I am for basic income.

Edit: and I just do not buy it... I would hire in Spain right now if the laws were more like the US. I cannot afford to risk hiring and getting a bad apple or not being able to afford her later on. I know many startups in PT/ES with that attitude. So maybe the NL system were a dossier will allow you to fire or just have the state pay from the taxes the company pays per employee anyway.

"It is a matter of preference"

As the previous comment points out, too much employee protection means no employee, not protected employee. You're suggesting the choice is secure employee vs insecure employee, whereas it seems it's actually insecure employee vs unemployed. If you make conditions unfavourable for employers, there won't be employers. I'm an employee, so I'd like protection, but it seems that's only possible to a degree, and when competing with other countries I guess it's a race to the bottom, until employees start leaving the country instead of the employers.

It's not a matter of protecting employers or employees "more" (and how would you directly compare? you would need to convert all policies to some sort of "protection unit").

It's a matter of protecting people who currently have a job or those who don't (including those who recently did). If you make it impossible to get rid of problematic employees, you make hiring new employees too risky. That in turn makes it so you can't get hired unless you have a perfect resume, with proper education and grades, and no gaps in employment, as that could indicate a risk, and the employer just can't take any chances, they need to reduce risk to the greatest extent possible.

The net result is less employment, and more workers who would do a fine job but just can't get hired anywhere.

I don't like extremes, both in protecting the employers or the employees.

It is not only ok but also fundamental, for me, to have the right to fire someone for low output or for bad behaviors (Except if it is right after a illness, a childbirth, put here any major stressful event in the life of someone) and it is also ok to give a period (in my state is now 6/12 months depending on the position) in which you can hire someone and evaluate him, deciding then to fire him if he is no good enough for you.

But to have a "fire at will" policy lasting forever? No way.

If you want to provide support for people during a "major stressful event in life", have the government provide that support (paid for by taxes of course). If you try to force private businesses to do that on their own, they will find ways not to, you'll have lots of expensive lawsuits, you'll be adding lots of crazy laws.

It's worse to force companies to employ someone for forever. That's a great reason to hire as little as possible, and fire within the trial period even if the employee did well, so you're not on the hook forever. Best case you end up "too big to just fail" like GM, worst case you die in just a year or two because you got unlucky with one turned-useless employee which your small business just can't afford. Those people will end up unemployed anyway when the business fails.

If you want to give people money because you feel bad for them, just (have the government) give it to them, that's the least adverse-incentive-prone way to do it.

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