EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home
m.dw.com
m.dw.com
I can't see this soon enough, I have family that answer emails in vacation all the time, that get phone calls like its nothing.
I know people that connect everyday from home to the office network to work one or two hours (extra) otherwise it's impossible to keep up with the workload.
Most managers know this, and turn a blind eye as it's in their best interest to get employees to work as much as possible.
Then the work doesn't get completed on time! That's bad management not hiring enough people, not the fault of the employee. SMH y'all IT people need a union.
Btw. Looks like the Great America is woke and hates you for the word 'union' you used in your comment.
There's a problem with your country if you can be fired for refusing overtime.
[a]: This also leads to the employer expecting one to be “on call” 24/7 regardless of your position.
If there's no concept of overtime in most salaried jobs, there's a problem with your country as well.
I'm a salaried, full-time employee and I'm paid to work 37.5 hours a week, no more, no less. And the collective agreement for IT services industry (which is what concerns me as a developer) dictates that 40 hours/week is the maximum.
If you want to read our collective agreement, you can find it here: https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti... Working hours are on page 19 (21 on the PDF).
The reality of the world is that if you're the lead developer for some product you will have times that you need to work off hours. Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday".
It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the fan at inconvenient hours and you need to respond. If not, you have to have routine 24/7 coverage which gets really expensive really fast ultimately leading to lower salaries for developers.
The 40 hours is averaged over several weeks (normally). You can have an extra 3 hours, but leave work at lunchtime the next day.
You can't, if:
1. you have a chronic illness that requires a good healthcare plan to be treated affordably
2. you have a large family
3. your student debt is larger than average
4. you have a large mortgage
5. your have other financial liabilities you can't afford to handle without good paying job
6. you have no retirement savings or they are insufficient
Items 1, 2, 3 and 6 are non-issues in Scandinavian countries.
Funny how Europeans are crowing in this thread about how Americans need unions for better pay, but when Americans say they have better pay Europeans just say Americans are obsessed with money.
The obsession with Americans tells a lot about what Europeans think of their system
Ultimately it changes from paying someone to get a job done to paying them for hours worked. Anyone that's hired a plumber knows that you get far faster and efficient work in the first situation.
Just because people could do something, doesn't mean that they will do it. The people at our company do not spend all of their time making the system more unreliable so that they'd be paid more to be on call. Hell, if you asked the developers, most of them would probably love to spend more time making the system more reliable, but the bosses usually want developers to add more features.
In fact leave is undervalued as a concept by most US employers/employees, various studies have found that workers who take more vacation and work less hours are healthier and more productive. Some progressive companies are starting to learn from this (I spoke to a travel technology company a while ago who will fund you to take a 2 week trip out of the country every year).
Now it seems that true craftsmen are the exception now, people are just hustlers in it for the money. Do it as cheap and fast as possible, bill fas much as you can and off to the next job.
Consider your example: If you pay a tradesperson to 'do a job' you should expect that they will cut every corner available to them that isn't in the contract. If you are paying for time, you might expect them to do a more thorough job. Which is better depends on a number of factors.
If you pay someone to get a job done, that's a contractor.
If you pay someone for their hours worked, that's an hourly-waged employee.
If you pay someone a salary, you're paying them to spend their working time, which will typically be around 35-40 hours a week but is not strictly defined or measured, attending to your business needs in whatever ways are agreed between you. It's a quite different relationship, based on a different level of expectations and trust.
To give a specific example: I'm a (European-based) salaried employee of a (US-based) company. Most weeks I spend rather more than 40 hours, one way or another, working on things for my employer, as I (mostly) enjoy my work and want to make the best contribution I can. Sometimes personal stuff comes up, and I may end up spending significantly less, but no-one's keeping track at that level on a day-to-day basis. I don't expect extra money if I work into the evening to finish something I'm involved in, nor do I expect to lose money if I spend the afternoon taking care of a family emergency.
I have in the past had a time-card that I punched when arriving at work, and again when leaving, and my employer paid me for the hours I worked; no more, no less. I'd call that "wages". My current employer pays me an agreed annual sum; it does not depend on the total number of hours I work during the year, but it comes with an expectation of how I will spend my time and expertise. That's a "salary".
Ultimately there's also a moral aspect of whether the employer owns the whole life of the employee or they are on a more balanced relationship. Anybody who's had to endure micromanagement knows that you get far more engaged and efficient work in the latter situation.
Per this view, if a worker worked 100% of their time, they would have achieved their optimum goal of extracting the most wealth possible. But nearly all people who have made that trade would tell you they are depressed, feel run down, and probably think about blowing their brains out on a regular basis.
At some point, the plumber wants to go home, too. Now, maybe it's true that they'll take 1 hour to complete a job at a comfortable rate rather than the fastest-possible rate of 45 minutes, and maybe 4 jobs get completed that day instead of 5 as a result. But it is also true that the 4 jobs may be done with a greater attention to detail. Ever have a maintenance worker track filth into your residence with reckless abandon? What is the value of a more rested, present, and thoughtful worker?
You may argue that for a plumber, there is no value added in that. But I would argue that the value is there, even though the business owner can't extract it as revenue. It is there in the quality of the work, the happiness of the worker, and the happiness of the customer. It makes for a better world, and if you value your employees and customers as people, you'll see that interests are aligned.
All of that said, the economy is a thing. If your business is in a highly competitive market, it's easy to wind up with thin margins in a race to the bottom. But if that's the case, is it not the responsibility of the business management/ownership to either find a way to be competitive short of exploiting workers, or otherwise exit the market and pursue another venture?
At the lowest level, workers will be trained for and work the jobs that are available to them, and the jobs available will be dictated as a function of the the local demand for that service or product. If a small, poorly run, exploitative plumbing company can't find the margins to operate because they are competing with better services, they should cease to exist. The demand will remain the same, and their exit from the market place will result in growth for their competitors, and the jobs will be recreated.
If you are a plumber by trade and run your own plumbing company and can't find a way to exist without exploiting your workers, you should exit the market as a business owner and work for another company. Otherwise, your business isn't plumbing, but exploitation itself.
If not, then clearly the shit hasn't actually hit any fans and I can keep relaxing on my free time.
Many times companies and clients like to pretend there is an emergency that needs extra hours, but if there is a price tag attached, the urgency disappears really fast.
Overtime is a mutual contract in Finland. The employee can't just decide to do overtime for extra pay (usually 150-200% hourly rate), neither can the company order an employee to do overtime hours. Both agree how many hours are needed and what should be accomplished by working extra hours.
I can _voluntarily_ work longer hours and "bank" those, I'm also free to use my banked hours at a time of my choosing or be compensated for those hours with money. For example I can do 9 hours from monday to thursday and leave at noon on friday for a nice long afternoon/evening with my family.
It depends. If it's the first time production is down and I'm already off, I fix the issue. Once it's fixed I'll tell my manager: "we need on-call people. Please don't consider me for that position because I value more my free-time than money. Thanks". The second time production is down, I won't fix it.
If they fire me because I don't do on-call, then again it depends. I would revisit my contract and if it doesn't say anything about being on-call I would point that out. In any case, I would start to look for a new job asap.
"Tell whoever is on call to deal with it"
The not-uncommon answer to this is an oncall rotation, where you are paid at some fraction of your full-time salary, to respond to such problems.
The fraction likely works out better than 'overtime' pay, as it's for all the time you are oncall, not just when some issue occurs.
Come on, man, it's not your company and if they're not paying you for that time, it's not your responsibility. Volunteering your time for someone else's business? Is this really what you want to do with your life?
Most companies try to extract the most value from their employees and this may mean overloading them and they use "industry benchmarks" to set the bar for what you're expected to deliver. Those are very debatable but effective in supporting their point.
Then in the bulk of the push comes from incentivizing people to do overtime by offering promotions, bonuses, good projects only to those who go above and beyond. Refusing overtime may not only be received with a lack of incentives but with concrete disincentives like getting the really nasty activities and treatment. If you're building a career, want the position, or want/need the higher pay, you'll do it. Depends on the company, the job, the person.
Exactly this. If managers notice that your team is doing everything on time, they will remove a member or two from your team, until you can barely meet the deadlines. Then they get a bonus for reducing the company costs.
It requires some experience to realize that it is not your fault if the deadlines are in danger. That is system working exactly as intended. But of course the company will pretend it's your fault. That is also system working exactly as intended. (In USA, this results in you doing a lot of overtime. That is also system working as intended. The urgent situation is not something unexpected; it happens every year in every project, it is a part of the plan.)
I think it’s beautiful your vacation hours are set out, etc.
It seems like there could be some issues if every vertical had one of these (“oh no, the real estate team has 7 weeks of vacation but the HR team only has 2?”) but outside of that it’s beautiful what y’all did as a collective entity. This is super eye opening, thanks for sharing.
The collective point is critical - unions negotiate wages as part of a tripartite arrangement in Finland. It's industry-wide sets of wages.
I recall a delegate at my Union conference getting very upset at the thought that our members where such low grade / status employees
The Uk is possibly different that no fixed hours has a district class / social status.
Interesting to see a eu style agreemnet
Besides one can't really compare IT jobs in UK and USA. In UK they are generally at lower end of pay and reputation compare to US.
* there's 7% extra that is paid as a lump sum when you change employers, and 33% paid into a retirement account (vs. perhaps 20% for a 401k; employer/employee proportion of 25-75 vs. 50-50 for 401k matching)
* you don't enter work with any debt, because university is paid by the state if you're poor. I have seen directors from America (easily $200k salary) saying they can't afford a vacation in Europe because they have two sons/daughters in grad school.
* you don't have to pay for healthcare (and taxes are comparable for lower income tax brackets). If you have a child, pregnancy+delivery costs €0.00.
* nowhere in Italy are you going to have a real estate market as crazy as Silicon Valley
* childcare will cost 150-500 euros a month depending on age vs 1000-3000$ in the US
Putting everything together, maybe you're paid twice as much. Go to Germany or Finland and there's even less difference.
As others in the thread have pointed out, these types of arrangements don't always correspond to the reality of the business. If you are, for example, paid a yearly bonus, then the concept of "unpaid overtime" doesn't really apply.
It's clear in the contract how many hours you do for which pay.
Working on Saturday needs to be 150% compensated and Sunday 200%, but I might be wrong on this last part.
This used to be true, but has changed in a lot of states and cities in the last decade or so. Many people still think that salaried=work as long as the boss says.
In those places, being salaried doesn't mean you have to work unlimited hours with no compensation. This only applies to managers. If you don't directly manage people, you are legally entitled to overtime. Pre-pandemic, some states were cracking down on this.
It's worth checking your state and city's labor laws every couple of years because things change all the time.
In my country, if the contract doesn't mention overtime, that's great, because it means the company must pay you nicely for overtime, and there is a limited amount of overtime per year. However, if it is explicitly a part of the contract, there may be more overtime per year (within some limits), and less compensation per extra hour (again, within some limits). So if you find overtime mentioned in your contract, that is a bad thing.
I'm just one atypical person, but in my experience, the employer is usually more nervous about the employee breaking things off than the employee.
If a company expects you to crunch, that means there’s too much work. If there’s too much work, it’s extremely unlikely that somebody doing a decent job would be fired.
Someday maybe our betters in Europe will understand that the American experience with unions is different than that of Europeans. And that American unions are a very different animal. Until that time, though, keep thinking we're just idiots.
"At-will employment" laws mean that the burden of proof for the cause of firing is on the employee, rather than the employer. This gives free rein to employer's to fire workers considering unionizing, so long as there is the barest pretext of another cause. As forming a union becomes economically risky, unions decline, or fail to form in new industries.
Unions have been attacked in the US, through explicit policies meant to defund unions, and to prevent unions from forming.
Just the stories about how union work is handled on US movie sets is just baffling. Directors can't even touch the lights without an Official Light Mover Union member doing it. If they do, all union people will just walk off set and that's the end of it.
In most European countries unions are more about collectively agreeing to some basic rules like wage, hours worked and other compensations.
In ways that no one should be proud of, and anyone with a conscience should at least recognize needs redressing-even if the outcomes are things they as an individual wouldn't directly benefit from.
A short googling for for "history of workplace safety in the us" reveals that unions had a hand in at least that. Probably in several other things you take for granted.
In my opinion it's a mistake to think that things like that cannot deteriorate away after they've been achieved once.
It's also kind of a mediocre bandaid for deeper social problems. An employer that can get away with asking you to do unreasonable amounts of work, work ridiculous hours, or achieve impossible feats OR ELSE probably doesn't have much market competition.
Also a quote from C.S. Lewis:
“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
>The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated.
We wouldn't have any billionaires if this was even remotely true. If having 999 million dollars doesn't satiate you, I submit there is no amount of money that will. We look down on hoarders who fill their house with old newspapers and knickknacks but when it's money hoarding we lionize it.
Insisting that support for unions and support for UBI must be linked is the same energy as insisting that more tightly restricting what food stamp recipients can buy is "helping" them.
But they are completely different approaches to this problem. For example, unions do not protect unemployed people, while UBI protects everyone. On the other hand, a union is something you could create tomorrow at your workplace without waiting for the rest of the country to change their minds.
In some sense, they are competing solutions, because if we had UBI, unions would be less necessary, because everyone who feels abused would have the opportunity to walk away... without ruining their life.
Many people have a very simple-minded view of both politics and the world in general, which leads them to a low-resolution model that lumps things into two massive buckets and assume that everyone else takes their set of beliefs wholesale from one of the buckets.
And CS Lewis is no expert. He's a preacher.
Do you realise in some fields work not getting completed on time could in some cases cause people to die?
Sometimes there is an emergency, and a professional saying 'sorry nope on vacation your fault for not having enough people to cover every eventuality' just isn't reasonable.
Don't guilt people who happen to have lifesaving jobs for taking vacations.
In many cases taking that job means accepting you may be forced to come in and work. Often called 'unlimited liability' for example. If you can't accept that, then leave the job to someone who can.
> The buck stops somewhere.
In this case apparently it's fine for it to stop with a dead person.
People that do a job where they can save lives accept the fact that saving lives is not granted.
People don't die because someone is slacking.
Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
Not sure where you read this argument?
Free time is a right
If someone dies during your free time it's not your responsibility
Besides: US have the worst life expectation of the whole west.
You should ask yourself why.
I'm not apologising for anything. I never said anything about 'slacking'? Just confused where you got this idea.
> If someone dies during your free time it's not your responsibility
This isn't reality - look at how people criticise presidents who are golfing during a national crisis where people are dying.
> US have the worst life expectation of the whole west
This article is about the EU isn't it? What's the US got to do with it?
> You should ask yourself why.
I don't know why the US does anything. Why do I need to explain it?
Isn't the job of a president to handle crisis?
The job of a doctor is not to prevent any death, just those that they can prevent during their work hours.
> What's the US got to do with it?
Because they are the champions of working non stop and yet their results when it really matters (you brought up saving lives) are worse than anybody else
Do you think he stops handling the crisis at 5pm? No? Why do you think not?
Hints:
how many presidents any country has?
And who put them there?
Do they send CVs and get selected after a black board interview where they have to invert a binary tree?
I'm sure there are jobs where this is true. I'm also sure it's not for 99.9% of people here.
It may not be the decision people will make, it may be an ethical quagmire etc etc but you can't just expect people to keep working past their limits forever.
There need to be reasonable bounds.
How often do you believe people get asked to work extra hours to save lives in imminent danger? 1 in 10000?
This law would cover other 9999 cases.
The issue is escalated through different support levels up to the on-call person, if they can't handle it then MAYBE people are bothered during their vacation.
Or if production breaks at 1600 on a friday night, I can maybe work extra hours to solve the issue if it looks like I'm essential to solving it. It just means that I'm coming later on monday to make up for the hours.
It doesn't work like that.
> Sometimes there is an emergency, and a professional saying 'sorry nope on vacation
Why are they relying on someone that is on vacation in the first place?
Are firemen supposed to not go on holiday ever during their work life?
That's simply the symptom of very bad management and on a larger scale of a very disfunctional society.
Sometimes there are only so many people who can solve a problem and society can't afford to have an excess number of them sitting around doing nothing in case there is an emergency.
> Are firemen supposed to not go on holiday ever during their work life?
Firemen, police, politicians, military, are all subject to getting recalled from leave if there is an emergency and they are needed to prevent life being lost. Nobody ever said they can't ever go on leave.
> That's simply the symptom of very bad management
No it's reality!
Look at how many people criticise presidents who are 'golfing' when there is a crisis and life is being lost.
Some people just need to be able to respond no matter what.
That's a very small subset of the entire workforce.
Maybe one in a million or less
> No it's reality!
It's not.
> Look at how many people criticise presidents who are 'golfing' when there is a crisis and life is being lost.
They are right.
The president is not a salaried worker, it's the president.
He works. He draws a salary. What do you think the difference is?
Why can't the Vice President delegate out of hours? Because that's not realistic? Well there you go... sometimes it's not realistic.
Well... Let's say that if I have to explain it too you, we have bigger issues to solve first.
> Why can't the Vice President delegate out of hour
Because that's not how it works
By the law
Applies for ordinary people as well - such as soldiers and police who are liable for recall at any time.
In my country they have 28 days of paid holidays every year
Ant it's still one of the few jobs left where they can retire after 15 years, 6 months, one day of work
> Police
In my country they have 28 days of paid holidays, 35 hours a week contract
In my country there are 1/10 of the homicides per 100 thousands people of the US
They are not liable if they don't go to work on their free time, ever.
Healthcare, public transportation, firemen, etc. they can't not provide the service, it's called (sorry the bad translation) "interruption of public service"
Yes, they can be re-called on duty, but it happens rarely.
They are payed extra time if that happens (sometimes the hourly pay is double of the regular one)
Soldiers can't even be sent on a war mission if they don't volunteer to it.
They usually do because the pay is astronomical (4-5 times the regular one, sometimes more)
But they are not supposed to.
They can still not show if they have reason: in this 2020 for example being COVID positive or simply sick.
It happened the opposite this year, many doctors and nurses volunteered to help.
They are employees of the State after all and they serve the public.
In the private sector you have to be compensated for working extra hours, if they don't, the employers are liable.
If they ask you to work on your free time, a judge could (and usually does) condemn the employer and the employee gets a compensation.
My parents worked for the national healthcare and when my mom was expecting me, she discovered she had a condition that caused two previous miscarriages.
My parents worked shift of 12 hours 5 days straight, they assumed it was too taxing on the body of a pregnant woman with a condition, so between me and my sister the hospital put her on paid sick leave for 36 months.
My country is Italy, our salaries are lower than countries like US where such protections don't exist, but at least we are protected from abuses (they still happen of course, but it's a risk for the employer)
One of the benefit of the system is that people know they have rights and will stand up for them
If you accept to work gratis in your free time, you're doing a disservice to the entire category.
Of course there are people abusing of these rights, but in general it's a good tradeoff that benefits the larger population instead of rewarding only the workaholics.
And don't even get me started on why being a workaholic society is bad for those who can't work more because they are not in good health or worse...
That said, burnout can make working harder worse than working a sane amount. But that doesn’t fall on the employer as much as the employee.
That is highly dependent on when the new employee is added to the project. If it's done early (as a result of proper planning), it's most likely not gonna hurt.
But with reasonable amount of people, if you start with the full team at the beginning, you can assign different responsibilities to different people. For example, one can do database, one can do web API, one can do web design, one can do integration with other systems, one can build and maintain continuous integration; you can also divide the domain knowledge among multiple people. Each person can focus on doing their part in such way that the others do not need to understand every single detail, and only use the agreed API.
However, if you add a new person late in the project... all simple things were probably already done, and all difficult things require a lot of knowledge about the existing code, that other team members already know, but if they spend their time explaining it to the new member, then their own work gets slower, so the overall speed reduces. (And yes, given enough time, the new member would learn everything and become just as productive as the old members. But the thing is, there is not enough time left at that moment.)
I was referring to my 40 hours ending on Friday at 5, and not returning to work until Monday morning. If management expects more from me then they need to hire more people or lower their retirement or delivery expectations.
Or just some balls. Don’t work more than you want to - either your employer will deal with it or you go find a new job. Not a big deal.
I work fewer hours than the median person at my company and I don’t think it has negatively impacted me much or at all. Any time someone tries to get me to do something that would require working additional hours I just say no or take extra vacation days in lieu (eg if I need to do something for a few hours on Saturday - I take an extra vacation day to make up. If it’s not worth it for the company, it doesn’t really need to get done on sat). Literally the worst case is you get fired, but probably nothing will happen.
Do you think it's a coincidence they get such a bad press?
It also doesn’t help that people want to label everyone so much to fit into just two categories. Feinstein (D-CA) is very pro-surveillance while some of the party (in congress) believes otherwise. Romney (R-UT) voted to convict Trump while every other Republican voted to acquit.
I’ll admit it is a bit hypocritical of me to lump all Republicans together, so I’ll clarify with: it’s where the party (in congress) seems to be heading (or already is). Obviously not all Republicans support that idea.
The obstacle to change in this country is not the Republican party, but Democrats who use them as an excuse to mask their similar, steadfast allegiance to business interests at the expense of everyone besides white collar workers.
It’s funny how federal government employees got paid parental leave though, but no legislation for non government employees was brought to the floor.
The only reason California can get away with the worker protections it has is because of its uniquely favorable weather, geography, productive land, and other resources.
No state can offer taxpayer funded healthcare, because then the people receiving more from healthcare than paying in will start to increase and the people paying in more than they receive will start to leave. It's the same problem for pretty much all other minimum standards of living, and the same one that exists between people in cheaper US states complaining about China and Mexico taking all their jobs.
Housing and healthcare are more difficult problems, but ones that have, again, been solved in just about every other developed country, including many with smaller economies than that of California. Hypothetical capital flight is just another among a litany of excuses used to justify their failure.
Is it hypothetical that a business that a retail business offers their employees lavish benefits and sells commodity products will be put out of business by lower prices from Walmart/Target/Amazon/Best Buy/etc?
Both of the above examples have happened, and capital flight is real. A few countries with better safety nets, who don't have a comparable emigration situation like in the US, does not mean that one of the two parties in the US is not trying at least a little bit.
None of your examples are headquartered in California, nor would any of these companies stop operating in the most populous state in the US with its largest economy were worker protections put in place.
>Is it hypothetical that manufacturing facilities relocated to China to be able to sell products at cheaper prices than their competitors?
The hollowing out of the industrial core was a bipartisan decision made in the 1990s with full support of Democrats, so its a bit rich to say "if we don't let them treat people bad, they'll make it even worse than we already helped them make it." The same power that them globalize manufacturing can force its return to the U.S. Again, every other developed country with a strong industrial base engages in this kind of protectionism for strategic and national security reasons. Germany is again, here, a salient example.
>Does not mean that one of the two parties in the US is not trying at least a little bit.
You keep insisting this without providing evidence of its reality. What major worker protections have been advanced and put into law by Democrats since the Obama presidency?
The argument isn’t that they would stop operating, but that they would experience less growth or maybe even contraction from people or businesses moving away due to higher costs (and taxes).
> The hollowing out of the industrial core was a bipartisan decision made in the 1990s with full support of Democrats, so its a bit rich to say "if we don't let them treat people bad, they'll make it even worse than we already helped them make it." The same power that them globalize manufacturing can force its return to the U.S. Again, every other developed country with a strong industrial base engages in this kind of protectionism for strategic and national security reasons. Germany is again, here, a salient example.
I didn’t write “if we don't let them treat people bad, they'll make it even worse than we already helped them make it that.” My example was intended to show that capital does go to wherever it’s cheapest, whether it be labor costs, lack of environmental regulations, etc.
> You keep insisting this without providing evidence of its reality. What major worker protections have been advanced and put into law by Democrats since the Obama presidency?
The proof is that the Democratic states on the west and northeast coasts and Illinois have passed laws requiring mandatory sick days, family leave acts, higher minimum wages, better unemployment benefits, etc. (including since Obama, even though that’s irrelevant).
Just because Democrats in the federal legislature have to play a different game doesn’t mean the state level ones aren’t able to get anything done.
Lest we get off track, if you go back to the beginning of this discussion, my contention is that Democrats have done a better job enacting legislation to protect workers, especially lower income workers, than Republicans. The proof is all the states that have better worker protections, did it with Democrat legislatures. What happens on the federal level may or may not matter, but Democrats haven’t had solid control of Congress for a long time, and with the little control they did, they managed to pass ACA, which is still at least something for poorer people, especially workers, and which Republicans continue to fight.
In fact, since Clinton took the Democratic party in a Neo-liberal direction (and made Reagan's dream of NAFTA a reality, "reformed" welfare, and the Glass-Steagall deregulation) I'm under the impression we have two such parties.
The fact is that you get to vote for your MEP if you choose to, and they in turn for the commission. It's weird that on the one hand people say the EU "[does] whatever they please and there is no real input from anyone" and on the other have no idea about the EU parliamentary process. It is what you make it.
The EU isn't perfect, but I'm always surprised by those in EU countries who think that it would be in their long-term interests to forge a path alone in a bi-polar geopolitical sphere dominated by the US and China, rather than club together with their EU neighbours and have a voice on the world stage.
Bit like say New York voting for Mr Happy as President and the country all votes for Mr Sad who has candidates in every state apart from New York. Now in that instance the people of New York's democratic say be kinda futile say in who runs the country as they had no chance. THAT is exactly how MEP voting choice was in some EU member countries that didn't have any EPP representation, say or choice and not a single EPP MEP voted for and yet it is the EPP that runs the EU.
Yes the EU isn't perfect but when they can't even sort out their own accounts and get them signed off year upon year, that's not a good sign of leadership or credibility. Heck even they admit they need to reform, which is sad as they didn't admit that until after the whole UK interdependence vote and that vote only came about as the UK leadership went to the EU for reforms and got palmed off with some tokens. Ironically had the EU even bothered to do any attempt at reform before the UK left, the UK could of tabled another vote as things would of changed and sadly the EU didn't do that and more so France been insistent that any reforms do not happen until the UK has left.
Remember that the EU was a trade agreement that people voted to join, what it became is something the people had no direct say in at all and that was the root of much divide that has grown over the past few decades. Me I do feel it is in the best interest of the EU and the UK to divorce as the UK has held the EU back upon many votes and looking at the voting history shows this and the EU could of had better financial regulations decades ago, regulations needed to work with the EURO financial model and that has not been good for the Euro.
No tabloid or other such outlet was used to form this opinion, other opinions may vary.
That's equally applicable at the national level too
>THAT is exactly how MEP voting choice was in some EU member countries that didn't have any EPP representation, say or choice and not a single EPP MEP voted for and yet it is the EPP that runs the EU.
The President of the European Commission may be an EPP member, but the college as a whole is pretty representative of the party make-up of the Parliament as a whole:
Party-Group / Commission / Parliament
EPP-EPP / 37% / 24%
PES-S&D / 33% / 21%
ALDE-RE / 19% / 14%
Ind-NI / 7% / 14%
ECR-ECR / 4% / 8%
>Yes the EU isn't perfect but when they can't even sort out their own accounts and get them signed off year upon year, that's not a good sign of leadership or credibility.
That's not true, you are repeating disinformation.
EU accounts have been signed off with a clean opinion every year since 2007.
> Heck even they admit they need to reform
So? Integrating an entire continent - and doing it right - takes time and needs to be done in an incremental fashion.
> which is sad as they didn't admit that until after the whole UK interdependence vote
Again, that is not true. Nobody thought that as soon as the Lisbon Treaty came in to force that the job was done.
>and that vote only came about as the UK leadership went to the EU for reforms and got palmed off with some tokens.
Once more - that is simply not true.
The UK didn't go to the EU with reforms, the UK went to the EU with a set of demands for special treatment. Demands that, in part, would undermine the single market.
> Ironically had the EU even bothered to do any attempt at reform before the UK left, the UK could of tabled another vote as things would of changed
Can you guess what I'm about to say? Yup, that is not true.
The people championing brexit (and by that I mean the politicians and notorious business people like Dyson and Martin) didn't give a shit about "reform". They wanted out and they were damned well going to get out by hook or by crook.
Do you really think the likes of the ERG would ever have countenanced a second vote?
>Remember that the EU was a trade agreement that people voted to join
ARRRGH. No. No it wasn't.
The EU has always, always, been a political project to integrate Europe.
Don't believe me? Let me quote a landmark case from the Court of Justice from 1963:
"The Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields and the subjects of which comprise not only member states but also their nationals. Independently of the legislation of member states, Community law therefore not only imposes obligations on individuals but is also intended to confer upon them rights which become part of their legal heritage. These rights arise not only where they are expressly granted by the treaty, but also by reason of obligations which the treaty imposes in a clearly defined way upon individuals as well as upon the member states and upon the institutions of the Community."
Does that sound like it's talking about a mere trade agreement?
And bare in mind that the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Cypress, Malta, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia all applied to join, and then did join, after that judgment was given.
That's 21 of the current 27 member states, plus the UK.
> what it became is something the people had no direct say in at all
Every member state has to agree to treaty changes. People could have voted for governments that would say no to those changes. Many member states usually have referendums - the proposed constitution was vetoed by referendums. Ireland extracted concessions by rejecting the Lisbon Treaty the first time around.
Whilst the debate about how accounts with errors could be signed off, the matter probably best covered here:
https://fullfact.org/europe/did-auditors-sign-eu-budget/
> That's equally applicable at the national level too
Very true and politics as it stands needs an overall to align with modern times as akin to electing one tool to handle all issues for 4-5 years is never an ideal solution as anybody who uses tools can attest. A more granular say in things is needed and whilst we are stuck with a limited choice selection of inputs we can only put an X every 4-5 years, politics will always drift from public opinion however initially the party was elected.
>Do you really think the likes of the ERG would ever have countenanced a second vote?
Point I was making is that had there been something that irrespective of how it effected the UK seen to change within the EU then politically there would of been a fair reason to put the brexit vote back to the people as what they had voted upon had changed and would of been a valid reason to enable that. Sure both sides had their rhetoric charismatics but the crux was without that change it would of been seen as a repeat vote, if something in the EU had changed then that would be totally different and even Tusk at the time as did many EU politician state that the EU needed some reforms. That is a matter they don't disagree upon, yet Macron has made it clear that any such reforms do not happen until the UK has left the EU. Which I can equally respect, but equally lament.
> ARRRGH. No. No it wasn't.
The UK people had a say to join the ECC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Community
The first say they had in any EU aspect (including Maastricht) political as a direct question was Brexit. Yes many other members took many changes from the ECC to the EU today too the people for a vote and whilst much of that was mooted for votes upon Maastricht and the like and even EU membership (Liberal Democrats was keen upon that until they got a result of leave). Sure you can say people voted for parties that made promises of votes, sadly such things got left so long for what result, the children of the parents who voted to join the ECC for the sake of the children, those children growing up and predominantly voting to leave the EU (which the ECC became).
So we shall agree to disagree upon that. As whilst the EU has always been political, in this instance the only say the people had upon membership of the EU was to say no, they said yes to the ECC in which the EU evolved into with the people being given no direct say and that may also of made a huge difference.
Crux is as far as the EU goes, most UK not really embraced it's direction and kinda seen the UK become that disgruntled employee that takes loads of sick days and causes disruption for the rest of the class and voting history of the UK and it's influence of vote upon others to play sheep and follow has seen many an EU initiative stymied by the UK's veto. Personally I do believe that had the EU had financial regulation changes they wanted without the UK blocking to protect it's own interest (which was fair and right for the UK), then you see initiatives the majority wants and needs blocked by a single member. Now that's EU democracy at work and general right, but without the closer integration of currency et all the initiative has tried to build upon foundations that are not as robust as could be. That and the impact upon the Euro and the amount of QE to keep the Euro competitive for exports as well as imports makes for a financial juggle that has seen much unfairness. After all Euro countries locked in at time of joining, so if they played up their status to join then they are locked at a level at which technically they are below and vice versa. So if Italy or Greece made out things better than was when joining then down the line the impact would see a huge negative impact, equally if say Germany played down it's finances when it joined, then it would see a better return with that lock-in. Of course that is all over simplified and the whole matter is very complex in the details, but the crux is - the EU better of without the UK and since UK been locked out of EU votes, seen financial changes move forward. Whilst the UK not the only country with protected interests that has held many things back, financial services has been one that is cornerstone for the EU's unity.
So yeah, the UK people voted to join a trade agreement and first say upon the political project of the EU and they said no and it all could of been avoided. In that time the whole things best summed up by UK comedy of old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE
> Every member state has to agree to treaty changes. People could have voted for governments that would say no to those changes. Many member states usually have referendums - the proposed constitution was vetoed by referendums. Ireland extracted concessions by rejecting the Lisbon Treaty the first time around.
Yes, but not all those member countries took any of those voted to the people as a referendum and many who did, reran those referendums seeing a change in outcome to say yes. The UK had no such referendums and that is a source of much lament and a product of failings of all UK political parties to various degree's as they all had the opportunity.
One flaw in the EU that they do need to fix is how large corporations can abuse country tax laws and by that use the single market to pick the cheapest member tax liability wise and funnel sales via them to negate local country tax they would of paid had they paid all taxes locally. So can expect in a year or so for Amazon, Google, Apple et all to not have the headline how they only paid a few pennies on the pound tax wise as they will no longer be legally able to use the single market quirks to their advantage tax wise. So there is that, and a source of unfairness that the EU really needs to fix. Though when they had Junker as president who was probably one of the most knowledgeable people upon such issues, nothing changed. I say one of the most knowledgeable as he did set-up the Luxenbourg ones many a large corporation enjoy. Indeed the Guardian feels he was unhelpful upon such issues: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/01/jean-claude...
But however you look at it, if you had a company and one employee that caused most of the chaos and issues and their heart wasn't in the job, would you not let them go in the interests of the company and rest of the employee's?
Either way, the EU has an opportunity to address it's unity and I hope it does or be more referendums down the line and that can all be avoided.
Yes. But the problem is people have a very hard time doing that. You cannot engage with EU level politics the same way you can in a real country. All these people speak different languages. Very hard to stay engaged when you have to listen to translations. You hardly ever get the kind of engaging coverage you would for domestic politics.
I know most of the politicians and parties in my country. I would easily recognize and have some opinion about most prominent congresspeople and senators in the US. Same goes for knesset members. Yet off top of my head I couldn't name you 10 EU MEPs. I know names of the biggest parties in the EU parliament but I couldn't tell you much about them.
Unless EU actually tries to establish a common culture and a common language, I don't see much changing.
There already is a common language and it's English. It may not be officially recognized but it's what everybody working for an EU institution uses.
Not knowing any MEPs by name is your choice and not a deficiency of the EU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io8aRZUFCxE
Even the speaker of the house doesn't. President of the EU commission starts off in her language, briefly reads some English off a piece of paper and then switches back. Maybe 1 in 3 or 4 MEPs speak some English. It's very hard to watch. And mind you, in most EU countries regular people would have trouble following the English translation too, they'd need to find one in their language.
I'm not questioning what you said about those working in EU institutions, I'm sure that's true. But that's irrelevant, that's not what drives politics.
That's very debatable. It will probably have unintended consequences like lowering salaries, increasing the intensity of workload during permissible hours, outsourcing or entirely eliminating some types of jobs. Ultimately, it just reduces the pool of possible arrangements between employers and employees. I know a few people who would readily give up their "right to disconnect" for a more interesting job or a higher salary for example.
The exact same has been said for child labor abolition, reducing the work week to 40 hours, raising women wages and for literally every other improvement in work conditions we've conquered so far.
If you ban work from home doesn't that mean those people have to stay at the office 1-2 hours longer to do their work?
The EU reminds me of how the UN unravelled into irrelevance back in the 70s-80s. Lots of good intentions, cash flowed, all kinds of progressive projects were seeded but then what happened?
Doesn't sound too bad to me.
The workload can increase arbitrarily. It should be confined to what can be completed within working hours - the extra work over that should be an exception under special circumstances (e.g. a sudden order), not the norm.
I get that people can be “senior” and in charge of important things, etc. but at a certain point if “leaders” do these things they are simply being terrible people and not really “handling” unexpected problems well.
Unless someone is dying it's not urgent.
P.S We don't get overtime so no reason to do any. On extremely rare ocasions I did some extra hours with the condition I take them off next day or that week's Friday.(Ex: Our online trainig server went dead the day before a training course. And yes... after that they bought a spare one. Don't get me started with IT related budget)
What eactly do you consider "controversial" in the right to disconnect?
It's better to do the 7.5 hours, go home and come back rested the next day. Your subconscious will be working on the problem anyway.
Most European countries seem to be over the glorification of long grueling hours. In the US and Japan it's still a badge of honor how much you work - never mind that productivity in either country isn't scaling relative to the hours used.
I work in a startup with 45 top notch engineers.
There's a huge difference between being at work 12 hours a day and actually doing something productive with that time.
Japan is an excellent example of this, in their office culture you never leave before the boss does and try to be at the office before them. People spend 12+ hours at work and don't produce more than other people who work sensible hours.
Coronavirus and remote works might be a savior for that culture.
Not saying anything about whether this is a good idea or not. Just saying that I know people like this that I used to be skeptical about before.
Then one night I found out could't sleep. At all. Had to take a few pills just to get some shuteye and woke up with a shitty metal taste in my mouth every morning.
I started getting heart palpitations at odd times. Was on SSRI for a few years just to get over the burnout. Acid reflux so bad I could only eat unseasoned chicken and white rice for 6 months.
Since that episode I've learned moderation and have had a hard 8h/day policy with rare exceptions. No issues since, and my output hasn't really changed.
For instance I work at an international company and I already get paid 2-3x less than same level engineers in US. I feel like this would increase the gap even more.
And I'd prefer to have the option to over-achieve if this is what I choose to do with my life.
But honestly the pay gap is not due to labour laws, at least not directly. It's because there's a war between the big tech firms to acquire talent which doesn't exist the same way in Europe.
But it would require coming out of my comfort zone so much. I have a girlfriend here, family, friends and much more.
I have calculated that I could "FIRE" in US so much faster compared to where I live. Especially if I did some years of work in USA and then "FIRE"d at some low cost of living country.
But I think I'm not going to do it for now. Luckily the company pays well in my country too, just not as well. But I do have a lot of regrets that I'm not using my potential to the fullest.
Why do you think US has so many big tech firms compared to Europe and other places? And why is there so much war between tech companies specifically in US?
Historical/incidental reasons I suppose. I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of the big tech giants, and a lot of VC being centered there (especially around SV specifically) so there is a lot of defensive hiring. When facebook pays a developer $250k per year, it's not only because of the value they're providing facebook, but it's because of the value they could provide a startup which could compete with facebook. By driving up the price of talent, they price startups out of the market.
Startups in Europe have much less access to VC funding, so they are less of a threat.
- World class universities
- Weak/non-existent non-compete
- Better risk tolerance from VC (Can't just park the money in real-estate. Worth it to invest in the Next Big Thing)
- Higher compensation means the best world-wide come work in that ecosystem
Less regulation. Facebook would've hit multiple EU privacy laws before it got even medium-sized.
Uber, Doordash and others would've never gotten past EU labor laws. They're having trouble even now.
And yes, the US has a huge concentration of enthusiastic talent willing to do pretty much anything as long as it's "disruptive". Also the US has ridiculous amounts of people wit millions to waste on said disruptive ideas. (Like over-engineered juice presses).
But who cares.. I like the low-pressure life here. Rents are lower than the US too. We have socialised healthcare, safe gun-free cities. That's worth a lot more than a number on a bank statement.
I hear that in the US people will lose their healthcare when they lose a job and it could cost $1000 a month (which is more than my monthly rent)! Here it's simply free. That brings a lot of peace of mind.
But I suppose wages take this into account. High rent prices, healthcare etc. Otherwise people wouldn't be able to live off their wage.
Going off the 2019 numbers, so pre-pandemic: 10% of Americans have a negative net worth. 30% of americans are on means-tested benefits: Medicaid, foodstamps, TANF, WIC, welfare, or section 8. An additional 20% on top of that, or more than 50% of Americans, receive federal subsidies, so do not fully pay for their own insurance.
Even for those who qualify as "with insurance", for the above specification, do not possess insurance nearly to the scale that is implied in the above quote of $2500 per month. Of the 86% insured (the number rose from 10% in 2018 to 13.7% in 2019), 20% are on individual plans with a deductible over $5000.
Fewer than 40% of Americans actually have healthcare insurance of the quality implied above -- which makes sense, because $2500 a month is actually a reasonable figure, and that exceeds wages for 40% of Americans. Reminder that 30% of Americans live at or below the poverty line, and receive government assistance for basic needs of food and shelter.
If you are free to set metric arbitrarily, you can always ensure that majority of Americans do not meet it. For example, fewer than 40% of Americans drive cars that are younger than 5 years old. Does it mean that driving is out of reach for most Americans? Clearly, it's not.
More concretely, despite that "fewer than 40%" have healthcare coverage of the sort you arbitrarily chosen, it turns out that 70% of Americans rate their healthcare coverage as either excellent or good ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar... ), and this figure has been stable for last 20 years.
The US tech sector is _perfect_ for a single male engineer, who doesn't have any health issues. You can work 16 hour days, sleep on the office sofa and earn six-seven figures before you're 30.
But as someone who's definitely not 30 any more, with a family and health issues there is no way I'm even considering moving to the US.
I could easily triple or quadruple my take-home pay, but I'd be taking all the safeties off my, and my family's, life. Not a fan.
It depends on your income. Here in Maryland, families of four making up to $70,000/year are eligible for childcare subsidies.
These numbers come from high income people who try to imagine what it would be like to be low income but don’t actually know about all of the programs the US, especially blue coastal states and the Midwest, have for people under a certain income level.
For higher income people like engineers, their employees will pay for their healthcare. Things like daycare can be a stretch, but you only pay that for a few years before the kids are eligible for free per-school. Say you have 2 kids and they need $1,500/month daycare for four years. (That’s more than I pay in Maryland which is a high cost state.) That works out to about $3,600 per year over a career. Two people working will absolutely make that much more in take home pay the US than in Europe.
From ages 0-5 you need to pay for childcare, pre-school starts at 6 and that's free. Pre-school isn't 8 hours a day though, so you need to pay around 100€ to supplement it with childcare.
After that it's school, high-school and university, all free again. High-school & university require you to buy the books though, which do have a cost, but nothing like the US schoolbook prices from what I've gathered. It's hundreds of euros per term if you buy new.
We implemented a sweeping healthcare reform a decade ago now. You can't just pretend that never happened.
That's not true in most of the states where people actually live. For example where I live in Maryland: https://www.marylandhealthconnection.gov/lost-your-job-you-c...
> Yes, you have 60 days from the date of losing your job to enroll in health coverage through Maryland Health Connection. You do not have to wait for open enrollment. A special enrollment period allows you to enroll in a health plan
Eligibility for free or subsidized healthcare depends on income. Here are the income limits in Maryland: https://www.marylandhealthconnection.gov/how-to-enroll/medic.... For a family of 4, if you earn less than about $36,000 a year you qualify for Medicaid, which provides free healthcare, including prescription drugs. For a family of four, you can enroll your kids in Medicaid if your family makes under $55,000 per year.
Above that it's a sliding scale based on household income.
It provides free health insurance; as Maryland Medicaid has cost-sharing requirements, it is not completely free health care. Prescription drugs, in particular, are not free for Medicaid recipients, though they are subsidized ($1-$3/prescription).
https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/premium-an...
Retail health care is not where the expense insanity in the US system kicks in.
The US health care system has deep, systemic problems! It's just probably not the copay problem.
It’s a couple of hundred dollars a year more than Finland or Sweden, but nothing dramatic.
And the fees/co-pays are of course not the end of the road. People in Sweden and Finland pay a lot more taxes. They pay thousands of dollars more every year, even when they don’t get sick. Median after-tax disposable income, according to the OECD, is $14,000-16,000/year more in the US than Finland or Sweden.
Now, of course, Americans spend a significant part of that difference on deductibles, premiums, etc. But in most states it’s a few thousand dollars a year on average. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
In the sunny day scenario. Why can't you stop cherry-picking?
> And the fees/co-pays are of course not the end of the road. People in Sweden and Finland pay a lot more taxes
It's the end of the road with regards to the topic. point-of-service fees. Taxes are assumed already - you get something obvious in return, you do not need to worry about healthcare for you entire life, even if you've been unemployed for a long time.
> Median after-tax disposable income, according to the OECD, is $14,000-16,000/year more in the US than Finland or Sweden.
Given the US's lack of welfare services this also seem to be a sunny day scenario. Your costs for daycare, education, rents etc are significantly higher and require that kind of disposable income to just save up to. Furthermore, this is only relevant if you think that more disposable income somehow automatically translates to more happiness and quality-of-life, which we know that it doesn't beyond a certain point.
This is true with some caveats:
If you lose your job, you lose health insurance from the job by default. But in general you have a choice to buy the same plan you had, at the full cost (including whatever the employer used to pay), which can, yes, be $1000/mo — or significantly more.
However, you will usually also then have the option of buying a plan from your state’s healthcare exchange, which may not be as good as your employer plan, but the lowest cost options will come consistently be far less than $1K/mo. [0]
And depending on income and other factors, you may be eligible for subsidies to pay part or all of the cost of an exchange plan, or you may be eligible for public insurance via Medicaid.
[0] https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/average-ma...
Seems to run counter to another, more terrible idea:
I do work a lot, but I have accepted the fact if it means I can earn more. I can retire that much earlier this way.
> I have family that answer emails in vacation all the time, that get phone calls like its nothing.
We certainly all know people like this. But, at what point should employees outright refuse to be connected to work on personal time?
I get that people whom have families that depend on them have limited choice in how far they can rebel at work, but perhaps we need young people to be a part of a new culture of work-life balance where interacting with work during any unpaid hours is seen as optional. Only those who have little to lose can stand up to corporate and make a difference.
Personally, I wouldn't work for an employer that wants free time from me. If that means I don't make a lot of money, that's fine by me. Time has value.
Having regulation around this issue can help with professions like the legal profession where the real way up the ladder is by overworking in whatever way possible. For people such as myself, an engineer, where overwork and brown-nosing don't have a 1-to-1 relation with a bigger paycheck or greater job stability, they have more leverage over what their employer can or cannot do to them.
Cherish your current employer because they are the vast minority of employers.
The bosses will likely favor those who work more than they should. And often working longer is seen more favorably than working better. This is mainly because it's more visible.
I tend to think that salaried positions and unpaid overtime shouldn't exist. But I'm open to arguments in favor of them. I just have a hard time seeing how they help align incentives of the employer and the employee.
I don't know about employees keeping up with their workload, but what I can say for sure is that the workload keeps up with how much the employee is willing to take.
But why are they doing that? I get it, a disrespectful boss could require employees to respond email or calls, and fixing that would require a shift in their mentality. But apart from that, I think it is not healthy at all the trend of having an ultra-connected setup with notifications enabled for everything, everywhere. Even if someone's workplace has a nice and respectful work culture, having their phone pinging them with work emails on a Saturday is just too much of an subconscious temptation for a lot of people.
I constantly try to convince everybody around me about the mental health improvements that brings something as simple as disabling background updates of all messaging systems we use day to day. Configuring email clients, WhatsApps, Messengers, etc. to only update when you actively open their apps. It was a game changer for me.
I'm the guy who if something messes up has to go through the databases trying to figure out what data is incorrect, and goes through logs and reports to try to infer what the data should be, and then figure out a way to fix it.
If I know it is starting to happen, and it isn't something I can quickly suggest how to fix or at least how to temporarily stop until I get back, I can at least usually tell someone what extra logging to add so that I'll have an easier time later on the cleanup.
I'd rather lose 10 minutes during my vacation than get back and immediately be made miserable enough to need another vacation.
I much rather just have them call me for that one critical issue that happens in a very long time, and appreciating me putting in the time after hours, than being forced to sit at home waiting for something to break which never actually happens.
In practice there is always someone available who is able to make time for it so there is really no need for on-call rosters. As such the act of stepping up and helping out avoids having this heavy commitment.
I'd rather just be there when it's really needed.
So, O(1)?
If you don't have on-call and you help out after hours everyone's appreciative. Might even get a small thank-you from the recognition portal for it, and "don't worry about that early meeting tomorrow, someone else will handle that". That kind of thing.
With on-call there's pressure all the time but it's not visible to anyone, and if you happen to be not immediately available everyone's angry. It's the total opposite in terms of experience.
So I try to be around when needed specifically to avoid having on-call commitments. As long as the occasional issue works out fine this way, nobody will bother setting up a formal on-call requirement. Most of my colleagues feel the same and it works out great. When shit hits the fan we're there anyway.
And the times I help out after hours... Plenty of times I'm not doing much during working hours, or have a personal things to do.. It's give and take. I love that flexibility.
If your employer wants to pay you for time that you spend at home doing non work stuff until they call, that’s up to them.
How is the pressure of “on call” any different than any other day at work? Unless you mean that your employer wants you to work 7 days a week, with 2 of them where you’re at home waiting to get a call. But then that issue is working 7 days a week.
This is shit because the 50 bucks does not make up for the enormous loss of flexibility in your free time. Even if nothing happens your whole off-time for a week is restricted.
If I'm incapacitated someone else will do the things I need to do that cannot be put off until I'm available again, but for some of those things it will take them longer and they might not do as good a job as I would have.
It goes the other way, too. I've done things that other people are better at when they were on vacation or out sick.
This is one of the reasons that documenting procedures is so important. For those things I do that do not have redundancy, I've written checklists and guides that others can follow to do most of the things I normally do. They have done the same for their areas of non-redundancy.
Because of this, I can't think of any time in the last 15 years that someone had to be asked to work during their vacation. If something went wrong in their area, others were able to either fix it, or at least mitigate its effects sufficiently for the fix to wait for the person to get back.
But I'm still going to take a look at email every day or so while on vacation, just in case. My checklists and guides aren't perfect. I'm not in an adversarial relationship with my coworkers, so on those rare occasions when they need to consult my guides and checklists when I'm away and those don't fully cover it, and I can dash off a clarification or suggestion that will help them and also save me a lot of time when I get back, I'm going to do it.
I'd rather spend 10 minutes every day on my vacation making sure things are good and fixing small issues, it gives me a feeling nothing is getting out of control.
Besides, I like my job. It's not the saltmines.
I think many of us in technology feel the same, the trick is to repress the control freak inside you and enjoy your free time while someone whose job is to fix these problems works on them.
But being bored is part of the free time
Boring is good, not bad
Edit: I love it too, but when I'm bored I work on some side project (never completed one!) instead
It gives me a feeling of fulfillment if I can do a bit of work for 10 minutes and help people out.
In my case I've been diagnosed in the spectrum of autism, I know it's my problem if I get easily bored, not because I'm not checking my work email while I'm on holiday.
The question is why ten minutes from home save days of work.
There's something horribly wrong going on if that's the case.
I'm on call a week every month, I get payed for it.
When I go back to work something happened that requires days or weeks of work to fix the issue, I will work to fix the issue for days or weeks, while still working no more than 40 hours/week.
Fixing management problems is above my pay grade.
journalists often report that the EU "lawmakers" are doing something when in it's really the parliament passing non-binding resolutions that don't do anything
In nearly all cases (except again in narrow areas defined in the treaties) Parliament must pass the legislation first, before it goes to the Council. They then must agree any changes made by the Council.
And yes, Parliament can - and almost always does - amend legislation as it goes through the legislative process.
the EU parliament cannot, so it's not a legislature
2) Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.
One area of focus for me is sickness and working from home. Sick days should be about rest and recovering both physically and mentally. Often see people working through while they aren't fully capable mentally but are too afraid to say so. We need measures like this ASAP.
The two pools must be kept separate as a public health measure. To do anything else gives a massive incentive to be a vector for illness.
Not to say we are perfect in the EU (and the UK, how I wish I didn't have to specify that separately now :(), but it's leaps and bounds ahead.
In Norway there's X amount of sick days one can use without any hassle (all paid), to use any more all you have to do is show a doctors note. If you have to use more than Y amount of days (chronic illness, a more serious thing or something), the government will temporarily take on the responsibility of paying the worker's wages. I don't think people should be punished for being sick.
I don't want to be "that guy" but Jeez Louise does this sound like total dystopia when viewed from the outside. What would happen if you didn't have sick days saved?
Additionally, they are not qualified for unemployment benefits if they are fired due to it being the employee’s fault they could not work.
If the answer is no, perhaps that is due to cultural differences. It's my impression that folks in Norway are more responsible in many regards compared to Americans.
Which is cause and which is consequence? Maybe Norwegians are more responsible at work because employers don’t exploit them so openly and the law gives them more protection.
Honestly the problem is that its a feedback loop. A trusting culture leads to people being more trustworthy... in the long run. The first company to do it will be taken advantage of. It will take a while for society to then frown on that and apply social pressure which will then in turn unlock more trust etc... but it's a process for sure
If the note shows that the employee cheated you get a warning. If the action is repeated then a doctor's note can be required from day one.
Start with good faith, but add some flexibility.
Personally, although I've fortunately had much need to take an appreciable number of sick days, I favor them being separate because as others note, especially with a relatively limited pool of PTO days, there's a lot of incentive to work sick.
However, historically, when the two were commonly separate, the sick time would often actually be a very significant chunk (maybe a month) with the understanding that actually burning through most or all of your sick time would be a rare event because of an operation or whatever.
Just to throw out rough numbers, you might have 4 weeks of a combined PTO pool today. 20 years ago you might have had 3 weeks of vacation time and 4 weeks of sick time.
Another thing that is important to point out is that leave days are sometimes an earned entitlement ultimately paid out to you if not taken, whereas sick leave isn't.
It's kind of insane to me that they can just be taken away like that.
[1] http://ask.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.info/cc-nto-vacatio....
If you have a joined pool of 60 PTO days per year, that means more days off than separate pools of 30 vacation days + up to 30 sick days. All else being equal, of course an employee would prefer to have more days off. However, all else would not be equal. The PTO days are a cost to the employer, which means the employer can afford to shell out less in other forms of compensation. Think of the job market as a market where employers compete for employees (and vice versa, but that's tangential to the point here). Employers offer different forms of compensation to employees: salary, bonuses, paid vacation days, etc. If the government suddenly mandated that employers must give all employees more vacation days, then the employers could afford to pay out less in other forms of compensation. Sure, in the short run the employer would pay out more to employees and be less profitable, but over time they would balance out this cost by paying less in other benefits.
In other words, if you take the perspective of an employee with a 5+ year time horizon, the total amount of compensation received from the employer would not be expected to increase as a result of those government-mandated extra vacation days. What would change, however, is the incentive of people to go to work sick and infect others. If sick days cost you money, then you are incentivized to go to work sick. As a result, more people get sick. That would be bad. So from a risk/reward pespective, we have a reward of ~0, and a risk of more sickness.
Everyone getting the same combined amount of day mitigates the above, with the understanding that might be 45 PTO days instead of 30 vacation + 30 sick. This would seem to leave the problem of people who are genuinely sick for longer 15 days, under the 30+30 they'd not be dipping into their vacation days as quickly.
There will always be some number of people who run out of sick days, no matter how many you have. Maybe the policies around short-term disability should be adjusted, and the more drastic situations handled with that (requiring doctor visits, etc).
I'm currently reading "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber, something that rings a lot of bells for me. I'll admit to having an very questioning attitude about workplace culture lately :-)
Well, that makes sense. When I'm stressed at work, I often get sick at the weekend. Makes sense it could start early, or leak into the next week.
I mean there surely are people out there pushing it to the limit but it's not a problem in general.
As for your point about really getting sick by the end of the year, as long as you have a doctor's note saying you are sick, you can stay at home, no matter how long or often you've been sick before that year. I guess it works similarly in Norway.
A) Take any time off at all because they do not receive sick or vacation time.
B) Take time off because they do not have enough sick or vacation days and require rest from illness or work, but do not have realistic time in which to do either.
This brings about the perception that US workers will "use extra days," when in reality they simply do not have enough to begin with.
It’s not a lie but then the next day at standup I make sure to say how much better I’m feeling. I strongly suspect all my coworkers do this too.
There's also a lot of interplay between mental and physical health. For my part, it is pretty straight-forward, that if I have a more stressful day, I will get a migraine, and need to spend several hours in a dark room. If I feel the edge of a migraine coming on, it is better for me to pre-emptively cancel meetings and take a nap rather than waiting for it to be so bad that I am forced to.
That doesn't make sense to me. It's better and more flexible to have 20 days to use as you want or need. let people roll over some of their unused time and everything is perfect.
It seems your way benefits the company and employees who can't manage their time.
In Sweden, the first day of sick leave is unpaid, after that it's very similar to Norway.
I'm not from Norway, but other European countries also have systems that are more or less similar.
Where I live, I think most adults would find it socially rather unacceptable to abuse a sick leave, at least on a regular or systematic basis. Getting caught would be rather embarrassing. So there's a social stigma against abusing the system. (That's probably not true of everyone, and there's always somebody abusing the system, but I believe the majority would find it socially unacceptable.)
Another related difference might be that at least in Nordic countries, people place more trust in the system, and the balance between collectivism and individualism tends more towards the former. If the system is seen as more trustworthy and as more of a mutual thing, as opposed to something that everybody's trying to game anyway, cheating the system is then also less acceptable. It would be like stealing from a common coffer. (Of course not everybody sees it that way, but I think there's more of a tendency towards that in the culture. And practically nobody who's not entirely naive trusts the system unconditionally, nor should they. But many ways of gaming the system for your own benefit are less acceptable to most people than they might be in a different culture.)
We shouldn’t punish the majority for the indiscretions of the few.
Ultimately some people will abuse sick leave, just like everything else in life. But those individuals should be dealt with on a individual basis.
Otherwise you just end up treating everyone like a criminal, at which point for an individual there’s no advantage to not engaging in abusive behaviour. You’re already effectively being punished for potential abusive behaviour, might as well make the most of it and actually engage in the abusive behaviour you’re being punished for.
For people who would have trouble managing their time, like an illness late in the year, just allow a bunch of days to be rolled over to be used before the end of the next year.
I was saying that it seems better to have the PTO days to use however you want than sick days that aren't supoosed to be used for non-sickness reasons.
Are you saying that it is normal for people to use the sick days when they are not really sick?
You mention needing to consult a doctor at a certain point. This is not uncommon in the U.S., with the employer wanting a doctor's note after more than two days of absence. (As an aside I always thought that was a burden on the employee, to have to pay for a doctors visit because the employer doesn't trust them. Not as big a deal if the employer would pay for the visit, but they don't. Certainly not a perfect world we live in...)
To compare, this is how I have it, in Slovakia:
* 35 days paid vacation -- by law
* sick days as much as needed, with doctor's note -- by law
* 6 sick days without doctor's note -- company benefit
There is a limit for the extra sick days, that you can't take more than 2 in a row. You usually take them if you hope that the sickness will be over in a day or two, for example if you get a cold on Friday; or if for some reason you do not want to visit the doctor during the first day of sickness, perhaps because that's when you feel worst.
That may indeed be the case in the US. In the scenario I'm describing, you only have vacation days. If you are sick, then this is altogether separate from your vacation days. There is no calculation or concept of using your vacation days if you are ill, or calling in sick as some form of vacation when not actually sick...at least not structurally. In some countries, if you are sick on your vacation day you even get your vacation days back!
In what way is it better for the employee to have a fixed pool of days that illness can cut into, compared to having a fixed pool of days that is truly and only yours for vacation (while not sick!)?
Maybe from the employer's perspective, costs are lower. But fortunately these are settled matters of employment regulation in Europe, and workers' well-being has been a focus.
>have to pay for a doctors visit
Indeed it's not a perfect world...no one has to pay for this in Europe.
Yes, all of these can be checked to some extent, but it will not be possible to fully check everything.
How is that better than just giving everyone the same number of days to manager as sick or personal for themselves?
It's also a matter of solidarity that those who can support those who can't. In this case, the healthier employees support the ones who are ill.
According to your logic above, why don't we get 100 sick days per year instead of 10? Some people need that many, fellow employees should support them too, right?
I guess the sick vs vacation day thing becomes a more of a problem in an environment where the rule-followers see a lot rule-breakers taking advantage.
The people who do follow the rules are left feeling shorted by those that don't. That doesn't seem right.
I think this happens with a lot of things. The employer can say "be trustworthy" and save money across the entire pool of employees, but the employees who follow the rules have to stand by watching other who break them.
Same thing happened with marking spots in my apartment complex. They numbered the spots to go with apartments, but don't enforce it. Someone always takes my spot. According to their rules I'm supposed to park further away in the unmarked spots, or steal someone elses spot. Most people follow the rules, so the office gets less parking complaints. But now people whose spots are taken are left worse off than before.
When companies require a doctor's note for any and all sick leaves, people will use the maximum amount the doctor prescribes (usually they just slap 3 days on for every sniffle).
On the other hand when people can take a handful (1-5) sick days freely, they tend to use just the bare minimum.
It's a matter of trust. The company is communicating to the employees that it trusts them to take the appropriate amount of sick days and conversely people don't abuse the trust.
At one of my earliest jobs, I would take a short lunch at my desk (I was very young and didn't know better). Management decided that they wanted to gauge how long I was lunching for, and insisted that I clock in and out for lunch. Well, you can be sure that I took the full time allotted to me after that.
How would one ever know? And what's the issue if someone pretend to be sick if they have up to X days to "be sick". I don't mind at all what my coworkers do with their lives.
I worked as a unionized grocery clerk and essentially everyone used all their sick time. People (including me) would call off just because they wanted to go to a party or something.
Some places try to avoid this by requiring a doctors note. But that's worse. I worked for a midsize electronics company that had unlimited sick time, but I needed a doctors note for anytime. I literally ralphed in the bathroom mid-day on a friday and HR made me go to the doctor on Monday to justify it, even though I was already better.
That policy is crazy because it creates a transaction cost for sick days. If I have a bad cold or stomach virus, might as well go into work than go to the doctor right?
Sick days should not be a simple pool of days off that you get to treat as equivalent to holiday days. This approach has the effect of (further) rewarding people who are lucky with their health, and incentivises not taking sick days when you should.
In america you have to realize that getting that note would actually cost people money and time.
I feel like a "sick day pool" or sick days burning PTO is just a shitty way for companies to try to save 0.02% on payroll while simultaneously pissing off the few employees who get burned by the policy. I can honestly say if I had to use PTO for an unexpected illness and it either messed up a vacation or caused me to have some vacation be unpaid, I would leave no matter how happy I was otherwise.
No, it doesn't work like that in Poland. You can just call it in, saying "I'm sick" and then go to the doctor. Doctor's note can cover up to 3 days before the visit.
In Finland, where this same system exists, each urban neighborhood has its own local clinic that in large part exists just for this reason: someone feeling ill can call early in the morning, be seen a little later that morning, and get a note that they can show their employer the next day (or whenever they recover).
Or a very serious and debilitating disease!
> In america ... that note would actually cost people money
Then fix the problem.
It still feels stupid every time you get past that threshold and still aren't quite healthy enough for work because the cold is just taking a bit longer this time, and you have to go see a doctor just to get the note.
Usually employers are paying for basic healthcare, so you wouldn't be paying for the doctor's visit yourself. But of course somebody's still paying, and it is a bit of a waste in cases where medical attention would not be actually needed. But it's not like you have to do that every time; you can compromise by trusting people for a couple of days before requiring that. It's all about compromise.
1. Healthcare is government-sponsored, so it costs you nothing
2. There are so called "first-contact doctors", who simply specialize in everyday things like treating common cold, and in more serious cases they would just point you to another, more specialized doctor. Getting appointment on the same or next day is quite easy.
If you said you were (still) sick for 3+ days you'd need some kind of doctor's note. Though these are easy to receive - the hardest part is usually getting an appointment in a hurry.
>If employees are off work for 7 days or less, they do not need to give their employer a fit note or other proof of sickness from a medical professional.
>When they return to work, their employer can ask them to confirm they’ve been off sick. This is called ‘self-certification’. The employer and employee will agree on how the employee should do this. They might need to fill in a form or send details of their sick leave by email.
https://edd.ca.gov/Disability/Am_I_Eligible_for_DI_Benefits....
To me this somehow... makese sense? Of course a burnout counts as sick time, but for just getting "time off" there's vacation days, which are (in Europe) mandatory. Mandatory as in "your contract grants you at least X days off" and often "you need to take at least X-Y days off in one year"
If more companies did that people would be happier and more productive across the board.
EDIT: This doesn't count public holidays, we have 10 or so public holidays (depending on your state) in addition to your vacation days.
[0] https://www.footholdamerica.com/faqs/employing-a-us-worker/h...
"By law, every country in the European Union has at least four work weeks of paid vacation. Austria, which guarantees workers the most time off, has a legal minimum of 22 paid vacation days and 13 paid holidays each year."
So the US has no minimum, but the minimum offered is typically 10 days and the a middle class job 15 days. On top of that you get at least 10 federal holidays off (or you get paid 2x if you work). Many companies recognize 13+ "official days off".
So most US employees (there are exceptions) get ~20 days off a year, while for middle class it's more typical to get closer to 25-30. (15 + 13)
Intra-EU immigrants, for example, are quite often treated like second rate workers. Maximum work for minimum pay. Come in at 9pm, stay for 2 hours, we need you for an emergency, 20 Yoyos in your pocket, yeah? That kind of thing.
If not for the laws, we'd be treated like disposable trash.
And by that metric, all Australian employees (excluding casual workers) get at least 32 days off a year (20 vacation days, plus 12 or more public holidays). The UK has 28, but that's because they have fewer public holidays. Seems like the US is still behind on time off, especially since none of your vacation time is actually guaranteed by law. I hope the situation improves over there.
The "at will" work concept (where employees can be fired without notice or compensation) is also very strange to me. That's not legal here.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/15/statista-how-far-behind-us-i...
That's also a hell of a 'so long as'. If you ban lumped PTO and don't establish a robust minimum, lots of people aren't going to get what they would prefer.
I'll save you the suspense. The number is zero.
It seems the general consensus there is regulation = evil and bad. Anyone who advocates such must be a communist.
Not at all suggest your comment is doing this.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla/faq
However, it doesn’t separate for yourself and someone else, so technically a mother could be on bed rest for 3 months and exhaust all of her leave.
A small number of states do mandate paid family leave (specifically to care for someone else which includes new parents), but they also usually stipulate minimum number of employees at businesses.
It definitely doesn’t behoove a young person interested in becoming a parent at some point to work at a startup or small business unless they explicitly offer paid parental leave as a benefit.
Part of the reason my wife and I moved to the state we did was so that she can get an extra two months of leave with her newborn, and so our daughter would be growing up in state that offered them at least that much in the future.
"An employer can choose to include bank holidays as part of a worker’s statutory annual leave."
https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights
Because if so, they don't count in the US. So the US would be 17 days of vacation plus statutory holidays. At my job I get 25 days off, plus 13 statutory holidays, so 38 days a year off, paid.
I believe they both define holidays, but it's for those directly employed, not workers in general.
Most professional jobs give 28+8 (or more, I had 30+8 which slowly increased to 33+8).
And there is no legal requirement to pay anyone for any government holiday that they do not work either. Many times, the people that do work on government holidays also do not get paid any extra for working on a holiday.
Places I had worked including my current employer, vacation days need to be scheduled at least a week+ in advance. As a person who gets sick a lot I almost always end up having to take unpaid days off when I’m sick because I blew though my 3-5 sick days.
Places with PTO I can take my entire pool off as sick time. Never took an unpaid day at a PTO business.
Right now. I have 400+ hours of banked vacation time, but I have used all of my sick days for the year. If I get sick I have to take it unpaid or work. It doesn’t make any sense.
Honestly I think they should outlaw having them separate.
If you missed weeks of work from an illness, those weeks aren't time where you could see family, see the world, relax, and be human. They don't satisfy the same long-term needs as fully-disconnected vacation time satisfies.
Why wouldn't you?
In many places (Europe, generally?), vacation days are earned. At least in the Netherlands if you were absent for weeks due to illness (for which there is no fixed pool of days), and decided not to take any vacation days, you'd either have some of your vacation days rolled over to the next year or they'd be paid out to you with salary and taxed.
It's not a luxury in the slightest. You'd have earned them just as you earned your wages.
But parental leave is considered as work, so if you come back after your parental leave, you have your full amount.
There's no distinction, at least not with the statutory holidays. You earn them as you earn your wages and there is no adjustment for illness.
It does point out that they'd need to enforce a reasonable minimum number of sick days if they're forcing them to be separate from PTO.
there are pros and cons to merged time off. psychologically, it sucks to burn "vacation" to take time off to recover from an illness. on the flip side, there is no reason for my manager to suspect me of abusing sick leave or verify my illness (which sounds super draconian). if I'm not feeling well, it's just a quick slack message and then I go back to drinking tea with lemon. also, unused PTO is usually paid out when you leave the company in the private sector. sick leave, AFAIK, is usually not.
there's definitely something to your public health argument, but as an individual it's hard to see why I would ever prefer x PTO + y sick leave over (x + y) PTO.
I don't think there should be any verification for minor illnesses. My company has an unlimited sick leave policy, and I've never needed to do more than send a quick "I'm not feeling well, should be back tomorrow." email. One of the other commenters mentioned Norway's system of having a doctor's note only after X sick days have been used, which seems reasonable.
Agreed that (x+y) PTO is individually preferable to (x vacation) + (y sick leave). That said, as thaeli mentioned, usually it isn't a summation. In moving from a standard of (10 vacation) + (10 sick leave) to a merged pool, the result was a standard of (15 PTO) rather than 20. That there isn't an individual push for the separation is also why it needs to be a regulation, rather than something left to the free market, because there is definitely a public health argument on it.
I'm sure there are reasonable companies that make pretty much any legal arrangement work well for the employees. but I'm an anxious person, so I can't help imagining the worst possible interpretation of my actions. I feel much more comfortable taking PTO than sick leave, even though I have a trusting manager.
I understand that different people have different needs/desires regarding time off, but I personally don't take it very often. I'm glad that I can choose employment where this results in me walking away with a fairly large check at the end. I would be very much opposed to any regulation that takes this away, though I could certainly support a law that requires employers to offer a choice between merged and separate.
[0] https://www.surepayroll.com/resources/blog/how-many-sick-day...
It's not nearly as barbaric as you're making it sound if you actually understand how it's supposed to used.
Only 20% of service workers have disability insurance, and I don't know of any fast food franchisee or hotel franchisee or pretty much any other small business that offers disability insurance. I would say it's still pretty barbaric. The lower your pay, the lower your benefits.
Only 1/3rd of non government employees have short term disability insurance. If you're a white collar office employee, you maybe have a 50% chance of having short term disability insurance, with the higher you get paid, the more likely you have it.
But for the people that need it the most, lower paid service workers, only 20% have it.
Nobody really asked or cared, so in effect they are the same thing. In practice lying was incentivized, and managers that didn't want to be lied to just adopted the policy that your sick days were yours to take for any reason.
I don't think this is something that should be legislated. It's really far down on the list to address.
If you're not completing enough work because you're abusing pseudo-unlimited-PTO-via-sick-days, or you magically get a cold every Friday before a week off, that gets handled by your manager directly. But it doesn't make sense to penalize the 99% of employees who are responsible and honest.
this just sounds like a shitty situation all around. it really sucks to suspect someone / be suspected of something that can't be conclusively proven one way or the other. if you can be fired for being sick too often at convenient times, you don't really have unlimited sick leave in practice.
My point was that if performance is an issue there are ways to address that. And if enough work is getting completed, it doesn't matter how many sick days were taken (so no need to track/have a pool).
When I'm sick, an insurance pays me. My employer doesn't. This insurance happens to be public/tax-funded, which is nice.
I don't expect my employer to pay me when I'm not working because I'm sick. Why would they? That would create bizarre incentives to push people to work when they are ill.
My employer pays me during my 5-6w paid time off, that's it. That's vacation. Whether was sick for 0 or 50 days that year doesn't matter.
Our leadership, once they finally relented to any amount of remote work, were saying, "your time at home is considered 'on call' time".
I addressed a formal request for a pay differential, based on labor laws and the use of the words 'on call'. I stressed that I was more than willing to be on call, but I would need my pay to reflect that, legally.
Now, when I shut my PC down at 5 and shut my phone off at 5, they no longer get mad that they can't get me after hours.
If someone pings me at 11pm from the US with a major issue and I have nothing better to do, Call of Duty can wait till tomorrow :P I like helping people and it helps relax my mind knowing that in the morning there hasn't been a major escalation building up over the last 8 hours. And they know I'm in Europe so they won't bother me if it's not urgent.
On the other side, if I need to go to the bank or doctor during the day I'll just schedule a meeting. No need to book time off. I love this flexibility. My boss is totally OK with this (and judging by his Yammer/Email activity, he does the exact same). My role is global so I always have colleagues working somewhere around the globe.
Of course it's not that easy for everyone. Some people have a life, kids etc. But it should remain a choice, that's my point. I happen to like a 24-hour society. That also happens.
I heard that in some countries like France and Germany some companies force email to stop working during the weekend. I wouldn't want this. Especially with Covid right now I have very little to go outside for, so the weekends are super boring.
You, in turn, can choose to work for another company with flex hours while keeping your current position.
Everybody wins.
So basically you have to work but are not doing anything but can't do whatever you feel like either. It's horrible.
It's a strange line of reasoning! Every time there's talk of reigning in employer surveillance, reducing working hours or generally speaking any measure that seeks to leverage up workers' power against their employers, there's a comfy tech worker ready to comment about how, well, I'm actually an exception, I actually like my job, etc...
And good for you, truly, if that's you! It feels wonderful to have employment that you really enjoy and look forward to. Keep working on the weekend if you really want to (a real danger of burnout though). But we are the exception here, and it makes no sense to govern based only on exceptions.
Thus obviously I'm against legislation that restricts my desired way of life. As long as it's the choice of the worker it should be possible IMO.
How about employers that seize to take advantage of employees and having them work overtime rather employing more people?
Well done you are the 1 percent but your experiences aren't realistic and too idealistic to work in a general setting that is governed ultimately by greed and capitalism.
It totally makes sense to continue to adapt those rights to changing environments. Like the proposed "off-times" while working from home.
What I don't like is the tax-system getting ever more complicated. Now we are talking about a 600 € deductible for working from home, which is more easily attainable than the already existing deductibles for your home office. Both will exist alongside each other. Then we have deductibles for commuting to work, which of course is counter-productive to deductibles against climate-change and makes no sense combined with the deductibles for staying at home. Why deduct both possible options, if you could just lower the tax-rate?
The existence of these rules, does not make the system fairer, it just makes it more and more complicated. You will never be able to complete it. A simpler system would benefit more people. If you earn less, it's likely you won't be able to apply for all these things anyway or properly fill out your tax statements. So I think we desperately need a shift here: Abolish all of these rules, at least the ones, which are actively harmful. If you really want people to keep more of their money, lower the tax-rate!
I would also reduce worker-protections for the highest earners, especially freelancers. At some point they are just getting in your way and are not protecting you, but actively hindering your progress. So I would propose, that both parties get more freedom to design their contracts, as soon as the employee has net earnings of say the top 10% or top 5%.
It should be for all freelancers or for none. Otherwise a situation like with the „accredited investor“ is created which is harming poorer but responsible people from taking opportunities.
Hindering someone to do their work, who is earning way more than an employee is one of the reason why IT and engineering salaries in Germany are so low. IT freelancers in Germany are hindered by regulation originally designed to prevent outsourcing of factory staff to the lowest bidder.
The point is, just because you are working from home (and have access to 100% of what you 'need' for work since you are always working from home) doesn't mean you should be expected to be on call at any time just because "you can".
My current thinking on the matter is, would be neat, it might be possible, but IDK whether it would be useful. If types are inferred completely, i.e. there's no actual type definitions, perhaps things not even having types themselves, but rather just rules extracted and tested such that the compiler evaluates and says "yup you can pass X into F" (which may be all you can say in cases like the omega combinator--there's no "type" you can associate with it afaict), then there's nothing to apply type classes to. "Can't have type classes, without having types". Also it takes away one of the big advantages of defined types (records / classes), in that you can do `.` and get precise autocomplete. If everything is just inferred, then the editor can't help you out as much.
Anyway, was just curious if you got anywhere.
Someone clue me in why that is so bad.
I've primarily worked at home for six years now, and it's been an incredibly effective method for providing that needed separation.
When the door is open, or if I come out of my office, they know it's a free-for-all for my attention, and I'll often walk out to play with them from time to time to clear my head and/or relieve some work-related stress.
My wife and I have a 1 year old, and we're both professionals who need to focus on work, hold meetings, and generally concentrate on our work. Which of us should look after our 1 year old while the other keeps the child at bay by hiding in the office?
The fact of the matter is; our homes were generally not created to be work places, and employers need to accept that as another commenter eloquently put it; we're not working from home, we're at home during a crises, trying to work.
In this case I don't think the regulation is necessary, which effectively makes it bad by default, because it adds complication and reduces flexibility of both employers and workers.
Slight tangent, but I also think governments start calling everything a "right" at their own peril. That's something I found incredibly refreshing about Andrew Yang's presidential run. Unlike every other progressive in America who has followed EU's lead by saying "we need universal healthcare because it's a human right", his take was "we should have healthcare because a safety net like that will encourage entrepreneurialism and therefore innovation."
I prefer to call the former "human rights" and the latter "societal rights". My problem with the EU and others is that they call everything "human rights" with no regard for the distinction, in what I believe to be an attempt to stall out discussion about the latter: "How can you be against this thing? It's a human right, you monster." Except they are different. The latter kind of "rights" are given to you by your society and require the labor of others on your behalf in order to work. This makes them not so simple.
To my mind, every society everywhere should enshrine the former, and the latter kind need to be decided on a society-by-society basis, and also might change with time.
Overall, I don't think it is a useful distinction to make. For either type of human right, there are cooperative agreements needed in order to maintain those rights.
Those are very different from healthcare, which is not something you have unless it is infringed. Healthcare needs to be actively provided for you. When you can very clearly put all "rights" into one of the two buckets, it's pretty clear there is a real distinction.
The reason you make a distinction is because the two kinds need to be handled in different ways, and that is harder to do if you are constantly conflating them.
For me, my apartment wasn't chosen with the expectation of being a space to work from home. My computer desk is in the corner of the living room, because I like being able to talk with my wife while playing video games. When covid hit, that also became my work desk, as there isn't a good place elsewhere to move it. The space simply wasn't intended to be a dedicated work area, and I know that I get distracted whenever my cats wail at me for attention. (I imagine that kids are even more needing of attention, though I don't have personal experimental evidence to back that up.)
And that's okay. That's human. It's okay to re-evaluate expectations in light of a crisis, and know that there will be distractions throughout the day as a result.
His point was that my sister and I were not difficult to manage, while he was working at home. He was just telling us to leave him alone and play outside. Or play legos in our rooms. The happy 80s.
I hear from my friends that working from home with kids is not manageable in a flat. Possible in a house.
Personally I love homeschooling (ie teaching my kids out of a school environment), but kids wither without educational input and intellectual nurturing. You can expect a kid to develop well without educational input shut in a room by themselves for weeks on end, even if their parents can afford lego.
I was not referring to home schooling but "managing kids" nowadays compared to the 80s. To my father, which was well involved in our education and housekeeping btw, it seems there wasn’t much anxiety about it. I feel that my friends are pretty anxious nowadays.
My dad was a general science teacher in a technical high school (woodworkers, mechanics, electrician ...), from an farmer family. We had this chance to learn a lot out of school, building stuff and caring for animals and crops. To the point actually where I haven’t learned a lot science wise until university.
How does one prove they don't use the room for anything else? Webcam recording throughout the month? Also, this kind of deduction favors the rich as the poor can't afford having one room just for that.
It absolutely 100% favors the rich. As do most tax incentives.
...and/or favours the educated: if you have to go to the bother of knowing about this allowance _and filing a tax return_ to claim. In Germany many (most?) employees pay their income taxes automagically via payroll deductions and so aren't required to submit an annual return.
A more fair options would be to still allow the room option for simplicity but also allow you to deduct things by the square foot so even if your office is just a corner it could count, though that is really mushy and people don't like mushy tax laws.
Completely favors the middle class that can afford to keep one room for 'work'. One wonders if starving artists can get some tax returns for their attic shoebox ateliers.
I worked for a little while on a project with a team based out of the Luxembourg office (Amazon). They mentioned casually that it's illegal for them to be paged from like 10pm to 6am. Not that the company policy forbids it, that the LAW forbids it and the company would be in serious trouble.
If the company needs an overnight on-call operator, they have to hire one (or, in Amazon's case, just have a team in Seattle, 9 hours offset, handle night on-call).
1. Work in a place that you don't normally use to relax when you would get home from work. Maybe a spare bedroom, maybe the kitchen with a stool. 2. Start work on time, and keep your schedule as non-pandemic-y as possible. Don't sleep in until a minute before work, but get up and pretend to do your commute. Make sure you make your coffee early, too. 3. When your done work on the clock, STOP ANSWERING EMAILS/SLACK/WHATEVER IS WORK RELATED. Now you're home for real.
I've worked on and off remote in software, and has saved my sanity every single time. The biggest thing is people are afraid to say no, but in reality, if your boss asks you to do work after you're done your day, either ask for overtime or don't even answer it. It's not your responsibility to work when you're off the clock. If your work would force you to work after-hours even before the pandemic, then there are a few problems: the bosses don't understand the work you do, they don't respect your time, and/or you enable them by working beyond your hours.
Could the employee make an agreement with his/her employer, or would such an agreement be deemed 'unlawful' under the new law?
But, these policies also put tricky restrictions around those who love the challenge of ridiculous overtime sprints (These people do actually exist). Protecting the general case can temper the edge cases. In this situation, I would argue the "edge cases" are not adverse. I think you want those types desperately, because that's where all the frontier advancement usually occurs. I.e. the linux kernel didn't get written over a bunch of carefully-metered 40 hour work weeks with mandatory EU breaks throughout. Works of passion and innovation need to occur organically, and in all cases this involves periods of furious productivity interspersed with total dead zones.
I actually caught some flak from a developer because I kept insisting that they have worked plenty this week so far and should consider taking a break. I eventually got a sharp rebuke like - "Why can't I work on this if I really want to?". I was left with no rational response beyond stating arbitrary metrics. This is a reaction that I could see myself having as well if the roles were reversed.
Perhaps we should arrive at a system where the EU restrictions are default, and employers can file for exemptions using some reasonable process in which employees participate via explicit opt-in, and the opt-in status in no way predicates acceptance of the applicant by the employer.
So if you are a developer and want to do 60 hour week writing code. You could do that under flexible hours. It is just that the employer can't force you to do that or expect you to regularly work outside regular hours.
On other hand being "on-call" is something different. It can be compensated and hours worked will be considered overtime with multiplier.
I think it's kinda self-evident that this would be the case?
I've owned a small company in the Netherlands that employed people. At times, we had to spent lots of money on accountants and lawyers, just to find out certain rules, restrictions, strange regulations. Not even implementing, this was just the cost we payed in energy, attention and money to understand it.
Regulations exist for reasons. What is your point?
Some Mainframe DBA's where on 4in4 and where called 2 3 times year.
I also heard of some one who worked two shifts for an extended period at PRESTEL
EU seeks to put end to unpaid "on-call" work culture that just assumes everyone is always on-call without extra compensation.
That's not feasible or scalable. As it is a balance, they will give you this but will take out somewhere else (less yearly increase and so on).
It's almost a disservice...
Plus if my getting money for the amount of kilometers I drive between my home and the workplace is scalable and working fine, why wouldn't this be?
It's taken off your taxes, not payed directly by your employer
Doesn't a write off mean a reduction in amount of taxable income? I think the government is saying German workers who work from home will pay tax on (income - $6/day) instead of (income). It would have no impact on their salary and there is no cost to their employer...
There are situations where I'd like to guarantee to my employer that I'll do my best to be available 24/7. This regulation would restrict my ability to negotiate.
Shame on the EU.
I'd guess we don't get it as much as we are generally high-value, highly mobile employees so it wouldn't pay to squeeze to hard. Or have I just had (mostly) good employers?
About 15 years ago in civil engineering there was great hesitance asking workers to work on weekends or stay late. And there was much appreciation of you did.
Now I feel that is fading as we transition to more "manage the computer" culture.
Today, you lose respect if you don't engage periodically during off hours.
Just respect the human being for sakes.
I remember a time when companies would have call centers across the US in different time zones to offer 24 hour service. What happened to that?
I have memories now of sending emails, but sometimes can’t tell if it was a dream or an actual email I sent.
(Usually the dreams and memories of emails are about figures drawn/images etc.)
I think this whole remote work movement could really heal the bigger cities and flush a bit more taxes into the smaller ones.
We will never achieve world peace if we let people from different timezones collaborate.
In an increasingly digital world, if you can't get flexibility workers from the EU, companies will just get them from somewhere else.
(This is a throw away comment to vent my personal frustrations. I'm quite afraid of the terrible responses this will draw from my fellow Americans so pardon me if I skip out form here.)
We need something like this in the states though.
I'm not even sure what is driving this. The EU already has a very lax work ethic. Is there really a problem in Europe with people having to be connected when not at work? What about the jobs that require a person be on-call?
(Work to live vs live to work, perhaps.)
Such rules serve only the government.
When Sweden voted to join the EU there was a lot of talk about the subsidiary principle[0], but it seems almost completely forgotten now.
I guess one could argue that it affects the internal labour market in some way, but so could pretty much any issue. I would love to see more members of the EU parliament vote against proposals like this, but I guess it's hard to be on record as saying no to something you might be in favour of - if raised on another level.
[0] "Specifically, it is the principle whereby the EU does not take action (except in the areas that fall within its exclusive competence), unless it is more effective than action taken at national, regional or local level." (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/subsidiarity.html)
It's just one of those things that always goes in one direction. Central regulation is just piled on.
I'm not saying there should be no labour regulations in EU, just that there is a lot of detailed regulation that is more appropriate to do on a national level where it can take local culture and priorities into account. And the fundamental EU principle of non discrimination based on nationality should ensure that for example a Rumanian worker in France has the same "right to disconnect" as a French worker.
I can't see why Swedes can't decide that they don't mind work emails during the weekend while Germans decide they want to have email free vacations.
https://www.handelsblatt.com/finanzen/banken-versicherungen/...
There are forms of self-employment in germany that pays less taxes explicitly because they types of work don't require as much public infrastructure as other types of work.
https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000051...
there are countless articles to be found about this if you just look for anything like "working from home tax deutsche bank", for example:
https://www.dw.com/en/deutsche-bank-proposal-to-levy-income-...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/12/deutsche-bank-proposes-a-5pe...
What does that even mean? Is the EU also going to come out with the "Right to breathe" and the "Right to go to the bathroom when you need to"?
I'm really frustrated with how the term "right" has been watered down. Rights used to be innate freedoms of the utmost importance, something worth dying for. Now it's just shorthand for some benefit the government provides, or something that the government allows you to do (often with lots of stipulations). Rights are no longer something innate to all humans, they are something that the government gives to you when it wants.
[1]https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/indust...
https://globalnaps.org/issue/workers-rights/
I'd put that under "Safe and healthy working conditions" and "reasonable limitation of working hours".
Otherwise you are at mercy of company policy or whims of your employer.
Yes, when it becomes a practically accepted norm to violate that right. Is your point that government is overstepping the bounds, or that this type of right does not deserve protection? Or is it just about the semantics and definition of the word "right"?
> Rights are no longer something innate to all humans, they are something that the government gives to you when it wants.
I always thought that the humanity creates communities, countries and their governments to protect those rights, among other things.
I'm curious as to how your perspective on these worker's rights and EU regulations generally has arisen ... is your primary experience of employment one based on working in the United States (which is ranked lower than a large number of European countries in the 2019 ITUC Global Rights)?
I assume the USA has building regs on toilets etc in work places