'Employment' is abused by the government to provide social benefits that it doesn't want to pay for. A job should trade work for cash and no more.
Jobs as trade work for cash went out the window around the middle of the previous century.
Sometimes work is physically hard, and the effect of that type of work usually doesn't show until you've done it for a longer time. So not only should you get money for the time and effort you spend, you should also get money for how hard the work was on your body. Pension and other benefits help with this.
Sure, if you're a programmer this might be true, but for most of physical jobs out in the world, the physicality of the job is literally tearing down peoples bodies one way or another.
> Also we already have government pensions
Yeah, so not "A job should trade work for cash and no more" but "A job should trade work for cash + pension" as pension is a social benefit.
> The economic effect of this is that workers have to wait years for some of their pay instead of getting it right now
No, the economic effect of this is that workers get paid for their work now, and the effect of that work in the future.
I have known plenty of young guys in the UK who went on these fly in fly out jobs on gas or oil platforms in Australia, as it's a relatively uncomplicated way to get a well paid job (the only good thing about it) due to easy access to Australia, being commonwealth etc. Some of them turned into literal cripples within 2-3 years, others half cripples requiring re education or placement in a less physically demanding job. It's not the same doing this once for a weekend and then classify it as "not so hard" and go out there, work in 100 deg heat or sub freezing temperatures every day, rain, wind etc. It grinds down a body slowly.
Dutch society (and most of western Europe) has made an explicit choice to create a social contract in which employees and employers are bound by the law of the government in question. and that law contains rules about employment.
mind you these rules exists because of the risk of the threat of violent uprisings in the 1850's. the revolutions of 1848 are a result of working in the way you just stated. it leads to massive unrest and instability.
There are many such social contracts, written, unwritten and I am proud that Europe has them and is keeping them.
Interestingly, having spent plenty of time in LATAM, many people consider themselves leftists, but it's very, very different, the social system is bad due to lack of money, or impractical allocation of funds, but the will and spirit is there.