Giving Four Months’ Notice or Paying to Quit Has These Workers Feeling Trapped
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Also incredibly ugly that a company would put doctors in this position. Basic healthcare and profit motives don't mix.
That said, at least 4 weeks notice are required in Germany, and you can sign a contract to increase the period, but the employee can never have a longer notice period than the employer.
The public one in Germany is struggling precisely why every public one everywhere is struggling: They defund the public healthcare to cripple it to justify privatizing it by saying 'it doesnt work'. Works every time as public believe it like idiots.
And no, the one that you have is not a mixed system 'that works'. Its a system in the middle of its privatization phase. When the transition is complete, youll see how things change.
You're making a lot of very confident assertions in that post without bothering to back them up.
People rush to assume that because they have seen it many times before.
It's weird, like someone once had a flat tire on their bike and now whenever someone says that their bike is broken, they can't imagine it to be anything but a flat tire. Brakes aren't working? That's because you have a flat tire. Pedals are falling off? It's just a trick to confuse you so you don't notice the flat tire. Handlebar is backwards? You've just been trained to ignore the flat tire.
Pointing at healthcare spending in the US and saying "ha-HA! that proves that public institutions aren't poorly funded!" really says much more about you than it does about healthcare, or public institutions.
Seriously, not every post on this site is talking about the US, especially when they specify otherwise. Americans only knowing their system and then extrapolating and assuming that it's the exact same everywhere one the planet is tiring.
And as long as the privatization continues, it will keep staying at rank two or rising. Looking at the state of a public healthcare system that is in the process of being privatized is not an argument for anything.
> Its a system in the middle of its privatization phase.
Yeah, no, it's been set up this way since the beginning, feel free to look into it instead of speculating. The way it's set up is that doctors bill 2-2.3x to private insurances and subsidize their work for the public insurance system where they're very limited in how much they may bill per patient, regardless of how much time they spend on treatment.
That's intentional. Part of the crippling of the public healthcare is done to force the people to go to private healthcare, who then bill the government for the services. Its how they such taxpayer money during the privatization phase.
> Yeah, no, it's been set up this way since the beginning, feel free to look into it instead of speculating
No public healthcare system was set up this way 40 years ago. Even in jurisdictions that had the potential to end up like this because of what was legally allowed, nowhere in the West it was like this. Creeping privatization of the last 40 years did this. Nothing else. Its time people stopped rationalizing and justifying how things are tumbling downhill.
Okay. I mean, you could look it up [1] and check when the private insurance companies and coops (kinda) in Germany were founded, or you could just declare that it definitely wasn't ever done so. Whatever floats your boat.
Privatization in such systems starts when the state supplied services are crippled by 'reformers'. Even in wholly public systems, first allowing 'some' private medicine then strangling the public one to channel the activity to private ones and then justify privatizing everything is the go-to tactic.
Previously for many issues the treatment was very basic and ineffective but now we can 3D print organs, do complex transplants, and all kinds of crazy things which work but require immense resources that society can't afford. So we are left with the unpleasant situation of "Yes we do know how to cure this, but we can't afford to".
Doctors lower on the totem pole get screwed by doctors further along in their career, but that hardly phases them. This is a profession where the institution of hazing deeply entrenched. Doctors-in-training are hazed with sleep deprivation and overworking during residency, to the detriment of patients who suffer increased rates of medical errors. The harm is well understood but doctors continue this anyway, evidently under the logic of "I suffered through it, so I'll make the new guys suffer the same."
So allow me to play the world's smallest violin for the plight of these doctors.
Why would anyone stand for it? Just stay home 'sick', or roll in late, take an actual hour for your lunch (scandalous!), take your legally required breaks, do the bare minimum, what are they gonna do, fire you?
Stuff like this continues because workers don't seem to realize they CAN just leave.
No it's not. It's absolutely normal in Germany.
> Why would anyone stand for it?
Because it goes both ways. The employer has to adhere to the same period. This gives some safety for both parties. The employee can search for a new job if they are let go and the employer can plan for at least a quarter.
That said, a one-sided clause would not even be legal here.
You have to realize that the US governments have repeatedly taken then position that non executives do not have rights. There’s the concept of a “right to work” law in the US, and what that means is that a company can fire you at any time for any or no reason. Historically the government would use the policy to break strikes by having the police kill the strikes en mass, and as we see with the recent rail strike, the government will just make strike action illegal if you ever actually attempt it.
Dystopia. Who wants to be a customer or patient being helped by a worker feeling that dire?
Somewhere between massive weekly turnover vs "paying to quit" has to be some sanity but individual workers have no bargaining power against corporations and governments.
That's true, but only if you play their game. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.
What this has meant in my experience is most people employed as Software Engineers need to give a month, and senior leaders will potentially be on 3 months (notably, this often extends to individual contributors who are i.e. a Distinguished Engineer at a larger firm).
In the US the prevalent practice seems to be 2 weeks notice and this employer seems very predatory to me.
It was the same in Iceland where I'm originally from. 3 months by far the most common for engineers.
The one anomaly I've come across was Jump Trading. Their offer to me included a 12 month notice and a 36 month non compete. I told them to shove it and took another offer.
A "reasonable" judge would probably side with a little employee facing a massive penalty for quitting, but a doctor isn't the average employee. I'd bet good money that this doctor wasn't even an actual employee. I bet he was operating as a contactor business, with separate insurance/accounting and such. A judge will not look so kindly on a subcontractor business, one probably turning over six or even seven figures and perfectly capable of taking proper legal advice before signing anything.
https://www.weisbergcummings.com/are-non-compete-agreements-...
Is a Non-Compete Clause Enforceable?
For an independent contractor, non-compete clauses could reclassify you as an employee. A non-compete for contractors can actually be an important factor in determining whether a worker is truly an employee rather than a contractor. If an independent contractor is reclassified as an employee, the company could be subjected to penalties, workers compensation insurance and overtime pay.
Even if you remain classified as a contractor, a non-compete clause may not be enforceable. Independent contractors are expected to be experts in their chosen field and are likely working for multiple companies at once. If one company attempts to enforce a non-compete clause, your ability to find work may be affected. If a non-compete clause unreasonably restrains your ability to work, most courts in the U.S. will not enforce it.
Non competes between firms are possible, but given extreme scrutiny due to antitrust and other issues.
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/dangers-of-having-an-indep... notes a case which sounds similar to what you described where a non-compete was enforced because the company was able to demonstrate that the consultants had no prior experience in their industry and were using the skills and contacts they’d made on the job to launch a direct competitor.
It's more typically 1 month notice unless you're in a more senior role.
I guess it was carried over from the UK.
This is in the UK and Norway, I think it is probably similar in other European countries.
Generally the period can be negotiated when you give notice and employers will often simply pay you you some part or all of the salary that would be due and let you leave earlier unless they need you to finish some work or train someone else.
If the doctor was paying the facility for use of equipment and access to patients it wouldn't be unreasonable for that contract to have some term where some minimum payment was expected.
You can't fire me without notice, I can't quit without notice. Gives everyone time to get their affairs in order.
If that's the situation, don't be a petulant unethical crybaby about not getting what you want when you want it and do the job you're being paid to do.
Rights come with responsibilities.
The employer should provide severance. Their act of removing a person's livelihood can have devastating consequences for the individual.
The employee shouldn't have to give notice, and forcing someone to PAY a fee to NOT work is forcing them to choose between wage theft and indentured servitude.
By and large, losing one employee won't make or break a company (and if it does, it should have given them more equity and/or autonomy to have a stake and sense of power to change some of the reasons they're leaving).
The idea that if you just pay people enough money they will work a single job their entire career and never quit is absurd.
Giving two weeks is a courtesy, nothing more. Forcing someone to work against their will ant great financial penalty is indentured servitude and the article cites court cases that are proceeding under human trafficking claims.
What do you mean "against their will"? They have voluntarily signed a contract. I hope that contract is fair (notice goes both ways), but it's definitely transparent from the beginning. If you don't want that, don't sign such a contract.
I’m pretty certain you’d call that a modern form of indentured servitude. They got a judge to agree with that and currently have a case against the company for human trafficking.
The article talks about it in the context of non-compete agreements, which the provision is at least similar to (specifying what happens after the employee decides to terminate the relationship).
You don’t see people pointing at homeless corporations saying, “that could be you, walmart.”
But you DO see corporations happy to have scared emps worried about being homeless, AND those same emps helping, through taxes, enable welfare so that walmart can pay less in wages.
Literally anything a public corporation does is evil. Every single one is required, by laws they lobby for, to put shareholder value over employees.
The fact that it may somehow fit the US definition for indentured servitude doesn't make it ignorant to think it's a fair deal. Laws aren't always perfect.
I know people in upper management roles in Switzerland that have 6 months notice. It's not a big deal.
On signing: $2k for the worker and in return there’s a year or whatever noncompete, plus a required notice period. The worker can choose to accept or not, or return the bonus if they need to jump quickly.
This works out for everyone: employers can pay for what it’s worth to them, smart employees can invest that money and pocket interest income.
The reason companies are able to be so abusive towards their employees is that they can mandate no compete for any level of employee despite the _vast_ majority of employees having no magical knowledge that company. The result is that an employee can’t move to a higher paying job, and so their current employer can pay them even less.
Any decent manager knows these are not enforceable in most cases
If you mean show up but not do all the work, there might be something in the contract for that too, if they're putting this bullshit into it.