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Comment by kanbara | Hacker News Reader

in germany, when doing layoffs, plans need to be submitted and in most cases when it exceeds a certain %, the company must rank people from most to least vulnerable, so pregnant women, people with dependents and older employees are not the first to get the boot

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I thought in most countries of Europe laying off pregnant employees was just not possible. It's the case in France ah least.

It seems like that would lead to Schrödinger’s womb. You could always have a “miscarriage” after.

It's not based on whatever the employee says, we have doctors and certificates. That's also how the employer knows there have to give maternal leave, etc.

The trick is in not linking healthcare coverage to employment.

I believe trick in Germany is to formally tell them you are pregnant before they try to fire you / pass over you for promotions etc.

Tell them too early and you risk discrimination, tell them too late and you risk missing out on legal protection.

While the goal sounds admirable, it seems like it would inevitably mean discriminating against young, child-free employees.

The ones most likely to find a new job quickly, yes.

Unless they rush to have "safety" kids first, that is.

Didn’t work for Elizabeth Holmes. But maybe encouraging pro-natalism isn’t such a bad thing.

Also usually the ones doing most of the work in a company and have the most flexible schedule.

Germany is very unfavourable for (young) childless professionals. We see a massive brain drain of highly educated Germans to Switzerland.

Huh, turns out even Germany has little confidence in their own state run social welfare systems. Makes sense I guess.

Or looked at from a different angle, Germany cares about its population enough to want to try to protect people in multiple ways rather than with a single point of failure.

> Or looked at from a different angle,

That's the same way of looking at it.

> Germany cares about its population enough to want to try to protect people in multiple ways rather than with a single point of failure.

Indeed, you're getting to the root cause of why the hallmark of government enterprise is incompetence, corruption, and inefficiency.

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