There are also very few places providing leave (outside of white-collar positions). For example, my wife was given two weeks off from her job after having my son. The state we lived in only required maternity leave to be implemented at companies having more than 50 employees. Oh, and those two weeks were unpaid.
In some places, taking a vacation longer than three weeks requires the company to stop paying your salary and consider you "abandoning" your job, or submitting special paperwork.
I do not miss the US; moving to the EU was the best decision I ever made.
"vacation longer than three weeks requires the company to stop paying your salary" What? Why is it called vacation then, I cannot comprehend this at all, heh.
Don't tell them some EU companies even give unlimited PAID vacation, lol. Never experienced this myself, because I usually have "only" 5 weeks paids vacation, but unlimited HO. Of course in practice this means I have main job and also doing self-employed contracts, if work in my main job is done.
Doesn't that depend on the state?
There's a new law still in committee:
https://www.scstatehouse.gov/billsearch.php?billnumbers=4226...
> What? Why is it called vacation then
Having more than two weeks off in a year is pretty strange. I worked at a place with "unlimited vacation" once, and you weren't allowed to take off more than two weeks at a time until someone took off two weeks every three weeks ... and that ended that policy. They made it about 4 months before getting fired though.
I mean, not that strange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...
Americans are very, very strange and the fact they think they're normal is part of that.
Shall we lobby our representatives? This does happen at the state level, and accordingly many states have more pro-worker policies and laws. But change at the federal level is a substantially harder thing to bring.
At the federal level, no major presidential candidate supports EU-style worker protections and mandatory benefits. And not enough congressional candidates support it, not even remotely enough to change anything. In fact, the vast majority are outright hostile to worker rights due to lobbying/capture by corporate interests.
At the state level, there is lots of variance, but even in the states most friendly to workers, it's not remotely possible to reach Europe's level of benefits around vacation, sick leave, maternity leave, let alone the right to organize for these things. There is no political will, and any political candidate who actually has the will could never win a statewide election.
All in all the US has been a success story. Whether there's correlation or causation between that and some of the regulatory and legal environment is hard to say. Maybe its success is primarily due to resources and geography and maybe the US would be even more successful with a more European style system.
[EDIT: it's should have been its ;) ]
Speaking only for myself, I've found that when I joined a company whose time-off policies I didn't like (only one so far), I just asked for more time off as part of the deal. The response I got was "sure. It's easier for us to give you more paid time off than more money."
Given the current political system(s) in the US, this is practically impossible at the federal level; difficult at the state level; somewhat more possible at the city level (eg New York City's Working Families Party). Third parties exist but generally have almost no influence.
Ummmmmm, Yes?
It's how the people who got ALL the rights we take for grated today did.
Especially our employment rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolpuddle_Martyrs
Probably other US organizations (universities?) also have fairly good vacation policies.
I think what's different about the US is that the country and states tend to not mandate this stuff. This does lead to people getting exploited under certain situations where the employer has more power in the relationship. I think the US is wrong on this but seems to work for them?
Make that five weeks for France plus up to 11 days of public holidays. That's a minimum too, we have a whole bunch of additional stuff that can stack on top of that, so many I can't even make a complete list from memory.
We're not better or worse, we're just different. Deal with it or leave us be.
Unlimited paid vacation is simply not a thing that is offered by any company anywhere in the world.
The EU approach is sort of the same, but to add regulation on top to steer the market towards specific goals, like having a strong middle class. If, for example, a company doesn't suffer from being nasty to their employees (e.g. because they're a monopolist), regulation will be put in place to create that dynamic. I personally find this approach more feasible, but regulation can be worked around and sometimes backfire, it's not easy to get right.
Back to your point: It comes down to how much you get paid. If you work full time and can't afford vacation or sickness, is that OK?
If you think that's OK, we just disagree I suppose. There's a power imbalance between employers and employees that favours the employers. They have more money, expertise, legal counsel, negotiation power etc. Given the chance, they will pay as little as they can for labour, crush competition etc. I don't believe that's good for a country in the long run.
If you think it's not OK, something has to happen. Paying people more so they can save up money to deal with this is one approach. Assuming the risk of them not working (with paid vacation and sick days) is another one. In the EU, we tend to go down the latter route. I guess you could see it as patronising, but there is beauty in sharing and distributing personal risks. I'm personally fine with both solutions. I'm running a consultancy right now, so I've decided to take the first route, assume and manage my own risks.
Historically, that stuff was put in place for factory workers in the industrial revolution I presume, though I'm very fuzzy on that. I'd argue good living conditions for low level workers help create a strong middle class through upward social mobility, but that's going off on a tangent perhaps.
A company having a monopoly in the regular market doesn't really matter for employment: if you're terrible to your employees, it's not your customers you have to fear, it's the employees. They will leave and no new ones will join and you won't be doing any business if you don't have any employees to actually do the work you'll get paid for.
> I guess you could see it as patronising, but there is beauty in sharing and distributing personal risks.
But that's quite literally what insurance is made for. The only difference is that insurance adds some amount of accountability.
Depends on the situation I suppose. If there's only one bakery corporation in your country and you're a baker, you can either work there, learn a new job or leave the country. It's a bit orthogonal for sure, but competition for talent is vital for good conditions for workers. Plus, a monopoly doesn't have to provide a good product or service, they just use their power to stifle competition. Suddenly their need for competent staff is greatly reduced.
> But that's quite literally what insurance is made for. The only difference is that insurance adds some amount of accountability
In my book, insurance is for unlikely, expensive events. In Germany for example, if an employee is sick for more than six weeks, the company no longer pays their salary, the health insurance takes over. It's likely that an employee is sick for a couple of days, not a case for insurance. Just how it's likely that an employee will want some vacation, also not a case for insurance.
I could however picture a system where companies only pay for the work employees actually do, and the funding for paid time off and sick days comes from some other source. Sounds intriguing. I believe everybody should be able to take some time off work for leisure and sickness, I see that as a human right. How exactly that's achieved, I'm personally very flexible there.
That's socialism. Look at what happened to the USSR and it's obvious that we don't want to go (further) down that path.
The cost of living is too high in many places; but that's a symptom and not a cause.
- Do you choose your water company?
- How about your power company?
- TV?
- Internet? and can it be different than your TV?
- Cell?
There are probably more that I have forgotten to mention. But, at least where I live, there is a choice for every one of those items. And hey, there's also no Comcast here.
What unlimited means is "as long as your manager is decent, you will maybe get your days off" vs accrued vacation where you may be forced to take vacation to not lose it.
I don't look at it that way. If you have accrued vacation, you "earned" your vacation and they can't take it away from you without compensation. Thus, you are guaranteed your days off. If they fire you, they should even have to pay you your salary for those vacation days.
"Unlimited" vacation just gives all the control to your employer: the right to deny you vacation, the right to dictate how long your vacation is, etc.
This is required in the US. That's the point of unlimited vacation - since it doesn't accrue, the company doesn't have to pay it out when you leave.
This is indeed the law in Israel. What happens is that people are allowed to accrue a number of vacation days up to a limit, typically however many days of vacation you earn in a year, times two. Then the company forces you to take, at the end of the year, a number of vacation days down to the limit.
Companies where this limit wasn't put in place introduced a moral hazard, whereby people would wink-and-handshake with their superiors when they would take a reasonable amount of vacation without actually reporting the vacation days to HR, wherein HR didn't really have the means to detect and enforce against the fraud. Thus people would work for decades, retire, and take compensation for decades of "untaken" vacation days, on top of the normal retirement packages. These policies represented usually $1+ million in obligation per worker and thus were clearly unsustainable without some kind of enforceable limit.
This is the law in California but not most other states.
In most states, vacation time is a benefit that can expire, evaporate, or be rescinded. The company is just deciding not to assign you job duties during your time off. How generous of them! But it's totally their right to decide not to do that, or to put a bunch of boxes around how they will do that. So it's legal, and common, that unused vacation time will actually be lost.
In CA, accrued vacation time is classified as "deferred compensation." It is legally money that is owed to you. It will be paid at a later date, but it must be paid.
It strikes me as no coincidence that the "unlimited vacation" fad started in tech companies with a large chunk of their workforce in California.
Someone I know who retired from a fairly senior position at Netflix rather liked it and took some fairly long vacations but said there really was a good tradition of umplugging at least as he observed that came from the top.
https://namely.com/blog/minimum-pto-what-is-it-why-you-shoul...
They don't do that for normal PTO but it's certainly feasible.
Pretty much no one (outside of maybe something regulated who may mandate two week PTOs for security purposes) is going to do that every time an employee takes PTO. In any case, if I really want to do work I don't even need access to my employer's computers.
Getting sick was jokingly referred to as a firing offense, though people did take sick leave. Burnout was a real thing – and I barely lasted a year, though that may well have been unrelated.
I could easily see a requirement from high up managment to “reduce risk” by having a department have a plan for an unusually long holiday stint (I.e someone taking 6 weeks off in a row), fundamentally because senior management don’t trust middle management.
At the job before that I had accrued 6 weeks of PTO, which was the max. I took every other Friday off after that and was paid out a month and a half when I left the company. Everyone understood the situation, so it wasn’t looked down upon when I was gone every other week.
My perspective was that unlimited PTO was a scam to reduce vacation time. Most people are not going to take advantage of it, so the company benefits.
This is nonsense in general. I've taken month-long vacations and never had to do anything special so long as I had the time and, obviously, told my manager.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/nq2ph2/i_r...
It isn't if they are meek or mid.
In general: it's good to let your employer know that you value your time. If you don't suck, they'll respect you more, not less.
I assume if you took the UK legal minimum of 5.6 weeks for example, you would get fired.
To have it really unlimited you need a special position, like be a relative of CEO. But in that case you can have the same even with limited vacation policy.
IIRC it's much safer not to provide any either — except in Montana which I believe requires Just Cause after probation, as there are only a handful of statutory exceptions to at-will employment, and most of them are very, very hard to prove without an extensive paper trail... or the employer spelling it out when they fire you.
Yes, you can be layered off a lot easier in the USA, but you also can jump around and chase higher income that isn’t regulated by the government.
The problem with your perspective is that people in America still want to make 30-50% more than in Europe for the same job and they want to pay 20% less taxes, but they also want all kinds of services and protection.
So I will go out on a limb and guess you are so self-righteous because you have a large savings pool, so you tell yourself “I don’t mind paying higher taxes and making less money because I have security” … largely because you have your savings, which you are also using to make life for Europeans unaffordable but bidding up prices.
I agree. I work for a FAANG and could ask for a transfer, but I'm worried about the risks that come with the US labor law and the lack of paid holiday too. Also the waves of lay off were much harsher in the US. That being said, it's fun to live in a different country (I lived in the US in the past) and there are more opportunities in tech in the US so I'm still contemplating it.
Take a Google L4 - $280K US, $190K UK, $160K DE.
But when you include the regulatory protections and benefits, the differences in living standards, etc. the US salary is probably still higher but these salaries are certainly nothing to balk at.
However, for higher levels (L6+), I think the difference becomes more important. Also, in US tech centers, there are many more opportunities than in Europe. If I were to lose my FAANG job, there would be no way I'd make the same amount of money in a different company in my country. On the other hand, being on a transfer visa in the US can make it hard to switch to a different company too.
In the end, there are pros and cons, and not a definite answer as to where it's best. It depends highly on individual circumstances.
Man this is fucking terrible. Despite what someone’s ideas about work might be, this is just not right unless you put work above literally everything else.
My wife currently has 18 months fully paid maternity leave, and we’re having tons of family adventure with our little one who is already 9 months old.
I couldn’t imagine not having that family time.
I think its very healthy and human to understand people have phases in life where they need to be cared for.
It’s very easy to have a narrow view of the world where everything would be fixed by the ‘market’.
Can you explain more about your experience with this? I’ve never heard of it.
You begin by referring to at-will employment, which has a long history in state laws. This context gives the impression the “what” that is doing the “requiring” is the state and its laws.
I’m wondering if this “long vacation” thing has a basis in law or possibly originates from individual company or union contracts.
Or if this is a cost savings measure for business services which are paid on monthly basis. Most insurances are based on employee count and earnings, but are calculated yearly.
It’s very easy to live in the EU with an US compensation.
I wonder if you will feel the same if you had a local job.
And money isn't that relevant anyway. Quality of life is more important. That's why I live in Spain where I make about half of what I could make in Holland where I'm from.
The biggest party in Holland for the last 20 years (VVD) was very neoliberal and they wanted to make the country into America where money trumps everything so I got disenfranchised and left. And right now the biggest party is even extreme right (and supported by the neolibs) so I'm extra glad I left.
But I'm happy in Spain. People enjoy life much more. There's no calvinist influence. Not to mention the climate.
You traded the Calvinist influence for the Roman Catholic influence in Spain. I'm sure there are tradeoffs involved. For instance, Dutch people tend to be very direct and matter-of-fact in their criticism of anything, which has benefits w/r/t efficiency and public order. Kind of hard to pull that off in a Catholic country.
Like most people talk about it as if culturally we used to expect 0 accommodations for working mothers, which was bad, and the expectation has increased over time.
But, actually in the past the mother would have spent many dedicated years with the infant/baby/toddler/child, until they entered school. If the mother has multiple children, it’s not really practical for a company to hold their spot open for like 8 years and I don’t think this happens even in the most progressive of European countries.
So, culturally speaking, does the rise of maternity leave actually come from an increasing cultural tolerance for the mother spending less time with the child via daycare?
Almost no one in Europe has 8 children but I know women who went on maternity leave 3 times. Generally kills your career as you don‘t advance during those years (and most only work part time afterwards) but the original job is still there.
Especially in very large companies, it‘s not too big of a burden. Just some extra slack in headcount planning. It‘s pretty rough in smaller companies. I used to sit on the board of pre-school. 5-6 employees, all women, lots of pregnancies and with the added twist that if they didn‘t have certain childhood diseases or vaccinations, they weren‘t allowed to work the entire pregnancy. We had to hire a lot of folks on temporary contracts.
Worth pointing out, while we had to pay the salary in case of work not being permitted and the time no work is allowed for anyone pregnant (6 weeks before birth and 8 weeks after), this is fully reimbursed trough insurance schemes every company has to pay into.
You don’t need 8 children to get to 8 years of dedicated child care with the pre-daycare-normalization worldview. You only need 2 children with an offset of 3 years, or 3 children with less offset.
That said, at least in Germany, you can‘t get to 8 years with 2 children as the maximum time for parental leave is capped at 36 months per child.
Likely the only reason for this minimal amount of statutory leave is a federal law:
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla
Though it does mandate twelve weeks of unpaid leave, not two, but it only kicks in if you've worked there for a year already.
Most short term disability insurance actually covers maternity leave for about 6 weeks. It’s really easy for employers to make sure this is part of their benefits package these days.
This is not entirely correct.
They can fire you for any reason as long as it’s not because of a protected reason.
There are certain protected reasons at the federal level and many states add additional ones at the state level.
So, for example, they can fire you for wearing a red shirt, but they cannot fire you for being too old (well, too old is defined as above 40…if you’re 35 they can legally fire you for being too old if they want).
Ergo: Surely it should be the other way around; that you can only be fired for specific protracted reasons, i.e. gross negligence.
The possibility of a lawsuit, resulting in fines and penalties. Obviously many people won't bother to sue, and some companies will take the risk.
Also socialized healthcare <3
Regardless of at-will employment, the vast majority of employers will still give you plenty of warning before you're fired for performance reasons. It's mainly an issue when a company suddenly has large layoffs. And despite what you see in the media, most people are employed by smaller companies that are generally not laying anyone off.
IOW, the negative aspects of at-will employment really don't have much impact on the average techie's life.
It would for me. It would be a constant worry, being jobless from one day to the next, how to pay the mortgage etc? I would find that a huge negative, even if it doesn't actually end up happening.
Also besides the notice period you're also entitled to a significant fee when you get fired (up to about a year's worth of salary depending on how long you worked for the company). Which is really reassuring especially for paying mortgage etc. I don't want to live on the edge of my seat all the time. And it's also something that stops me from moving to another job because I would have to start from zero and lose this protection. Which I don't mind, I don't like job-hopping anyway.
I really don't like the American mentality of high-risk, high-reward. I don't care much about money but I do care a lot about stability. But anyway I live in Europe and I'm happy with the way things are here. I do hate the neoliberals here that try to make europe like America (which mainly benefits the big corpos, not us).
So, if a company says "we're firing everyone wearing red shirts", then you can potentially contest that. If they fire you without a reason, then it's legal. If you can prove there was actually a reason, and that the reason was illegal, then you can sue them for wrongful termination
Sure, it is a risk. You could be wrong and then they sue you. Now you have to prove it. Better to just say that you're firing them and that is all. If they don't know the reason, they can't effectively sue you.
Possibly in Europe, but this not the law anywhere in the U.S.
To the extent that any American corporation requires this, it is purely a corporate policy.
I'd understand (though not agree with) an individual company capping an individual vacation at three weeks, but not a (presumably) state law to that effect.
no, it's actually the polar opposite of that. either party is free to end the relationship at any time. there is essentially what is a long term contract (may not be called a contract), but one which either of the two parties can terminate. it's halfway between being a european style employee and being a truly independent contractor. an indentured servant is certainly not free at all to end a bad relationship or to seek a better job or more pay - totally the opposite thing.
and i don't think there's anything wrong with it. in fact, i personally strongly want to move more toward becoming a true independent contractor someday, but the culture of engineering strongly favors employees for what i prefer to do. i'd rather pay my own taxes and handle my own retirement and medical insurance and other "benefits", many of which do not benefit me at all.
when you say "click-or-be-fired" it seems shocking. rephrase it into "agree to our new terms going forward, or we will not renew". i have zero problem with that if that was the situation that was originally agreed to.
now, i don't know what those new terms are or whether they were fair, and that might have been a problem. but simply the at-will employment system isn't wrong on it's own. but in our jurisdiction, not ireland (which is how X appears to have got itself in trouble).
An employee has needs that sometimes cannot go untended, s/he has rent/mortgage payments, s/he may have family to take care of, loan repayments, children at non-free school, etc etc. This is normal, and the paraphernalia of living a life. They are long-term commitments.
So if the employee is presented with an ultimatum like this, it really amounts to “rip up your life, or take the new (worse) offer we are giving you”. It smacks of Vader’s famous line: “I am altering the deal. Pray that I don’t alter it any further”. You may prefer living in a world where corporations can wreak havoc with employees lives without consequence (like Vader) but I don’t.
Leaving the country at the end of this year and returning back to the UK. I came here for the money and the weather. The weather is now too damn hot, and I’ve made enough money to retire (in the UK at least) and look after my wife after an American hospital utterly destroyed her life, putting her into a coma after trying to “turn beds” like restaurants “turn tables”. I so much wish I’d done this 2 years ago, life would have been very different if I had.
you prefer "guarantees". that's fine. i prefer more freedom and i don't want or trust those guarantees. nothing keeps a company from going out of business and then it doesn't matter what the law says or what they owed you - piff - you're screwed right then and there. you can also be run over by a bus tomorrow through no fault of your own in spite of any number of laws to keep that from happening.
> You may prefer living in a world where corporations can wreak havoc with employees lives without consequence (like Vader) but I don’t.
i don't like that either. but realize we both already do live in that world. unfortunately it is a fundamental universal fact of life that enough power and money can be, and usually will be, wielded to do bad things. since you can't fundamentally change that, most "fixes" are just trading one thing for another, or shifting costs to someone else, who is probably poorer and less powerful. every safety net is also a set of handcuffs. every benefit has a cost somewhere else. to move more toward more employment guarantees makes you more of a slave, not less. ironically, more regulation strongly favors the larger bureaucracies and bigger companies at the expense of the individuals and small companies. so now you just encouraged more economic asymmetry.
i'm not telling you what you prefer or what's best for you or what to believe. just realize that everyone does not have the same viewpoint or needs at all. and it's not simply evil vs. good as portrayed in the movies.
i'm sorry to hear about your wife. the quality of healthcare in this country can be highly variable, it's certainly not always bad. i've heard that UK sometimes has different issues. use your intelligence to make the wisest and best decisions you can and be as proactive as possible, that's all you can do, anywhere, anytime.
"Accept this employment contact change or be unable to afford treatment for your illness" is often not really a choice. It's "freedom" for those with money, oppression for those without.
> nothing keeps a company from going out of business and then it doesn't matter what the law says or what they owed you - piff - you're screwed right then and there. you can also be run over by a bus tomorrow through no fault of your own in spite of any number of laws to keep that from happening.
You seem to refute your own point. It's true you could get ran over by a bus - so why do we still have laws to prohibit bus drivers from knowingly running you over? Because we typically want to minimize the number of lives we "screw", even if we can't reduce it to zero.
Further, a company going out of business is still very much in the realm of something sufficient social safety nets can help with - lessening the blow to employees' lives while they search/train for a new job.
> i don't like that either. but realize we both already do live in that world.
We can and should try to improve it. There is no reason to be resigned to the idea that this is how things must always be, when this itself is a relatively recent state of affairs and already a notable improvement over, say, feudalism of the 10th century (in both freedom and quality of life).
> every benefit has a cost somewhere else
Humanity's progress isn't a zero-sum game - there are plenty of net positive changes we have made and can continue to make.
> and it's not simply evil vs. good as portrayed in the movies.
I found spacedcowboy's consideration of power dynamics a significantly more developed worldview than what you've demonstrated above.
You actually net increase the ability of people to work for themselves. Healthcare is often cited as one of the primarily reasons people don’t take the step to found their own business.
Not to mention that if you want more equity between employer / employee relationships we need more ways to break up the asymmetric leverage of the relationship and this is a major one that traps folks
- as you mentioned health insurance (and to some extent life insurance, cheap when young, but not so cheap as you get older)
- retirement. this seems to be steadily changing to 401K type schemes. the 85 point (age + years of service = 85) pensions are solidly in the rear view mirror, and i for one, applaud that. you can take your 401K where-ever you want and decide for yourself what age and how much money you need.
but i have other problems with "universal" health care though; the VA has something like this and it's not better. must it be that way? maybe not, but is it likely be that way? yeah...
then you have the free-rider problem vs. basic human rights. i'd just be happy if everybody could purchase the same insurance at the same price employed or not if they wished to do so. it's not quite there yet, although i have received quotes from Kaiser in CA for equivalent individual policies are that are nearly the same price to what just my parole deduction portion is from $$big$$corp - not counting their ~40-50% portion. which implies, as usual, big companies are being not very efficient. billing is a disaster; why is my insurance charged $50,000 for something i can buy out-of-pocket for $5,000? patents and drug companies are a disaster; problem: drugs are too expensive - solution: give artificial monopolies...
so what we've done so far in this country manages is a half-measure that manages to be worse than what we had before and just as bad or worse than some ideal universal health care would be. i acknowledge that health care is a thorny problem, nothing seems to be a good answer and we're highly unlikely to be fixing it (by fix, i mean make it better, not just doing more stupid stuff).
except all the legal ways you can't fire someone. Sexism, Racism, Ageism, and maybe Sexual Orientation (may not be Federal) are the big 4 reasons why this can't simply be a social contract. And there's more subtle but not illegal ways you can screw yourself over like Promissary Estoppel, because you can't just hire someone and fire them the first week "for whatever reason" and think that's not open for abuse.
>when you say "click-or-be-fired" it seems shocking. rephrase it into "agree to our new terms going forward, or we will not renew". i have zero problem with that if that was the situation that was originally agreed to.
"I have altered the terms, pray I do not alter it further".
These aren't even labor laws. This can be extortion or retaliation. Neither of which are exactly squeaky clean. Or it could be a simply breaking of contract (e.g. your contract says WFH and now they want to force RTO you). If there's no protection nor reparation on the employer side for breaking a contract they can remake at anytime, it may as well be handcuffs instead.
> In United States labor law, at-will employment is an employer's ability to dismiss an employee for any reason (that is, without having to establish "just cause" for termination), and without warning,[1] as long as the reason is not illegal (e.g. firing because of the employee's gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or disability status). When an employee is acknowledged as being hired "at will", courts deny the employee any claim for loss resulting from the dismissal.
Some people do have employment contracts with more consideration but as I understand it that mostly applies to union work and C suite executive positions.
Most states’ unemployment insurance covers up to a maximum benefit per week, and a maximum number of weeks. When I lost my job once, I was paid $325 per week.
Your employment contract may have terms that override the at-will relationship, in which case the employer has to follow the contract's terms. You may also be unionized, in which case the union will have negotiated termination procedures with your employer. And you may live in a State that has additional rules for terminating contracts.
But as a general rule, I believe this is legal in the US in most cases.
I think employees have been allowed to quit at any time since the early 20th century in most western countries. Of course there is a probationary period involved, but it's nothing like earlier times when police would possibly come and take you to your place of work, or it was illegal to be unemployed in several jurisdictions up to 20th century (e.g. USSR) etc.
So discussing this as "feature" rather than tablestakes in any modern society is somewhat misleading IMO.
I don't know if there are some professions where it's a bit more complicated than this and am happy to be corrected.
So let’s say I leave after 1 month of giving notice. I now owe the employer 2 months salary.
Like, I could just stop showing up and they would fire me for cause without notice, but that matters only if I needed unemployment pay. If I already had a new job that I would like to start immediately, I could just do that.
2 weeks in der EU is common, 1 month rarer...3 is a lot and leads me to believe there's a lot of € at stake in this case.
For employees that have not been working for the firm very long the notice period will be shorter on both sides. What the exact rules are I'm not sure.
How is it the same if there's a probationary period?
I can quit my job today with absolutely no consequences beyond not having an income. Can I do the same where you are?
- Generally, you can be fired without any particular reason.
- Outside of a few whitelisted reasons (like being fired "for cause"), when fired, you can collect unemployment (a system where the employer self-insures, sending money into a governmental pool to payout in such cases) for O(1 yr), with caps in the $900/mo.range, depending on the state. Not clicking on the link would likely not count as "cause," but Twitter might try to argue it does (not that it necessarily matters since the severance package is probably better and probably precludes filing for unemployment).
- Other labor laws exist, like requiring some sort of notification period for mass layoffs. If this were found to be a mass layoff in disguise, there'd be additional penalties.
- Similarly with race or any of the things you can't fire a person for (e.g., if a person didn't see the email because they were pregnant and doing something medically relevant, a lawyer might be able to say something about the firing being structured in a way that discriminates against pregnant people, which is not legal).
- If the link had any attached terms and conditions, those likely would not be enforceable since the contract was agreed to under duress.
- Any other contracts between Twitter and the employees might matter. Perhaps the firing is allowed, but there are other constraints on the exact manner (e.g., having previously negotiated a better severance package).
- If the link had any specific terms involving lower pay or reduced benefits or whatnot, there's a decent chance that it was criminal extortion or blackmail in various parts of the US.
And so on. We can start tacking on hypotheticals which might apply, but I'll stop there.
> indentured servitude
There's no need to be so hyperbolic when bagging on the US. It's bad that we don't have great safety nets for people, but forcing individual employers to take up the slack isn't an ideal solution either (still no protections when the employer goes bankrupt or when a crisis hits somebody like a college student, and it disproportionately impacts the smallest businesses because you can't spread the risk out across a lot of employees and revenue -- an imperfect but almost strictly better solution is just raising the unemployment rates to match the real inflation we've seen), and it's nothing like indentured servitude which allows the working conditions to degrade nearly arbitrarily without a chance to leave and go someplace better.
The contract is between two parties until a new contract is proposed. If a party declines the new terms (by not clicking) then the past contract becomes void.
So the old contract is still in effect, as it was not replaced by a new contract. So who terminated the old contract? That's the question here, and the conclusion seems to be that the employer is the one who then fired the employee, the employee did not quit by refusing the new contract.
But that's not what this was about.
X was attempting to characterize the refusal to click as a resignation by the employee rather than a termination by the company. This is because a resignation would not trigger contract-related severance (which apparently Twitter employees had) or hit X's unemployment insurance account, while a termination would trigger both severance and unemployment.
You might be thinking of "at will employment" - which is the case in 49 of 50 states.