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Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

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Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#211

Post by greglindahl »

realusername wrote: post #187
greglindahl wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of young people in France are on short-term contracts, precisely because long-term employees are hard to fire. Imagine that you are a startup in France, with long-term employees, and suddenly you realize you screwed up, and you have to cut your expenses in half. Today, that means your startup is dead and all employees are screwed, but in the US, your startup continues with a much lower valuation. Which is bette…

> A lot of young people in France are on short-term contracts, precisely because long-term employees are hard to fire. Having a long-term contract where you can be fired at-will any day is effectively the same as cumulating short-term contracts, so instead of a lot of people on short-term contracts, you just have everybody (100%) on short term contracts.

That's not the case in the US: employees have a lot more protection if they're a part of a "protected class". And, surprisingly enough, it works pretty well.

I, personally, have a limited ability to be a part of a protected class, but that appears to work out ok for people like me. I've been fired once, and I got a better job as a result.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#212

Post by nicolas_t »

zapita wrote: post #177
realusername wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've discussed with a lot of small businesses in France, workers-friendly laws are not an obstacle at all and unlike what you can see in the news, it plays almost no part in hiring (the laws are actually very reasonable and it all makes sense). The main obstacle is by far the high taxes.

This is incorrect. The French like to complain about their taxes, but it's not that different from California. Employee protection regulation absolutely is problematic in France, because it over-protect relatively small groups at the expense of everyone else. Small and medium-sized businesses are most affected by this. The transition from 40-ish people to 200-ish people is where the system really breaks down for Fren…

No different than California? Let's see. I don't know the numbers well in Cali but I know what I paid in France. I'd be curious to see what one would pay in California for a similar situation.

For a 100,000 euros income as a sole proprietorship, I paid 42% altogether. From those 42%, 7% were income tax, the remaining 35% were Charges sociales which covers healthcare, unemployment and retirement benefits. When French people complain about high taxes for hiring, they complain about the Charges sociales.

When ones is employed, most of the charges sociales are paid by the employer so do not come out of the employee salary (but it's the same in the end).

Honestly, it's not as big a problem in tech where wages are quite a bit lower than the US to account for the high charges sociales. But for smaller companies hiring low skilled labor or for jobs that are traditionally less paid (customer service, etc...), then it is rather high.

And to add insult to injury, the organisms that are charged with collecting those charges sociales are a complete clusterfuck. For the same year, they calculated 3 different amounts and none matched what my accountant had calculated. Closing down the business and getting out of the RSI's list took 2 years and repeated letters.

That said, I do agree with you regarding employee protection. Those regulations are helpful and should be there but there's a balance to be had between both extremes. It's the same with renter's protection in France which are way too biased against landlords and also create a lack of available apartment (coming back to France after living abroad for multiple years meant that I didn't qualify for the new unpaid rent insurance the government created and locked me out of a third of the apartments in the city I wanted to live.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#213

Post by andrepd »

JPKab wrote: post #62
cylinder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real story is he has no employment rights because he's in America and he's "at will." They can dismiss him because they don't like his lunch selection that day and he has no rights. That's at will employment. This type of situation plays out all over the country everyday.

It gets abused for sure, but more often, businesses get to fire bad employees, and this means they are more likely to give some people a chance who wouldn't get one otherwise. Hiring in certain countries is very risky, because it is so costly to fire a bad employee.

More often, you assert. But have you got any evidence to say so?

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#214

Post by patmcc »

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #65
cylinder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real story is he has no employment rights because he's in America and he's "at will." They can dismiss him because they don't like his lunch selection that day and he has no rights. That's at will employment. This type of situation plays out all over the country everyday.

Forcing employers to keep employees they don't like, for any reason beyond discrimination, isn't the answer. The better answer is, IMO, better social safety net so people making $14/hr don't end up on the streets just because their job goes away.

>>Forcing employers to keep employees they don't like

Many jurisdictions allow firing without cause - they just make the employers pay (significant) severance, often related to the length of service of the employee. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "I don't want you in my company any longer", I just happen to think it might be reasonable to pay for that privilege.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#215

Post by nicolas_t »

realusername wrote: post #187
greglindahl wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of young people in France are on short-term contracts, precisely because long-term employees are hard to fire. Imagine that you are a startup in France, with long-term employees, and suddenly you realize you screwed up, and you have to cut your expenses in half. Today, that means your startup is dead and all employees are screwed, but in the US, your startup continues with a much lower valuation. Which is bette…

> A lot of young people in France are on short-term contracts, precisely because long-term employees are hard to fire. Having a long-term contract where you can be fired at-will any day is effectively the same as cumulating short-term contracts, so instead of a lot of people on short-term contracts, you just have everybody (100%) on short term contracts.

There is one big difference. If you have a long term contract in the US where you can get fired at will, you can still get a mortgage. If you're cumulating short term contracts in France, no bank will agree to let you get a mortgage or will make it very difficult.

This creates an underclass of people who are unable to buy their own house because of the employment situation

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#216

Post by coldacid »

thisacctforreal wrote: post #102
coldacid wrote: post #19

Well, I certainly won't be staying at any Marriott hotels any more. That's an abysmal way of handling things.

I think these personal boycotts are important and I also participate in them (Nestle, Facebook, etc). But it's unfortunate know that we will likely never be able to match the scale of a boycott from China. edit: However if China keeps doing stunts like this then companies might be able to make the decision not to do business there.

Re edit: Isn't that what Google's already done? If only other big tech companies would flip Beijing the bird the same way...

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#217

Post by gnicholas »

cylinder wrote: post #54
corobo wrote: post #21

The meat of the story is that Omaha man worked for Marriott hotels on customer support. Their support system allows their agents to like tweets. The man appears to have inadvertently clicked like on a tweet while dealing with a large influx of support messages (due to a promo going on) thanking Marriott for listing Tibet as its own country which was a huge no-no due to Mariott's presence in China. Execs fire him as a…

The real story is he has no employment rights because he's in America and he's "at will." They can dismiss him because they don't like his lunch selection that day and he has no rights. That's at will employment. This type of situation plays out all over the country everyday.

I see this pro-worker sentiment on HN pretty regularly. But I also see the "hire slow, fire fast" mantra.

Are these views held by different people, or by the same people regarding different situations (like working for big companies versus startups)?

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#218

Post by greglindahl »

realusername wrote: post #200
greglindahl wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a similar situation, many US startups survive, after laying off of their half their at-will employees. That's my point.

I don't know what perception of the country you have but it's not the Soviet Union you know, having financial issue is a valid reason to fire employees. The US is the only developed place without reasonable workers laws so it's more an exception than anything else.

In the US, we call this argument "Red Baiting". Sure, let's accuse our opponent of starving 10s of millions of people to death!

When there's a financial problem, there are multiple differing opinions as to what's reasonable.

But if you want to call the US the "only developed place without reasonable worker laws", you might want to consider Denmark. Because they don't have the opinion you're propagating.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#219

Post by Aloha »

kylnew wrote: post #112

Honestly, Marriott is a terrible chain with contempt for its own customers. Every time I use a Marriott (not always by choice) I’m insulted by the quality of food for the price they ask. I once got $10 ‘fresh squeezed OJ’ at breakfast before knowing the price and realizing they were pouring it from a Tropicana container. So when I hear this story I’m not even remotely surprised by Marriotts behavior. Upper management…

Was it a franchised property, or OandO, or was it just merely managed by Marriott?

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#220

Post by yorwba »

greglindahl wrote: post #167
John_KZ wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also why people in France have stable, long-term jobs, instead of being fired by Wallmart every 6 months due to some war veteran scheme that allows them to save 0.1% on employee salaries. In this particular case, if the man wasn't trained appropriately to handle international PR while doing so, the wrongdoing lies with the company. The article itself seems to adopt a certain attitude that I really dislike. Fo…

A lot of young people in France are on short-term contracts, precisely because long-term employees are hard to fire. Imagine that you are a startup in France, with long-term employees, and suddenly you realize you screwed up, and you have to cut your expenses in half. Today, that means your startup is dead and all employees are screwed, but in the US, your startup continues with a much lower valuation. Which is bette…

> you are a startup in France, with long-term employees, and suddenly you realize you screwed up, and you have to cut your expenses in half.

You dismiss employees equivalent to half of your expenses on economic grounds, and after the appropriate notice period (1 month for employees with 6 months - 2 years tenure [1]) you now have half the expenses.

If that's not fast enough, I doubt your startup would have survived for more than 2 months with an instant layoff.

[1] http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/France.pdf

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