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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

#381

Post by Tomte »

stephen_g wrote: post #350
ptaipale wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by "more humane" but U.S. has lower unemployment than OECD average, and European countries mostly have higher. In particular, France and Italy, known for how difficult it is to dismiss employees both individually and in masses, have high unemployment. North European countries, where individual dismissal is difficult but mass dismissal (restructuring) is easy, fare better. Germany, also with q…

It’s difficult to compare though, because of other factors. I believe the main one between countries like France and Italy and Germany is actually the Euro currency. It’s generally considered to be overvalued compared to France and Italy’s economies and undervalued compared to Germany’s. This makes Germany’s exports extremely competitive (at the expense of costlier imports) which has spurred on their ability to build…

Germany also has developed more creative ways to deal with businesses' concerns, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_time

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

michaelmrose wrote: post #341
_ptgt wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the issue is Chinese culture, but it is Chinese leadership--which, admittedly, has encouraged and created a culture of concerning nationalism and subservience to authoritarians with no respect for human rights or rule of law. If you look back in contemporary Chinese history, there are several episodes where influential groups were openly supporting a more democratic society. It wasn't Chinese culture th…

The society that gives birth to the autocrats is complicit and for the most part welcoming of its values. It's a mistake to merely think of them as brainwashed. They rule their society still because their values and the values of the people are aligned. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... /why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.html It's a pragmatic societ…

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by astrange »

yorwba wrote: post #286
greglindahl wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, no problem, I am convinced because Europe has tons of successful startups. That works great until the next time I am interviewed by French TV about why the EU doesn't have as many startups as Silicon Valley.

Surely at-will employment is not all it takes to suddenly have lots of successful startups. Otherwise the US would have a more spread-out distribution of startups, instead of the cluster in Silicon Valley. When you do get interviewed by French TV, I hope you won't pretend like this is a single-cause issue with a simple fix.

California's advantages are existing tech employers, wildly risk taking investors, and above average US workers' rights like banning non compete agreements. The EU has the first, none of the second, and I wouldn't know about the third.

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

#384

Post by Symbiote »

DanBC wrote: post #369
mthoms wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Pretty much all of them except a few European nations. Where on earth did you get that idea? There are no affluent western nation besides the United States with "At Will" employment except perhaps Israel (I was unable to confirm).

The UK effectively has at will employment for the first two years. (But with Equality Act protections for people with protected characteristics: you can't fire someone because of their gender, for example).

It's one week up to 2 years.

Not great, but "at will" means 0 notice.

https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/notice-periods

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

#385

Post by [deleted] »

jpttsn wrote: post #357
michaelmrose wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The society that gives birth to the autocrats is complicit and for the most part welcoming of its values. It's a mistake to merely think of them as brainwashed. They rule their society still because their values and the values of the people are aligned. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... /why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.html It's a pragmatic societ…

Harsh. What about postwar Germany?

[deleted]

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

#386

Post by kgwgk »

Buge wrote: post #325
nicolas_t wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

100k euros would be ~$124k. At that salary if you are single your marginal tax rate would be 28% federal + 6.2% employee social security + 6.2% employer social security + 1.45% employee medicare + 1.45% employer medicare + 9.3% California income + 0.9% California disability insurance = 53.5%. This doesn't include unemployment taxes (California or federal) which might be another 0.3-0.5%. Though for real math, the emp…

Note that you’re basing your calculations on a EUR 100k salary. His 100k are the sum of salary and employer-paid charges.

It’s true that California taxes are high. But it’s also true that France taxes are higher. And, to be fair, bring with them higher entitlements.

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

#387

Post by michaelmrose »

exolymph wrote: post #372
curun1r wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the real story is how much businesses kowtow to the Chinese government and enable their human rights abuses. I would be quite happy to see Marriott face blowback in the US and other parts of the world over this as people show their support for a free Tibet. Letting China browbeat businesses into submission for the privilege of operating in that market isn't a good thing and more businesses need to be made to decid…

> Letting China browbeat businesses into submission for the privilege of operating in that market isn't a good thing I don't think "letting" is a very accurate word in this case — Marriott could pull out of China (likely at a loss) but the company doesn't want to because it would be financially stupid. In fact, as a public company Marriott is mandated to act in its shareholders' best financial interests.

"as a public company Marriott is mandated to act in its shareholders' best financial interests"

The reality: You can't take shareholder money out on the front lawn and set it on fire

What the internet thinks: Company not only can do insert shitty thing here but MUST do insert shitty thing here because they have a fiduciary duty.

The problem is that the internet perception of reality is semi fictional. They damn well could have simply stated that they as a company don't take a personal position on Tibet but wont be bullied and faced near zero chance of successful lawsuit even if investors took a short term bath due to business in china.

To refute this simply provide examples of investors who successfully sued because of decisions they didn't agree with an explain how this situation is similar.

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

#388

Post by mantas »

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.

In Europe he’d be fired for failing to do his job and/or tainting company image. No employee rights can save someone who made a mistake.

He might go to court over that and try to claim that it was not his fault or that it’s not such a big mistake. But his chances wouldn’t be good in most countries.

Oh, and he wouldn’t even be offered any kind of severance. It’d be seen as employ-fault firing.

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

#389

Post by jakeogh »

fyi1183 wrote: post #348
hueving wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Regardless of your view on labour laws I think most people agree on this. Not if the other option was China shutting down a bunch of Marriott hotels and hundreds of employees losing their jobs instead.

See, this is an interesting thing about labor law: it can actually protect both parties. If Marriott was forbidden by law from firing the employee in this situation, then they could much more easily deflect the pressure from China. Make some token gesture and then say, hey, we'd like to do more, but those pesky laws prevent us from doing that. This is a case where everybody wins when there's stronger employee protect…

Nah, the better outcome is Marriott showing it's hand. Better to know who is running the show, the consumers do just fine sorting it out. PR is extremely powerful and at least in the US many of us are very conscious about voting with our money. The alternative, where influence by people that are antithetical to our core values stays under the radar is much more damaging. My whole family will soon know this story, and they _love_ voting with their money.

How's the NFL doing?

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

#390

Post by zkomp »

Tehnix wrote: post #367
darawk wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they are taking a risk. If you make it harder to fire people, companies simply won't hire them in the first place. The harder it is to fire someone, the more dangerous it is to hire them . The more cautious employers will be about hiring in the first place. This is a real problem in countries that have strict firing laws.

>simply won't hire them in the first place Except that is simply not true, and very easily proven false simply by showing countries with actual employee protection and unions like e.g. Denmark.

It is not black and white though, I'm in sweden. Companies will of course hire out of necessity, but strive as much as possible to not do it - outsource, consultants, temp workers, move abroad etc etc
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