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EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

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Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#311

Post by reaperducer »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #174
Hamuko wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. There's a problem with your country if you can be fired for refusing overtime.

(in America) There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. Whether you work 35 or 60 hours, it’s the same pay.[a] As a result, employers don’t have to worry about overtime pay, only burnt out employees (but entry and junior levels are disposable, right? /s) [a]: This also leads to the employer expecting one to be “on call” 24/7 regardles…

There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked.

This used to be true, but has changed in a lot of states and cities in the last decade or so. Many people still think that salaried=work as long as the boss says.

In those places, being salaried doesn't mean you have to work unlimited hours with no compensation. This only applies to managers. If you don't directly manage people, you are legally entitled to overtime. Pre-pandemic, some states were cracking down on this.

It's worth checking your state and city's labor laws every couple of years because things change all the time.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#312

Post by lotsofpulp »

pc86 wrote: post #131
MereInterest wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your shock, and try to keep myself from feeling that the current situation in the US is either normal or ethical. To answer your question, yes, recovery from cancer would could from the pool of sick days in most places in the US. If the recovery takes more than the pool of sick days (7-9 days per year, somehow and perversely being different on average by seniority[0]), then all remaining recovery time is unpa…

Sick days are meant to be used for recovery from minor illness, not for cancer. This is why short- and long-term disability insurance exist, which pay your full salary or close to it. For example my employer pays for everyone to have ST and LT coverage up to 60 or 80% of salary (I forget which honestly) and you can purchase additional coverage which is (I think) pretax to bring that up to 100% for one or both. For ex…

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/disability-insurance-plans...

Only 20% of service workers have disability insurance, and I don't know of any fast food franchisee or hotel franchisee or pretty much any other small business that offers disability insurance. I would say it's still pretty barbaric. The lower your pay, the lower your benefits.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#313

Post by beepboopbeep »

What a stark contrast to America. A country of "Personal freedom" that utterly entraps you to work and shames you as a socialist for asking for support from your government. Ironically, the cut throat work environment that has trained me to always keep an eye out for a better deal is drawing me to immigrating away from this country to the EU.

(This is a throw away comment to vent my personal frustrations. I'm quite afraid of the terrible responses this will draw from my fellow Americans so pardon me if I skip out form here.)

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#314

Post by minikites »

tboyd47 wrote: post #188
bobthechef wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I sympathize with the need to push back on bad management, the situation is a bit like being between a rock (bad management) and a hard place (unions). Tyranny of the few vs. tyranny of the majority or the mob. The latter is worse. It's also kind of a mediocre bandaid for deeper social problems. An employer that can get away with asking you to do unreasonable amounts of work, work ridiculous hours, or achieve i…

That's an amazing quote.

Really?

>The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated.

We wouldn't have any billionaires if this was even remotely true. If having 999 million dollars doesn't satiate you, I submit there is no amount of money that will. We look down on hoarders who fill their house with old newspapers and knickknacks but when it's money hoarding we lionize it.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#315

Post by fastball »

rapsey wrote: post #303
fastball wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but maybe that's why a top-down approach like this is a bad one?

You mean the EU ruling? What is wrong with it?

Regulation always has unintended side-effects.

In this case I don't think the regulation is necessary, which effectively makes it bad by default, because it adds complication and reduces flexibility of both employers and workers.

Slight tangent, but I also think governments start calling everything a "right" at their own peril. That's something I found incredibly refreshing about Andrew Yang's presidential run. Unlike every other progressive in America who has followed EU's lead by saying "we need universal healthcare because it's a human right", his take was "we should have healthcare because a safety net like that will encourage entrepreneurialism and therefore innovation."

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#317

Post by lotsofpulp »

amelius wrote: post #238

Nice, but how are they going to compete against the Chinese?

The US has the same situation in between its own states, and why a single state can't go too far in providing benefits for its people lest it need to raise taxes too much that it causes businesses to decamp.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#318

Post by lotsofpulp »

claudeganon wrote: post #305
lotsofpulp wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every state that has a semblance of worker protections is led by Democrats. They aren’t perfect, but the problem isn’t mostly Democrats, who at the federal level can’t get anything done without support from Republicans, who are far from making worker protections any part of their initiatives. It’s funny how federal government employees got paid parental leave though, but no legislation for non government em…

California is controlled top-to-bottom by Democrats and still has remarkably poor worker protections by the standard of any other developed country and is even worse when you compare things like the state of housing, poverty, and healthcare. They have tremendous latitude to make better conditions for workers and yet somehow this never pans out in California or other "blue" states. At what point do these excuses wear…

How is California supposed to do that if other states don't? Businesses would quickly move to other states if the tax difference became too high.

The only reason California can get away with the worker protections it has is because of its uniquely favorable weather, geography, productive land, and other resources.

No state can offer taxpayer funded healthcare, because then the people receiving more from healthcare than paying in will start to increase and the people paying in more than they receive will start to leave. It's the same problem for pretty much all other minimum standards of living, and the same one that exists between people in cheaper US states complaining about China and Mexico taking all their jobs.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#319

Post by davidgay »

treis wrote: post #204
Hamuko wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. If there's no concept of overtime in most salaried jobs, there's a problem with your country as well. I'm a salaried, full-time employee and I'm paid to work 37.5 hours a week, no more, no less. And the collective agreement for IT services industry (which is what concerns me as a developer)…

And you probably get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of what a developer in the US can make. The reality of the world is that if you're the lead developer for some product you will have times that you need to work off hours. Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday". It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the…

> It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the fan at inconvenient hours and you need to respond. If not, you have to have routine 24/7 coverage which gets really expensive really fast ultimately leading to lower salaries for developers.

The not-uncommon answer to this is an oncall rotation, where you are paid at some fraction of your full-time salary, to respond to such problems.

The fraction likely works out better than 'overtime' pay, as it's for all the time you are oncall, not just when some issue occurs.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#320

Post by woeirua »

makecheck wrote: post #226
vfc1 wrote: post #106

You got to admit that the EU at least has the courage to take some controversial measures in the best interest of their people. I can't see this soon enough, I have family that answer emails in vacation all the time, that get phone calls like its nothing. I know people that connect everyday from home to the office network to work one or two hours (extra) otherwise it's impossible to keep up with the workload. Most ma…

Years ago I saw an executive call up a senior IT manager who was on vacation with his family and instruct him to cut it short and return immediately. Imagine how livid he and his family would have been. I get that people can be “senior” and in charge of important things, etc. but at a certain point if “leaders” do these things they are simply being terrible people and not really “handling” unexpected problems well.

And this is why it's so important to be financially independent. If you have money saved up in this situation you can politely tell your boss, that you won't be coming back from vacation period, and the only remaining question is whether you come back at all after your vacation. He might throw a hissy fit and try to make your life difficult, but you can always walk away if you have enough savings.
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