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Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

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Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French employees are generelle low paid in cash. however, a big part of the compensation is through labor protection - something that is not worth a lot to a software developer. currently, France had a serious issue with brain drain. software developers move to Germany or the UK to get higher salaries. This gives a situation where all advanced jobs move out while simpler job stay back with really expensive labor prot…

How are social protections for say, losing a job, health emergencies, and retirement? 90% of my drive for more and more money is the fear of long term unemployment and knowing there's nobody to come save me. If that fear didn't exist, I'd probably work for half the price to be honest.

> health emergencies

We have socialized health care, and even private care is like 1% the cost of american healthcare. I got elective surgery without insurance which included full anethesia in a private clinic and they were very sorry because the total would be 600 euros.

> retirement

Public retirement is ~50% of your average lifetime salary though the age was recently raised from 62 to 64 (in the face of massive protests).

> losing a job

Firing is harder to do in the first case, they have to have cause, or the company has to be facing bankruptcy, there's a long notice period. Unemployment is also a decent percentage of your salary and can go on for months.

Frankly on 60k a year, you live well even in a city like Paris, you're not living a life of luxury but that's comfortable upper middle class levels (in Paris).

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be dramatic here so don't read too deeply into the comparison: I'm sure black people weren't willing to go to jail either some 60 years ago. Or worse. Most of the biggest change was achieved with the biggest sacrifice. If they throw teachers in jail over not doing their job, the state loses in the long term. If enough refuse to do it they have to bargain, illegal or not. And it wouldn't take long sinc…

The problem is you have to sacrifice to fight against the move of people that take no risk. It's a very unfair battle.

Indeed. The house holds most of the cards. But it's not risk-free per se. It's just a prisoners dilemma that hasn't had a chance to shift to the worst case scenario of "literally everyone leaves". Probably still a safe bet, but it's only as safe as the people they are gambling with.

Sad part is that it's bad but not necessarily "life or death" for many teachers as of now. But it may be that way if we keep going.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French employees are generelle low paid in cash. however, a big part of the compensation is through labor protection - something that is not worth a lot to a software developer. currently, France had a serious issue with brain drain. software developers move to Germany or the UK to get higher salaries. This gives a situation where all advanced jobs move out while simpler job stay back with really expensive labor prot…

How are social protections for say, losing a job, health emergencies, and retirement? 90% of my drive for more and more money is the fear of long term unemployment and knowing there's nobody to come save me. If that fear didn't exist, I'd probably work for half the price to be honest.

The you are no software developer. As a software developer you have no fear of unemployment.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#64
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It WOULD work, but alas, you don't do it. This is also why the USA has all those anti-strike laws. My mom did it reasonably often as a teacher. The state made it illegal for her to ever strike again. Maybe not being willing to go to jail for refusing to work is why she doesn't do it? It's crazy to me that the law is basically "show up to work for whatever we decide to pay you, or go to jail" (via contempt of court,…

To many Danes (everyone I’ve ever discussed it with) Americans are simply “ridiculous” in the way you keep electing people who hurt you. It’s like you’re in a continuous abusive relationship with your own democracy. My wife and I just had twins, and while it went fine they needed CPAP to help their lungs develop fully because they were born with a c-section. Which put them in the children’s intensive care unit for ar…

I'm American and I don't disagree that America has serious problems, but you should be leery of trying to compare your country with another country, especially if you haven't lived there and have only read about it.

I was a military wife for about two decades and had two children during that time and it cost next to nothing to spend two or three nights in the hospital to give birth and then all outpatient visits for me and my kids were completely free. I was friends for a time with a Canadian woman who used to openly hate on America and one of her criticisms was we have apparently a weirdly high percentage of citizens who have served in the military.

So I sometimes wonder how many American children get born while one of their parents is in service. And I spent years trying to figure out how to explain to other Americans what military life and military compensation is like and I eventually gave up. Civilian jobs have relatively high pay and few benefits. Military jobs have relatively low pay but high benefits and it's an apples to oranges comparison and I know when I was a military wife, anyone who wasn't making a career of it seemed to be trying to have all the kids they planned to ever have before leaving service because it's so cheap to have a kid while in service.

I desperately wish America would fix some of its problems. But I genuinely wonder just how bad it really is when I never see mention of details like that and when I have looked for data on just how many Americans get some portion of their medical care covered as military dependents for some portion of their life, I have been unable to turn up stats. So I don't know what to conclude, honestly.

But if I cannot figure it out as an American, my guess is your opinions amount to prejudice, not informed analysis. And although I know why so many people in the world have opinions about the US -- because the US is very influential, so it impacts them -- I don't run around telling other countries how to fix their social problems and it bugs me that so many foreigners feel they know what is best for us, often without ever having lived here.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#65
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are social protections for say, losing a job, health emergencies, and retirement? 90% of my drive for more and more money is the fear of long term unemployment and knowing there's nobody to come save me. If that fear didn't exist, I'd probably work for half the price to be honest.

> health emergencies We have socialized health care, and even private care is like 1% the cost of american healthcare. I got elective surgery without insurance which included full anethesia in a private clinic and they were very sorry because the total would be 600 euros. > retirement Public retirement is ~50% of your average lifetime salary though the age was recently raised from 62 to 64 (in the face of massive pro…

> We have socialized health care, and even private care is like 1% the cost of american healthcare. I got elective surgery without insurance which included full anethesia in a private clinic and they were very sorry because the total would be 600 euros.

Socialized healthcare is pretty much a given in other similar countries in the EU though, it's the US which is an outlier.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#66
post #12
post #9

French Software Engineers make $60k per year. I'm sure they wonder why and think striking / unionizing is the answer

What sorts of salary should French software engineers be making then? $80k? $100k? $200k?

Based on the current strikes, the main point is less about their current salary and more that they are technically taking pay hits due to Ubisoft not giving raises that keep up with inflation. They are effectively making less money now that they were in 2022.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#67

I'm consistently impressed by French solidarity to just go on a strike until they get their government (or a company in this case) to start treating them fairly. I wish that could work in the UK, but alas, we don't do that here.

The British national motto is literally "well, what are you going to do". I have no idea what it would take for the general population to strike.

We're going through serious strikes at the moment.

Right now, the junior doctors are striking.

Not sure what you mean by general population, but we had major riots about 10 years ago where some police stations got attacked.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#68
People is delusional thinking the world has to be as it is, big companies can do what they want with our earth resources, workers are just competitors in a race to get a economy class seat to paradise, other countries are just unintelligent cheapo workforce and/or enemies, money is the only possible humanity ruler.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#69

I'm consistently impressed by French solidarity to just go on a strike until they get their government (or a company in this case) to start treating them fairly. I wish that could work in the UK, but alas, we don't do that here.

Some people do in the uk, I like this website to have an idea of what's happening in the country: https://www.strikecalendar.co.uk/

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#70
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It WOULD work, but alas, you don't do it. This is also why the USA has all those anti-strike laws. My mom did it reasonably often as a teacher. The state made it illegal for her to ever strike again. Maybe not being willing to go to jail for refusing to work is why she doesn't do it? It's crazy to me that the law is basically "show up to work for whatever we decide to pay you, or go to jail" (via contempt of court,…

To many Danes (everyone I’ve ever discussed it with) Americans are simply “ridiculous” in the way you keep electing people who hurt you. It’s like you’re in a continuous abusive relationship with your own democracy. My wife and I just had twins, and while it went fine they needed CPAP to help their lungs develop fully because they were born with a c-section. Which put them in the children’s intensive care unit for ar…

In Poland you pay ~30% of your salary as income and social taxes.

If employed, woman has free access to public health system, with huge waiting lists, as you mentioned in your case.

When getting pregnant, woman can go into full paid sick leave untill the delivery day. And then there is a maternity leave paid in 80% for a year. And there there is possibility to get unpaid leave for up to 3 more years, while woman keep her employment and access to healthcare as working person.

And then you hear about wealthy western countries when at 4 months woman should either leave the job or the baby. Not surprising such wealthy countries getting old fast.

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