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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

#71

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,…

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…

> If they throw teachers in jail over not doing their job, the state loses in the long term.

British health workers (nurses, ambulance workers) went on strike during 2022 and 2023. Their union eventually accepted a 5% pay increase - down from their initial 19% demand - which doesn't even begin to cover inflation. Most demands fizzle out into nearly nothing and most unions are by now massive bureaucratic machines, staffed with people more focused on their own interests and careers than on those of their members.

The same pattern can be seen with nurses in Sweden. Salaries aren't high enough, funds aren't allocated, nurses quit their jobs. To find new hires, standards must be lowered.

"The state" no longer cares. That's what decline looks like.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 60k bad? Pretty sure it's the average salary in the entire Europe.

If you get satisfied with a 60k gross salary as an engineer wherever you are in Europe you should maybe question yourself unless you’re full remote in a Bulgarian country side. Cars cost the same everywhere, same goes for flight tickets , electronics, top universities tuition, major food or fashion brands, etc etc.

Looks like you missed rent, healthcare and public transport in your list there.

For anyone wondering how relevant is public transport, in Sydney I couldn't do anything without a car, in Vienna I can't find a good use for one.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#73
post #21

Good luck to them, but why would you want to work for such an awful company anyway? Even in the 3A (or "4A"...) space, there are much better studios, in Europe and elsewhere. Preserve your sanity and quit.

I'm not sure on hard hiring numbers; but I imagine that since Ubisoft is a French company, they have a much larger presence in France than other large studios.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 60k bad? Pretty sure it's the average salary in the entire Europe.

If you get satisfied with a 60k gross salary as an engineer wherever you are in Europe you should maybe question yourself unless you’re full remote in a Bulgarian country side. Cars cost the same everywhere, same goes for flight tickets , electronics, top universities tuition, major food or fashion brands, etc etc.

Cars (especially accounting for total ownership costs), tuition and food definitely do not cost the same everywhere.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#75
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but you’re mistaken. 60k€ in France or Germany is a decent salary. Power cords don’t cost 15€? What are you talking about? I see prices way below 10€

€2 at Aldi, I have no idea what the poster is talking about. €60k is a very decent salary.

Perhaps they mean an Apple cord

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#76
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Most French people believe they still live in the France of the 1990s: a country of abundance with excellent ROI for the amount of taxes paid.

But as you pointed out, other european countries have since caught up and provide the same benefits.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#77
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 60k bad? Pretty sure it's the average salary in the entire Europe.

Average salary isn't an excuse if it's unlivable. It's hard to live on 60K in Europe when a goddamn power cord costs 15 Euro

Where do you live? Switzerland?

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#79

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.

Then move to France or Scandinavia. I'd suggest Norway since they have a huge oil reserve so the country can sustain its current population.

But if you build a successful startup, you have to give up your ownership as having wealth/assets gets heavily taxed. If your startup have a bad financial year, its really frustrating to be forced to take a 2% dividend of your networth, tax 40% of that amount as dividend tax and then pay the remaining 1.1% as wealth tax. That is why everyone with some wealth is now moving to Switzerland.

Re: Ubisoft Employees In France have gone on a Strike

#80

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.

Solidarity? You must live far from actual France and have some romantic young rosy view on events far away. Almost everybody who isn't protesting is pissed off at folks protesting, since they block you from doing basic things in life like going to work, shopping groceries, driving anywhere or flying, taking train, going to gas station, going to hospital (I kid you not, you can be unlucky and literally die to negligence when health care sector goes on strike and nobody would bat an eye too much, and french public health care sector is not in good state currently). Cca half of my colleagues commute daily to work from France, so I have some group of quite opinionated citizens that express their honest opinions loudly outside of French borders.

There are often good causes behind strikes. What they actually do though every single time, is take rest of civilian population as hostages, make their life as miserable as possible for as long as possible, to create pressure on politicians.

See a little flaw in the logic above? You consistently end up in the crowd of hostages that take various pressures from side to side, often in matters unrelated to yours (say massive subsidies to diary farmers should be even more massive, nobody got time to improve efficiency or processes so market gets distorted more and more and local farmers are brutally incompetitive on their own), and you and your family suffers.

US population would not handle such massive things nicely I believe, not with so many guns and gun/freedom culture in general population.

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