Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

Post by 2019ideas » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #15

mrmekon wrote: post #13

Since maternity and paternity leave are frequently more than 6 months long, employees temporarily leaving for a big chunk of the year is just a fact of doing business here. Granting unpaid leave to go try your own thing for a while is, from the employer's perspective, not any different. Some people never come back, most people do. The same is true for parental leave (many quit their jobs towards the end of their leav…

> The fear is that otherwise you will quit. Hiring is hard here, so it's better to have a promise of someone coming back in 6 months than a job opening that can take 12 months to fill. This is what a strong economy actually looks like. It's hard (in my experience) to get Americans to understand this, because our economy here has been so bad for so long, most people here have never experienced anything like this.

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

adetrest wrote: post #6

Meanwhile, in the US and Canada, you are forced to sign clauses that gives your employer full ownership of anything you invent ever while employed and you have to ask your ~parents~ employer if you could please do something else on the side. Good for Sweden, these feodal rules are dragging everyone down.

Post by LunaSea » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #9

INTPenis wrote: post #8

I'm an anonymous coward on here so I can give another perspective. My employer struggles to find skilled people and when one guy on my team suddenly disappeared for 6 months it was definitely felt. Before that I hadn't really grasped the idea yet. Even though I've lived in Sweden since I was a child. I just couldn't accept that you can duck out of your job for several months and then come back as if nothing happened.…

I did this and the alternative was me quitting the job completely. I don't think that would have been much better for the company.

Post by wjjdjw » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #23

adetrest wrote: post #6

Meanwhile, in the US and Canada, you are forced to sign clauses that gives your employer full ownership of anything you invent ever while employed and you have to ask your ~parents~ employer if you could please do something else on the side. Good for Sweden, these feodal rules are dragging everyone down.

When I first learned about this type of contract I couldn’t even believe the concept. How can anybody think it’s ok that a company can claim and kind of ownership over things an employee does in his free time? I have signed up for 40 hours a week and not for being fully owned by the company. What happens if you work another job and invent things there? Do the companies own each other’s stuff?

Post by jhoechtl » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #19

maxsilver wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fear is that otherwise you will quit. Hiring is hard here, so it's better to have a promise of someone coming back in 6 months than a job opening that can take 12 months to fill. This is what a strong economy actually looks like. It's hard (in my experience) to get Americans to understand this, because our economy here has been so bad for so long, most people here have never experienced anything like this.

Exactly. Male real wages have been stagnant since 1973, and that's without considering the situation around health care, where costs have risen much faster than general inflation. Counting health care, male real wages have declined noticeably since 1973. Meanwhile, returns to capital have grown dramatically. This is precisely what you would expect in a weak economy, where the workers necessarily lack bargaining power…