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Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

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Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#431

Post by andrekandre »

galangalalgol wrote: post #295
csydas wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually shocked that so many companies handle performance improvement and coaching so badly. We implemented a coaching system for our support team about a year ago with the explicit purpose that individual coaching does not directly affect KPI, and that as much coaching can and should be done freely without worry of impacting the support team. The system tracks both the person being coached and their team lead w…

I've seen this work well, especially with some flexibility. Had a very dramatic underperformer on a team that sat near me. His lead went down every paperwork rabbit hole to get him fired, and the improvement plan was the last step. He simply couldn't knock out a simple backlog item without a lot of help. I'm not sure how he graduated with a degree. But the improvement plan had him doing some ops work as well as devel…

thats a really cool story, and i think that may be true of a lot of oeople who end up fired: they just didn't find (or weren't placed in) a position where they can shine with their talents... maybe some places are too quick to fire...

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#432

Post by astrange »

unity1001 wrote: post #423
astrange wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Japanese economy is healthy relative to the rest of the world but it's true that Japanese people are too poor and are not getting better fast enough. But this is mostly because "sacrificing and hardworking" was a dumb thing to set up the country to be. They were worried about people having too much free time so set up a super unproductive structure where every man was in the office 12 hours a day, gets micromanag…

> The Japanese economy is healthy relative to the rest of the world It is frozen at the exact size and breadth that US wanted to freeze it. Its a literal economic colony. > But this is mostly because "sacrificing and hardworking" was a dumb thing to set up the country to be It worked until 1991. I very much recommedn reading about the Plaza Accords.

Impressive you think the US can influence other countries that long. We can't even stop Saudi Arabia from raising gas prices whenever they want to annoy us.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#433

Post by s1artibartfast »

angry_octet wrote: post #430
s1artibartfast wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He already sued and won in jurisdiction B. The money is in jurisdiction A. No banks and police in jurisdiction A will honor a legal document from jurisdiction B. This leaves you to the situation described above. The best option is to take the decision from jurisdiction B into a new court proceeding and jurisdiction A and ask them to honor it with a local court order in A. They may or they may not. Even within the Uni…

To inject some expertise: "Enforcement of Judgments in the United States: Overview" https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/w-034-2858

Thank you! this largely agrees with the link I posted 7 hours ago.

Particularly relevant, is that if you want to collect in the US, you have to go to the courts in the US and show them the foreign judgment. There are many circumstances where these are not accepted.

>Juppor is talking about suing in Florida courts. Florida is absolutely at will. He may be able to sue to collect a foreign court judgement instead

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#434

Post by michalu »

gnicholas wrote: post #378
CameronNemo wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way more expensive legal fees though, and a much slower "justice" system. In the Netherlands court, the legal fees were sub 1k, and the decision happened less than 2 months from the filing.

How can the legal fees be less than a thousand dollars? It would take at least a few hours to research the law and write a brief, let alone prepare for court and make an appearance. Even if a lawyer was paid only $150/hr, it seems hard to come in under $1k. Regardless, it would certainly be much more expensive in the US, where decent lawyers are hundreds or thousands an hour.

Europe doesn't have case law, the law is written and codified so once you finish law school you have all the laws memorized. The judge can only apply specific paragraph of the law not create new ones. 1k is cheap yes, 5k would in such case be more reasonable to expect if you're in a similar situation if you go with a lawyer (depending on firm and location i.e. lawyer in big city vs provincial town)

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#435

Post by RalfWausE »

formerly_proven wrote: post #67
belter wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus cue in the shock of US Employees, when they realize his court costs to sue his employer were less than 500 dollars.

This isn't harmonized across the EU though, e.g. in German labor courts each side pays their own fees and lawyers regardless of outcome. So even a completely illegal action by your employer can/will still cost you hundreds to thousands of euros when you go and fight it. (The flip side is you don't have to pay for a team of expensive corpo-lawyers in case you loose)

Most people in germany (at least the ones with common sense) have a "Arbeitsrechtsschutz", a insurance which covers legal fees, a lawyer and so on. As this insurance is very cheap (i pay around 30 Euros a month) i can only recommend this for anyone working in germany.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#436

Post by Oletros »

phpisthebest wrote: post #141
bbbobbb wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry what extra work? you know the company is able to hire more people right?

You know companies have budgets right? you can not just "hire more people" and remain profitable, no profit no company. Companies are not charities created to employ people. So sure if only 1 person is off on leave most likely another person could be hired But 5 years of protected leave..... What percentage of the work force is going to be out on that? Also since it is very hard to terminate someone in the EU, what h…

> Parental leave should be measured in weeks, not years. If you want to be a stay at home parent for years, leave the work force and then return...,.

And is for things like this that libertarians shouldn't make laws

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#437

Post by raxxorraxor »

ianai wrote: post #72

Unfortunately this is well within corporate “go away” money. They’ll gladly dish over 75k to get a threat off their books. It’s the corporate equivalent to stuffing 20 bucks in your pocket in case you’re held up while out on a run and don’t carry your wallet. Add a zero to make it 750k if you want corporations to think about it deeper.

I think for devs the information that the employer watches your every move is pretty important. Portals like glassdoor should introduce a new metric about bossware.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#438

Post by watwut »

unity1001 wrote: post #255
watwut wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. EU countries have more stakes in that conflict considering some of them would be next to be attacked if Russia won in Ukraine. The Russia is an actual threat for EU countries. Which is why the biggest hawks in that conflict are EU countries.

No they aren't. Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal are staying away from it as much as possible. Many central European countries, the same. This is an Anglosaxon + Germanic project, with the addition of Poland. Its their war. ... There can be no bigger enemy than the country that blew up European pipelines to sink European industry. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-09/european-...

You will be shocked to find out that Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia are all EU countries. All are full members actually - no less then Italy or France.

And yes, Italy is rather pro-Russia.

And you are wrong in other way too - Germany does everything possible to not deliver arms to Ukraine. They are tempted by that Russian money and did not get off the imperial against east thinking entirely.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#439

Post by badpun »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #419
astrange wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firemen mostly don't fight fires. We've decided to send them out on every ambulance call just in case, so they do have a lot of work, but it's not clear if they're adding anything or if it's busywork. (Which isn’t to say we should make them work less, but we should get them smaller trucks like other countries have.)

That's not the way it is everywhere. I'm a volunteer firefighter and I'd say at least 19 times out of 20 my calls are for a fire. The other occasions would be traffic control at an accident or assisting EMTs with lifting a person.

Obviously depends on location, but normally only state-funded firefighters are performing the prevention duties (and have authority to fine people and companies).

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#440

Post by em-bee »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #323
phpisthebest wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is what you identify as problems the market (thus people) do not agree are problems For example you decry the " inefficient space usage " of modern housing, and suburbs, however many people clearly prefer to have single family structures on plots of land over living in densely populated area's I am one of those people, I would never choose to voluntary live in a dense city like NYC or even LA I can t…

What government is trying to force more density? Please let me know so I can move there. The closest I can think of is Tokyo, where the zoning laws are basically set by the national government. In the USA, the local landed gentry can easily block any new development/increase in density, which is a big part of the reason we have so much sprawl*. In Japan, all you can do is shake your fist and write an angry letter to…

china's cities are growing and creating more density. i don't know if that is forced though, or simply demand from people who prefer to live in the cities because there are more opportunities there.

but look at any city with a growing population.

vienna for example is growing rapidly in the last two decades, after a slow decline of its population for almost a century, and it's interesting how the city addresses that growth with sufficiently dense housing. a whole new suburb is being built on a green field (literally) for 25,000 people and 20,000 jobs (not a bedroom community where everyone is commuting into the city), and that addresses only a fraction of the growth so elsewhere the city must be growing in density too.

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