this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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That's what I don't understand. Europe is capitalist like the US, never the less, such cruelty and greed from the employer are simply unheard of.
They had guillotines.
We need more of that shit to keep the assholes in line.
Europe didn't buy the crap sold by 'economist' witch doctors like Milton Friedman and Alan Greedspan. At least, they didn't buy it as much.
The US treats capitalism as a religious absolute. The rest of the world regards the US as a fairly extreme example of laissez-faire capitalism.
Lots of True Believers really thought that if you didn't regulate anything and just let companies become more and more powerful, somehow the world would be a better place for it.
Check out the Chicago School of Economics if you want to know what really has brought us to this point. Hugely influential and hugely misguided, but it made a lot of men very rich and powerful so it was seen as a good thing 🤦
EDIT: Apologies to Witch Doctors everywhere.
Witch doctor here, I'm offended.
/s
As well you should be, sir! :)
Unions are much stronger in Europe. In the US they're a lot more limited in what they can do, if a strike would be too disruptive, which is, you know, the whole fucking point of a strike, the government can just forbid it.
That conversation gave me such a headache around the rail strike.
"They need sick days and proper pay"
"I recognize that"
"that's why they're on strike"
"well if they're allowed to strike the economy shuts down"
"if they're so important they should probably get fair pay and benefits shouldn't they?"
"Well yeah"
"that's why they're on strike"
"well if they're allowed to strike the economy shuts down"
🙄
Fuck the economy. The fact that capitalist society runs on nothing but greed and the desire for infinite growth is an issue, not the economy being "bad"
What I hate is the only measure of "the economy" is the stock market.
The stock market measures nothing but the theft of economic value. Pick any other metric and it's FUUUUUCKED
That's why what we really need is for unions themselves to unionize to threaten a general strike. It's an absolute last resort as it would be a complete economic killswitch, but it's a threat that can't be ignored.
It drives me crazy how people almost always fail to see the other answer.
"well if they don't get sick days and proper pay the economy shuts down"
Like, you're not even having a debate about which framing makes the most sense, they just don't see one of them.
What would happen in Europe in this case? Infinite paid leave ?
In Latvia 9 days are payed by employer. Then you officially can have up to 26 weeks payed by government, or extended up to 52 weeks, but that needa a docotrs commision.
However, in case of a sick child it gets trickier, the official longest sick leave in one go you can have is 21 days for that (if you need to be treated at a hospital, 14 at home), all payed by the government. But you can probably just close after 21 and open a new one. You can for sure close, have one day of work and reopen, this has happened to me before.
In India, in such a case we'd typically allow infinite "work from home" leave, assigning the kind of work that he could do without time crunches etc, the medical insurance for employees typically cover families too but if required we'd provide financial support above the insurance to a decent extent but not unlimited for the medical care of the daughter, and unless the guy was a massive cunt, possibly even then, his peers would voluntarily help out sometimes with babysitting or odd jobs etc if he was a single dad. This is all if it was a private business.
With poetic exaggeration -if it was a government job, the guy already has infinite leaves because our government employees just don't work anyway, unless he does something horrendous like a murder he won't be fired and he'll have free but not great medical services available.
I'm honestly having a hard time believing this.
What "work from home" kind of work without time crunches can teachers do? How many teachers work for private businesses?
How many government employed teachers just don't do any work - to the extent no one would notice if they didn't show up?
In Australia, sure in a small mum and dad type business the guy wouldn't be fired, but most businesses couldn't actually afford to pay the guy to take extended personal leave. Most businesses would do their best to give the guy unlimited unpaid leave, but that's not a given. People would usually take personal income protection insurance to cover this type of thing.
I'm just not sure what people really expect in this type of situation. For a small or medium business infinite paid leave just isn't viable.
Even if work from home was possible it's not necessarily appropriate here. The guy wants to spend time with his daughter. Working from home is not spending time with your daughter, that would be pretending to work from home.