
U.S. Ranked Worst for Workers’ Rights Among Major Economies - paulpauper
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-18/u-s-ranked-worst-for-workers-rights-among-major-economies
======
socialdemocrat
Does not surprise me. As a Norwegian I have experienced working for smaller
companies getting bought up by US multinationals in many occasions.

The new American bosses tend to be surprised that employees have rights.

I remember they went through their employee handbook covering the rules we
should follow.

Some of the rules they had on the books which was illegal in Norway:

1\. Ban talking about politics and religion at work. Illegal in Norway as
freedom of speech is a protected by government.

2\. Drug tests of employees. Also illegal unless you operate heavy and
dangerous equipment and have been given special permission by government to do
such tests.

3\. Criminal background checks. Also illegal unless you work with say children
or in the military.

Of course we also kept hearing stories about how our colleagues in the US
offices got treated. Not very nice. People got fired on the spot and kicked
out.

In Norway you got to give a 2-3 month notice. You cannot suddenly spring on
people “you are fired!”

And the reason for firing has to be legitimate. Insubordination e.g. isn’t a
valid reason to be fired in Scandinavia. You have to be clearly neglectful of
your job, or there has to be economic hard times.

Hence you don’t have to be worried about getting fired for say pissing off
your boss as long as you are doing a decent job.

~~~
JaceLightning
> Ban talking about politics and religion at work. Illegal in Norway as
> freedom of speech is a protected by government.

I'm all for freedom of speech, but there are certain policies that make me
uncomfortable. Like talking about sex should be freedom of speech, but is
taboo in the workplace.

It's all about protecting everyone's rights to feel comfortable (by banning
topics that enrage people.).

> Criminal background checks.

This is common practice as people don't want to hire workers who will steal or
cause other issues.

What's wrong with that?

> People got fired on the spot and kicked out.

Sure, that's pro worker, but not pro business. If someone isn't doing their
job, they gotta go. Not 2-3 months. Now.

~~~
pepe56
You seem to underestimate the level of productivity and willingness to bring
the company forward, that comes from a good worker/business relationship. And
a good relationship requires good management and trust from both sides.

I would try to explain that in more detail, but I feel like your opinion is
already very much set in stone.

------
chapium
Strange not including China as a major economy. I thought they were huge!

~~~
lapcatsoftware
It's a badly written article and headline. The US was ranked worst among the
G7, a very specific group of countries.

~~~
H8crilA
Yeah, basically among the first-world countries. Which the US probably is no
more.

~~~
dangus
In my opinion, the US is basically two countries due to the inequality.

For professionals, it’s possibly the best place to live in the world.

For the working class, you’re better off elsewhere.

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Aunche
This is going to catch a lot of flak because it's a rather cynical
observation. It's interesting that almost all the best countries for workers
rights on the map have stagnant GDPs in the past decade outside of Uruguay and
Ireland.

~~~
ornornor
Yet another hint we shouldn’t consider GDP to be the benchmark for economies.

------
logicchains
Interestingly it's also ranked one of the highest for average wages:
[https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/average-
wages.htm](https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/average-wages.htm) .

~~~
socialdemocrat
That is a bullshit measure. That is an arithmetic average pulled up by the
excessive compensation to the 1% in America.

Look at e.g. the wage of a McDonalds worker in the US and it is among the
lowest in the west.

I think e.g. in Norway you make 3-4x what a US McDonalds worker makes.

It also does not take into account that US workers have almost no vacation and
long work days.

US workers don’t have they high hourly wage. They just work their ass off
while Europeans are at the beach enjoying life with their family.

Ok, a simplification but life is not great for American workers and they ought
to demand better treatment.

~~~
koheripbal
You are combating one extreme with another. 1% vs McDonalds workers.

Look at the middle 90% - they are the highest paid in the world with a record
low 4% unemployment rate (covid-excluding).

THIS is why worker protections are not priority. Employment mobility in the
US, combined with the highest salaries makes them almost useless.

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skee0083
America is a third world country with iphones.

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ornornor
[https://outline.com/4EDx3n](https://outline.com/4EDx3n)

------
whb07
While at the same time this is the real headline “U.S ranked first as country
most desired to immigrate to among all countries”.

Conversely: “Highly paid tech workers in the US believe Marxism will do
wonders for the average person”

~~~
cryptica
>> U.S ranked first as country most desired to immigrate to among all
countries”

This is because US has very good marketing and most of the numbers are
deceptive. I think if you ask typical US immigrants how the reality
corresponds with their prior expectations, I think the theme will be
disappointment.

Huge US salaries sound very attractive to people from other countries, but I
think that when they actually arrive on the ground and they realize how high
the costs of living are (especially rents), and they realize that they have
almost 0 negotiating power due to visa requirements, the salaries don't look
so good anymore.

The same can be said about big cities in any developed country. People leave
small towns in droves to live in big cities with big salaries but it's only
when they arrive there physically that they understand how terrible a deal it
actually is. A person who lives in a small or medium-sized town is able to buy
multiple houses with land on a small salary and even rent them out to others
for profit. In big cities, a typical highly paid worker can barely afford a
single shoebox-sized apartment for themselves.

I've worked as a software developer all over the world (Australia, Russia, The
Netherlands, UK, Germany) and I worked remotely for a US company for 1 year
and have spoken with hundreds of people about this so I should have a pretty
good idea of how it works.

~~~
logicchains
>I think if you ask typical US immigrants how the reality corresponds with
their prior expectations, I think the theme will be disappointment.

Do you have any numbers on what percentage return home?

~~~
spamizbad
One paper showed about 1/3rd. Source:
[https://www.pnas.org/content/116/1/116/tab-figures-
data](https://www.pnas.org/content/116/1/116/tab-figures-data)

~~~
NoOneNew
Yea, that paper is trying to prove their novel way of estimating emigration
flow. I couldn't find anywhere that their numbers were proven with hard
reported numbers.

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reedwolf
US needs to emulate more worker-friendly nations like South Korea and Japan.

~~~
nix23
>South Korea

Wow you Sir are the blindest of the blinds...really South Korea and Japan???

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea)

[http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190501000216](http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190501000216)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi)

~~~
fiblye
He was clearly joking, but Japan’s suicide rates have dropped. Meanwhile
countless Americans are dropping out of life, overdosing on drugs, and their
deaths are counted as a separate statistic. There were about 46,000 suicides
in America in 2016 and 70,000 drug overdose deaths in 2017.[1] Looking at
rates of unemployment, depression, and other problems, I doubt the
overwhelming majority of those are completely accidental. If someone were to
close their eyes and slam the gas pedal and accept whatever happens, we’d rule
that a suicide, but we try saying drug overdoses are just accidents. It’s time
to take it seriously and recognize that something in life is driving people to
accept the risks of dangerous drugs. Including them in the statistic would be
enough to push the American suicide rate to about double Japan’s.

But to focus on the actual topic, most of the problem in Japan is social
pressure. Workers have actual legal rights. Employers are required to offer
vacation time and workers can’t be fired without good reason. It’s actually
incredibly difficult to fire someone.

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/prescription-drug-
overdo...](https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/prescription-drug-
overdose/index.html)

~~~
adventured
> Including them in the statistic enough to push the American suicide rate to
> about double Japan’s.

Including all drug overdoses in suicides would be a very far overreaching
fabrication requiring knowledge that you can never possess about the person
that died (you have to know their state of mind and intent at the time of
overdose). It also does a disservice to the aspect of how extraordinarily
dangerous opioid drug addiction is and how easy it is to overdose by accident
(especially if fentanyl is involved).

If we're going to play that game, then you have to use that god-like power to
remove all suicides that didn't really mean to do it and all accidental drug
overdoses.

Magically the number just dropped by 2/3.

Suicide is defined by a successful attempt to kill one's self. The fact is you
have no idea what the intent of all the people that overdose on drugs is, so
conflating them is plainly incorrect.

------
whiddershins
I hate to say it but, at this point this kinda stuff comes across as anti-
American propaganda to me.

It’s always an assertion that the U.S. is terrible on some metric that upon
further digging was measured in some arbitrary way to get the desired
conclusion.

Here’s the thing: living in the United States, for a significant percentage of
the population, is pretty awesome.

For people not within that group, maybe it is easy to believe that the U.S. is
dystopian.

But IMO the solution might really be to keep working at extending the awesome
to the rest of the people. Not be disingenuous about the awesome, that makes
people want to tear everything down.

~~~
whb07
The poorest states in US have higher wealth than the GDP/capita of say UK and
other western EU countries.

What does that tell you?

~~~
stormdennis
People in the UK don't live in trailer parks

~~~
whiddershins
What is wrong with a trailer park. I’ve lived in a trailer park.

Is this just a random classist dig? Or are you under the impression that
trailer parks are an unmitigated hell?

Some people in the U.K. do live in public housing, don’t know what it’s like,
perhaps it is way nicer than a trailer park. But I don’t know, do you?

~~~
stormdennis
Maybe the perception is different but to me living in a caravan however big
feels like one step above living in a motel which seems to be another thing
that hand to mouth Americans have to put up with. You'd think that in a
country as big and rich as America that workers could afford a home.

~~~
dangus
"Trailers" in trailer parks are not portable like a caravan or recreational
vehicle.

They are full modular homes that are delivered by truck, yes, so they're
initially _on a trailer_. But once they are "installed" they are full homes.
They can't be moved on a whim, it would cost thousands of dollars to relocate
a trailer home.

In other words, it's just a factory-built home that's delivered via truck in
one piece.

Think of like a nice three bedroom apartment, that's what a brand new mobile
home would get you. You can also get doublewides that are delivered on two
trailers and put together into one home. Here's an example:

[https://www.redmanhomesofindiana.com/home-plans-
photos/advan...](https://www.redmanhomesofindiana.com/home-plans-
photos/advantage-1680-265)

Mobile homes can be built on an owned plot of land, or on rented space
("trailer parks").

Mobile homes may be one of the best values in America in terms of comfortable,
detached living at a low cost. The idea that people in mobile homes live in
squalor seems to me to be somewhat discriminatory.

~~~
stormdennis
Fair enough, I still don't like the sound of them one little bit though. No
one in this country would consider one of those a house though, however well
appointed they are. The way people living in them are portrayed on TV/film
doesn't help either though.

