
Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business - velik_m
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190206-swedens-surprising-rule-for-time-off
======
mrmekon
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 leave, if they had already been thinking about it).

Even when they aren't required to grant it, larger Swedish companies will
often give you unpaid leave if you just ask. 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.

Sweden has an _enormous_ market of consultancies compared to the U.S. for
filling these temporary gaps. Obviously consultants are expensive and not
trained on your projects, so it's not the same as a long-time employee, but it
gives options to "control the bleeding."

~~~
maxsilver
> 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.

~~~
lkrubner
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. In a strong economy, the
percentage of national income going to workers would increase, as it did from
1935 to 1973.

~~~
CalRobert
Additionally, in 1973, there was a good chance you had a partner who could
stay at home to watch the kid(s). Now you have both people working whether you
like it or not, because you're competing with two-income households for
housing.

Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing, but
making it (on average) necessary for two people to work to afford a home when
before it took one is a bad thing.

~~~
antisthenes
> Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing

Any reason you used the term _servitude_ which implies a negative connotation,
when many women were happy with that arrangement? It also implies none of the
women received positive utility from staying at home with the kids and it was
always a chore, which seems a little ridiculous.

We should be embracing every opportunity for more personal involvement with
our children and family, not calling it servitude. It does all families, past,
present and future, a huge disservice.

~~~
rcxdude
the term presumably is used because at that point it was not a choice. Many
women may have been happy with it, but there was scant alternative for those
who were not.

~~~
CalRobert
It depends on a lot on where you were, but there are places that literally
fired women when they got married. [https://www.irishcentral.com/news/how-
things-have-changed-te...](https://www.irishcentral.com/news/how-things-have-
changed-ten-things-that-irish-women-could-not-do-in-1970s-183526621-237593131)

This has changed, but it reveals a lot. It also might relate to why it's so
hard to find teachers for the price government is accustomed to paying - if
you were a well-educated woman in the 1950's you had far fewer options (aka
bargaining power) than you do today, and teaching was likely to be one of the
few options with a bit of prestige and mental stimulation available to you.

It's true that women weren't FORCED to not work, but to suggest that they
didn't face a strong disadvantage is disingenuous. Hell, it's still a rampant
problem - how many tech bros get off an interview and then say "ah but she's
32, she'll want to take maternity soon". This is a good reason for making
maternity and paternity leave equal, incidentally...

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/podcasts/the-
daily/pregna...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/podcasts/the-
daily/pregnancy-discrimination.html)

Though for all that, my wife stays home with our kid by choice. She went back
to work when our daughter was 6 months old, and after six months of barely
seeing her outside of the weekends she just couldn't bear it (I didn't much
like it either). The only reason we can do that is because I have a good
paying job in tech making something over the 90th percentile of incomes in my
country. I wish other people had that choice. Hell, I wish I had that choice.
But few do.

------
INTPenis
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 saw it as a sort of betrayal of your co-workers and duties.

And when your employer is already struggling, quietly, to find competent
personnel, it really felt like a kick in the gut to lose one of the most
competent resources in that team.

Of course that person came back and has always performed at a decent level.

Now I'm older and more mature, I have my own company, so I'm much more
accepting of the privilege to take a break from my employer to develop my own
business.

Unfortunately, and the article states this, there is an issue being in direct
competition with your employer. Mine is a consultancy firm which means they do
almost anything. They can purchase a solution from someone and re-sell it as
their own. So it's very hard for me to start an IT business that does not
compete with them.

It's a sword of damocles dangling over me right now, because I haven't
revealed to my manager what I'm doing in my own free time yet. All I know for
sure is that I haven't signed any contract preventing me from running my own
business and there is a clause in the collective bargaining contract that
states that I can't use any company resources, which is obvious.

~~~
timc3
If you are in IT in Sweden you might want legal advice to check this out.
Anything that you build outside of work might be owned by your employer by
default.

~~~
progre
I thought that's for patentable stuff. Regular software should be owned by the
creator if its created outside of work.

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adetrest
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.

~~~
maxxxxx
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?

~~~
wjjdjw
So would you assume you can work 40 hr and trade secrets from your employer as
a side hustle, just because it's not happening within the work time?

~~~
deogeo
Are those contract clauses limited to trade secrets?

~~~
maxxxxx
They often are not limited. In essence the company claims it owns all your
creative output while you are employed.

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ubermonkey
This is a great idea, honestly, for the economy at large. If more people start
more companies, we're probably all better off even if they don't all survive.

If an American political party were TRULY pro-business and pro-entrepreneur,
they'd get behind policies like this. They'd also support divorcing health
care from employment, because holy COW how many folks would start a new
venture IF ONLY they could afford private market insurance?

~~~
devonkim
Milton Friedman was also a staunch supporter of social safety nets as well as
free markets. Anyone that supports free markets and Friedman’s ideas should
try to understand why he supported them together ardently. I consider myself
both a supporter of actually free markets along with very generous safety nets
for the non-winners of such an aggressive business climate. Otherwise, we
quickly approach a literal meat grinder of humans and loss of human potential
is unfortunate no matter what the economic system.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html)

~~~
Mirioron
But Negative Income Tax has actually been tried and it didn't produce quite
the results that people were hoping for.

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dhh2106
>For the last two decades, full-time workers with permanent jobs have had the
right to take a six-month leave of absence to launch a company (or
alternatively, to study or to look after a relative).

These are unpaid leaves, right?

I think it's a great idea, particularly for a business of a certain size. I
know many of my peers leave their jobs because they are looking for an
extended break. If they didn't have to leave, it could be a win for both
employees and employers.

~~~
petercooper
_These are unpaid leaves, right?_

Yes.

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AltruisticGap
In Belgium we have a "career break". 6 months, only condition is to be
employed in the company for one year if I recall correctly. Employer can not
refuse.

You also get paid basic allocations similar to unemployment, unlike this
system.

You only get it once though.

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mnm1
What's wrong with the threat of starvation and homelessness as a motivator for
innovation? Real innovators don't sleep, never take a day off, and work 26
hours a day. In America we know how to motivate people: threaten their
livelihood by having virtually no safety net, no holidays, no health
insurance, and no hope to go along with all of that. That's what drives real
innovators, unlike these wussy European ones who can't even start a business
without assurance that they'll have a job to go back to if it fails.
Unnecessary crutches. We don't even have assurance a doctor will save your
life if you get hit by a car on your way to work and they want reassurances
about their job. Clearly their system is inferior. Our innovators work through
pain. Repetitive stress injuries from typing and psychotic episodes from lack
of sleep only make them stronger. This is what it takes to be number one in
surveillance, ads, killing, and other shit no decent person wants to excel in.
</s>

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52-6F-62
I think this is brilliant, but I’m interested to hear criticisms or arguments
against it.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
Well, the biggest argument against it will be a need to find and train a
temporary replacement for the person. For many positions finding and training
alone may take longer than that.

And then what do you do with the replacement once the original guy is back?

Overall though, I would agree that benefits overweight potential problems.

~~~
52-6F-62
I imagine the situation would be quite similar to how we handle
maternity/paternity leave here in Canada, and it's rarely a problem.

Once its an accepted pattern, there are fewer surprises, and most people are
understanding.

~~~
Tor3
Exactly. It was briefly mentioned in the article too. Sweden already has a
mature maternity/paternity system in place, and companies handle those just
fine (in most cases, if they're doing any kind of planning and thinking). Thus
they can handle these kinds of leaves as well - it's minor when you compare to
the number of maternity/paternity leaves, there's much more of the latter. And
(as it was mentioned in the article), it _is_ possible to say 'no' to the
leave if the employee's position is crucial (presumably there are definitions
for what the actually means). Or hold it off for some time. Unlike with
maternity/paternity leaves.

I wish there was something like this in my country as well.

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alltakendamned
Can anyone tell me what this is called in Swedish ?

~~~
moogly
Tjänstledighet

