As a Danish employer, it's easier to just join a collective agreement which is vetted by the lawyers specialized in employment law of both the employer's and labour unions, and use industry standard contracts, than to do individual negotiations with every employee while running the risk of negotiating a deal which doesn't hold up in the court of law.
Collective agreements save enormous amounts of administrative time and legal headaches for employers.
Yes, the employer's have their own unions.
What really sets the Danish labour market apart from the rest of the Nordics, is how much easier it is to let employee's go when there's good reason or fire them when necessary.
” What really sets the Danish labour market apart from the rest of the Nordics, is how much easier it is to let employee's go when there's good reason or fire them when necessary.”
Thanks for sharing this, I had no idea. In Finland it’s pretty much impossible to fire someone unless they spend 100% of their time trying to destroy the company they work for.
Finnish jobs typically have a trial period like six months. It's easy to not continue from that to permanent employment / I've heard that happen in IT business. People are also regularly fired for basically company financial reasons. So I would not say parent poster is strictly correct.
If it's like in Germany, you can reduce your staff for economic reasons - however there are rules to follow: if the choice is between a junior dev you hired last year or another who has been with the company for 10 years, you'll have to let the junior dev go first...
3-6 month trial/probation is fairly common. While it does help both sides familiarise with each other, it can't prevent a conflict in the future.
I've dealt with long time (15 years) employees suddenly or gradually going completely nuts - refusing to perform any meaningful task, accusing others of abuse and just playing dirty for months, sometimes years.
It's no fun, I tell you what!
6 months trials are useful but to a point
Denmark is 3 months probation, where you can fire with 1 day notice. You can fire people for underperforming, but you have to warn them first, and tell them what they need to change.
Letting people go after a probation review is probably more likely to result in changing the hiring process, rather than treating it as some kind of initial warranty period.
You don't want to invest in hiring and onboarding someone if you're outright saying they might not make it beyond 3/6 months.
> how much easier it is to let employee's go when there's good reason or fire them when necessary.
Like what are the barriers for this, normally? In Germany there's the so called "fristlose Kündigung" where you can immediately be fired when you steal or something alike.
If you break the contract you signed when being employed you can be fired with immediate effect. Other than that you can always be fired without any reason, but you have some period where you will stay in employment. Its different from profession to profession. But one month, rising to three months with seniority, is normal.
Usually you can also be fired at will the first month of your employment.
Writing that you can always be fired without any reason is not entirely correct.
For anyone who's covered by "funktionærloven" (a law that covers pretty much all white collar employees who's not hired under a collective bargain), the employer can only terminate without cause in the first twelve months of employment.
Since an employee has a 3 month notice period after 6 months of employment, this means that after 9 months (3 months notice makes the employment longer than 12 months) the employer needs to provide reasonable cause for termination.
You are right of cause. I wrote "without any reason" bcs the reasonable cause for termination can be very loose. Bad fit, competence not needed etc. are enough. Unless the true reason is an illegal one like pregnancy and so on.
Generally an employee must have received at least one written warning before termination with a description of what they need to change and how. After that the employee needs to have enough time to make those adjustments before an employer can terminate
This is of course very dependent on what the warning is about. If an employee is showing up hours too late and is asked to be at the office on time, then an employer is (for the most part) allowed to fire them if they show up late the following day
If on the other hand the warning is about something like performance, then the employee has to have time to actually "perform" before they can be terminated
Anecdotally I've noticed an increasing amount of my colleagues who do not step up for themselves when employers break these agreements
This has emboldened some companies to be a bit too creative with their interpretation of the law because they think they can get away with it, so the type of "cause" you're describing definitely happens more than it should
> Anecdotally I've noticed an increasing amount of my colleagues who do not step up for themselves when employers break these agreements
Which is a good reason to join a union (IDA).
Personally, I've seen American companies both in and outside Denmark spend a lot more effort than necessary to fire someone.
Basically, because everybody is afraid of getting sued -- which is a great pretext for creating a healthy work environment :)
It's more or less the same. The employer is obligated to giving a truthful and sensible reason for the dismissal in writing, the employee has no such obligation. The union can only object and demand compensation if the employer is lying or the grounds for dismissal are unreasonable.
Also, Denmark has public salary insurance backed by the state, so in case the employer goes bankrupt, all back wages will still be paid as if the employees were just dismissed. Overtime, vacation and severance packages will not be lost by the employees, giving them more security and time to relocate to other jobs.
But eg. in Sweden the dismissal process can be extremely difficult and complicated. As a consultant in a Swedish corporation I experienced the crazy consequences of extreme union protectionism of employee rights.
In one case, a worker was fired because he was caught sleeping on the night shift, while he should have been keeping an eye on a multi-million dollar food processing machinery, making ingredients all night long - ingredients which has to be produced within strict food safety tolerances.
The union blocked his firing, so the department boss let him go after a few month, giving lack of work as the reason.
When the boss of the department finally had waited long enough, and went looking for another employee with the same qualification in the small towns near the factory, the union representatives at the factory demanded that the boss re-hired the Mr. Sleepy, because he was the last one to be let go, and as such had first priority for being re-hired.
Also, I was informed of a factory of domestic appliances being shut down and moved some 300 km away, because the top brass was annoyed by the grey haired middle management at the site, their obstructionism and resistance to change, backed by the manager's union. The C-suites figured that they could easily replace the employees, but the middle management wouldn't tag along, sell their houses, etc. The union was told it was a cost cutting exercise, and all employees would be offered their old jobs back at the new location if they were willing to relocate. The real reason for the exercise was actually the elimination of the useless middle management layer and getting free hands to rebuild the organisation.
If I am not mistaken, when an employer let people go they should also pay what 3 months of full paycheck? It is easier to let people go, but also expensive.
Depends on how long they have been employed. Been working 5 months, its only 1 month, 2 years and 9 months, its 3 months, and continues till you reach 6 months. But that period, you will often have to still work.. so if you are let go, with 3 months, you have to work, but can go look for other work etc. (Sometimes you dont have to work, thats up to the employer)
I always install Sumatra when re-installing user devices with Windows, to avoid the Adobe crapware and reduce the attack-surface. Sumatra's inability handle embedded file formats such as flash and cad-drawings in PDF-documents being a feature rather than a problem.
It often surprises me how many users are happily using Sumatra many years later, none the wiser.
The provocation of suicidal thoughts of grown-ups often comes from feeling stuck in a shitty life situation while watching the never ending photo-streams falsely portraying happy lives, beautiful products and experiences you cannot afford, the partners you will never have participating in staged social occasions that you will never attend while dining your depression meds. and feeling numb, lifeless and without energy.
So even if Facebook succeeds in removing all predatory, malicious and disturbing content, are they going to eliminate all of the above from Zuck's kiddy-insta?
I see absolutely no reason why kids should be any different than grown-ups in this regard. Quite the opposite. Kids are absolutely obsessed with comparing themselves to other kids, and Zuck's Kiddy-insta is an absolute recipe for disaster.
I personally stopped using Facebook 10 years ago and will probably never come back. At the time when I used it I only used it to connect with friends and family and I saw no disturbing content or content that would incite jealousy, greed or lust.
I think the trend of hyper self-centric content begun with Instagram indeed. For example Photo Models and Body Builders sharing photos of their bodies for no apparent reason besides to glorify and/or sell themselves.
Photos of food make no sense to me, photos of pets I can somehow understand and yes I can understand how looking at happy lives and happy experiences can make you feel miserable but then again Facebook or Instagram don't really know your mental health and state you are in and can not magically remove "sensitive" content that would disturb you.
Best thing would be to stop using social media altogether or use it only to inform yourself about the world around you but in the form of text or perhaps audio/voice only.
