Shops could face legal action over 'lads' mags'

[MrJonno]

FMLA is for unpaid leave?, that's hardly maternity leave. Don't know about you but I don't know a single person who has enough savings to last 3 months unpaid without government support who won't be looking at bankruptcy/being homeless especially when they have just had a baby.

You could of course say don't have a baby if you don't have 3 months savings but you would be a complete cunt if you did (so I'm sure you wouldn't say such a thing)

[Kristie]

FMLA is for unpaid leave?, that's hardly maternity leave. Don't know about you but I don't know a single person who has enough savings to last 3 months unpaid without government support who won't be looking at bankruptcy/being homeless especially when they have just had a baby.

You could of course say don't have a baby if you don't have 3 months savings but you would be a complete cunt if you did (so I'm sure you wouldn't say such a thing)

If you get paid or not depends on your employer. FMLA just guaranteed time off and that your job will be there when you get back.
I know a ton of people with savings like that. My family would survive on savings alone over a 3 month period. I saw my sister's bank statement just last weekend and she has more than enough to last over 3 months. You must not know many responsible people.

[MrJonno]

And who picks up the price for letting go of employees too easily, its not just the employee the state (ie the tax payer) pays the cost in benefits, crime, health costs. Ensure employer profits are maximised is not the only factor. If you give someone the boot you hurt the employee and society , expect to justify it (its not like running a business your own way is a right)

Also when employees are more expensive to take on they tend to get invested in and not just treated as a disposable resource, its why a French employee is the most productive in Europe.

[MrJonno]

FMLA just guaranteed time off and that your job will be there when you get back

So generous

[Coito ergo sum]

In English, the US is the country on the planet that doesn't have maternity leave (most now have paternity as well), don't want to employ women because they might have babies and you will make less money tough shit price of living in a civilized country

We do have maternity leave - it's called the Family and Medical Leave Act. It just doesn't apply to small employers, which is a compromise allowing smaller businesses to avoid the significant added costs involved in giving people several months off and then bringing them back, while making larger employers abide by the rule which they are generally financially better able to absorb. We want to keep the costs of doing business low for smaller businesses, so they have an opportunity to grow.

It is not lawful to fail to hire or to terminate a person because she is a woman or because she is pregnant.

It's counterfactual to say that in the US people don't want to employ women. Women are employed here just as much as in the UK. You, as with most of your assessments of life in the US, don't know what you're talking about.

[Kristie]

FMLA just guaranteed time off and that your job will be there when you get back

So generous

I'm a woman with 3 kids and I don't see the problem with it. My job with my first baby paid me full pay for 8 weeks and half pay for 4 weeks. I used saved up vacation time and some sick leave to make it 12 weeks if full pay. With my second, a different job, I got 6 weeks if full pay and 4 weeks if partial pay. I supplemented with sick and vacation time there also. And, that was with only being a part-time employee. With my third, I was not working. Hubby did get to take several days off with all 3 babies though, using FMLA. Again, different jobs paid him different amounts. Usually, the longer you're there, the more they will pay during that time off. I don't expect to be paid by my employer or the government to stay home with a baby. 6 weeks is when doctors release most women to go back to work.

[Coito ergo sum]

Nonsense. If they aren't making enough money at WalMart, they can go look for a job somewhere else. They aren't slaves. Most of them are happy to have any job at all, and if WalMart has to pay every worker a "fair wage" as defined by most socialists and liberals, it will soon go out of business and nobody will have a job.

Actually if Walmart can't pay someone enough to survive the state has to move in and top up their wages to keep them alive, its in fact corporate welfare. If a business can't pay enough to keep its employees alive its not a business it might as well be nationalised as its not making a genuine profit anyway

Walmart pays pretty good, actually. Introductory wages are at minimum wage for the lowest-level positions, but as a person works there for a while their pay goes up and they get pretty good benefits.

Minimum wage in the UK is 6.31 pounds, right? That's a little higher than in the US, but look at the cost of living between the US and the UK: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/co ... ed+Kingdom

Wanna trade a couple dollars an hour for gas prices that are 111% higher in the UK? Rent in the UK is like 8% to 20% higher? Real estate prices are 130% higher?

And, the US has Median Monthly Disposable Salary (After Tax) 3,171.00 $ compared to the UK which is at 2,418.01 $ So, for all the "substandard wages" we get here in the US, we have 23% more disposable income.

Look at clothing and shooes in that link -- 88% more you blokes pay for jeans? Nice! Good thing you have a couple bucks more than us on the minimum wage....And, your basic utilities like electric and such are 25% higher than in the US. Transportation costs generally higher. Food costs generally higher.

Yeah - must do things the way they do in Europe, cuz it's sooooo much better...lol

[Coito ergo sum]

FMLA is for unpaid leave?, that's hardly maternity leave. Don't know about you but I don't know a single person who has enough savings to last 3 months unpaid without government support who won't be looking at bankruptcy/being homeless especially when they have just had a baby.

That's because you live in the UK. Things are better here, thankfully.

You could of course say don't have a baby if you don't have 3 months savings but you would be a complete cunt if you did (so I'm sure you wouldn't say such a thing)

Oh, well, I have no trouble saying that too many people who can't afford to raise their children have children. We have an overpopulation problem in the world. I personally waited many years to have children until I was better able to support them. One would have to be a complete cunt to not acknowledge that there are good reasons not to have children, and that because someone has children ought not make the rest of the world beholden to them.

[Coito ergo sum]

And who picks up the price for letting go of employees too easily, its not just the employee the state (ie the tax payer) pays the cost in benefits, crime, health costs. Ensure employer profits are maximised is not the only factor. If you give someone the boot you hurt the employee and society , expect to justify it (its not like running a business your own way is a right)

Also when employees are more expensive to take on they tend to get invested in and not just treated as a disposable resource, its why a French employee is the most productive in Europe.

Well, I would never say that people who are unemployed commit more crimes than employed people. One would have to be a complete cunt to say that. And, one would also have to be ignorant of the statistics.

Who picks the price for letting go of employers? I guess the same democratic system that picks the laws that pick the onerous restrictions and requirements and costs. Why would it be a different "who?" It's a public policy debate.

Nobody said ensuring employer profits are maximized is the only factor. Nobody here said it was even the predominent factor. Ensuring low barriers to entry into business is not about "maximizing" profits -- it's about allowing people to enter the business world easier so they get the opportunity to grow a need for employees, which then benefits employees who would be left unused.

And, increased flexibility and speed in decisionmaking helps employees -- because if employees are unemployed, they can atrophy, lose their skills, and then it only becomes harder for them to be valuable to an organization and it reduces what they can do, which reduces what someone is willing to pay them to do.

[MrJonno]

Well its about getting the balance right, short of a business going of me punching someone I will still have a job by the end of the tomorrow. I'm actually on 3 months notice either way (corporate requirement) which in good times is a pain but at the moment nice to have. The idea that someone could get rid of me for nothing other than a gut feeling they don't trust me is frightening.

As for assuming most business will act in a sensible decent way, most good ones will take the government base level restrictions and add stuff on top of them, but if the base level is lower your total benefits arent going to be as good.

Statutory minimum 20 days holiday (+ bank holidays) means a good company will offer 25-30, if the minimum was 0 a good company might give you 10 but you always have to work on the basis of how the worst companies will work not the best anyway

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Most Wal-mart employees are eligible for food stamps. I guess that's "pretty good pay".

[Calilasseia]

I'd be more in favour of losing all of those tiresome celebrations of rich people flaunting their largesse such as Hello!. Which the writer Tom Wolfe famously described as "plutography". When asked about this, he said "Pornography is written material devoted to sex, plutography is written material devoted to rich people".

[Kristie]

Most Wal-mart employees are eligible for food stamps. I guess that's "pretty good pay".

Plus, most don't get full time hours, so they're no eligible for full benefits. Most store like them only give supervisors and management 40 hours.

[Seth]

Most Wal-mart employees are eligible for food stamps. I guess that's "pretty good pay".

Plus, most don't get full time hours, so they're no eligible for full benefits. Most store like them only give supervisors and management 40 hours.

Well, you can blame Obamacare for that, a practice that's going to expand significantly in the next year. Small business can neither afford to pay for the mandatory health care or the fines, so they will skirt the law (legally) by cutting worker's hours and hiring more temp part time workers to cover shifts.

That's the Liberal Progressive Marxist's fault.

[Seth]

Most Wal-mart employees are eligible for food stamps. I guess that's "pretty good pay".

Most everybody is eligible for food stamps these days because the government has substantially loosened the criteria for qualification so as to get as many people as possible on the dole. The purpose and intent of getting people on the dole, as described succinctly by Cloward and Pivens, and as followed religiously by Obama at every turn, is to crash the capitalist system by overloading the government benefits system, thus causing an opening for Marxist takeover as the dependent class riots because the government is bankrupt and can no longer feed and entertain them.