Shops could face legal action over 'lads' mags'

[Seth]

Who builds the yacht?

Rarely merkins

http://www.superyachts.com/directory/yacht-builders.htm

Know why? Because the Clinton administration got the Democrat Congress to levy a high "luxury tax" on yachts, which put pretty much all of the US yacht makers out of business...which just moved to a place with better tax laws.

Money, you see, flows away from taxation like water flows downhill.

[Coito ergo sum]

You can sack someone for poor performance but you can't do it on the spot, its a set of warnings to improve and if they fail you get rid of them. Can take a few weeks to months and you need to have a proper written record of doing so. Rogering the bosses misses in the office during working hours does count as gross misconduct and would be able to get rid of them for it.

That is not what Xamones recounted, in terms of UK law. He said you could sack them for any good reason, as long as you gave them notice. He did not state that it was mandatory that you give them warnings to improve. I'm not sure who is right, but if you're right then the system sounds silly. Mandatory "sets of warnings?" Whether to terminate someone "on the spot" has a lot to do with what they did wrong. If someone makes a huge mistake, it's often reasonable to let them go. Further, if an employee is a cancer on the workplace, or is deemed not trustworthy, then keeping them around can be a big risk.

Here in the US, whether you're entitled to warnings depends on whether or not the relationship specifies that warnings will be given. An employer and employee can agree in a contract, or the employer can set forth procedures in its formal policies. But there is nothing legislated. The employer, under the law, is generally able to let an employee go, provided they don't do so for an unlawful reason, and there are many unlawful reasons. But, the law is ill-equipped to deal with the minutia of interpersonal relationships and performance assessments that are important to the employer-employee relationship, and the employment relationship (especially in small businesses) is often very personal, so simply "not liking" someone can very often be a good reason to let them go.

You can make a position redundant (in the UK at least) if business turns down but its the position you are making redundant not the person. Again the employer needs to put at least some justification into that.

Here in the US there is a distinction made between large and small companies. With large companies, there is the WARN Act which relates to reductions in force and plant shutdowns -- so, employers who are going to let employees go en masse have to send them notices and provide severance and such. However, small employers can just let someone go, as long as they aren't doing so because of race, color, religion, national origin, sometimes height or weight, sometimes sexual orientation, age, disability, and other protected activities. If an employer just wants to let you go because you're douche, then that's fine. Go work for people who you get along with. Why would anyone want to work where they hate it anyway?

UK employment laws are far closer to the US than any other in the EU but even they aren't on the lines I don't like someone so I can sack you crap. What sort of life would it be for an employee if employment was that unstable

Very good, actually. Because most people behave reasonably, and because employers know they have greater flexibility and aren't saddled with quite as much costs, they are more willing to hire, which is why we have historically tended to to have lower unemployment. Employees may lose jobs, be laid off, or whatnot, but the pool of available alternative employers is bigger and they tended to get hired quicker.

What sucks is to have employers reluctant to hire unless they are very, very sure they will want to keep you around, and very, very sure they will be able to meet the costs and expenses associated with the employee. That causes a greater degree of sluggishness in hiring, more time for unemployed workers to be dormant and to have their skills atrophy, etc.

You'll find that the main areas of concern -- firings on account of race, religion (or lack thereof), disability, handicap, color, sex, age - that sort of thing - cover most of the "bad" reasons. The vast majority of employers don't fire someone just on a whim. It's a fair assumption that they hired the person because they needed the employee to do something. But, if the person and the employer simply don't get along, then that can impact the workplace in a general sense, and so if an employee shows up and is just insufferable, it seems perfectly reasonable to let him go. However, we don't have any significant problem of employers just up and firing people for "not liking" them. That's a non-problem that doesn't need a solution. But, it's bad public and economic policy to saddle employers with litigation every time they let someone go, so it's good policy to be very specific as to the reasons someone can't be let go. Areas where there are specific problems can be addressed - like where an employer lets someone go right before pension benefits vest, or for serving on jury duty, or for serving in the armed forces -- all these are addressed in the law. So, while there is no blanked "employers must always articulate a really good business reason to let people go", the end result is that the common "bad" reasons for letting people go are covered by the law.

[Coito ergo sum]

You can make a position redundant, you can't sack someone without a very good reason. If you make the position redundant you can't rehire someone in a given period

As mentioned by Xamanos these rights do take a while to kick in but I could sleep with my boss wife (out of office hours) and he couldnt sack me for it

That too sounds like an idiotic law. Employees fucking their bosses' wives and that's not a terminable offense? It would be in a civilized country.

...

But if it has nothing to do with work per se, then the boss has no legal reason to sack them. Outside of work, all is fair in love and war.

Other than - "I don't want a guy I don't trust working for me." That sounds like a great reason. Someone who would sneak behind their boss' back and fuck his wife doesn't sound like a person who I'd like to have working for me. How many other ways is he going to want to dick me over?

It's like if someone was convicted for check fraud "outside of work" and it had "nothing to do with work per se." I don't want that guy in my office, even if he is just stacking boxes in the warehouse, or typing things on a typewriter. I don't trust him.

Those both seem like great reasons to let someone go.

[Seth]

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.

Nobody starves in America. Nobody.

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

So, you'd rather those people NOT make the money they currently make? How kind of you. But then your opinion about being a dependent class prole is well known, so I'm hardly surprised.

Know why third-world countries like it when Nike builds a shoe factory in their shithole nation? Because the workers who work for 50 cents an hour in a pest-hole like Bangladesh are making 50 cents more an hour than they were before Nike showed up, and they are glad to have it. This means the shithole government collects more taxes, more people are working, less social welfare money is needed and the society begins to inch up the economic ladder, just like China did when the US started investing in Chinese manufacturing.

But you'd rather Nike be banned from having shoes made in Bangladesh because you don't think it's "fair" to the workers they have to work for 50 cents an hour, so Nike closes its plant and all those workers, who were on the road to economic success over time, are suddenly unemployed and starving again.

Nice.

Quit trying to give economic advice, you don't have the understanding to make an intelligent comment about it.

[Kristie]

Nobody starves in America. Nobody.

False

[Seth]

Nobody starves in America. Nobody.

False

Prove it. Show me one person in the US in the last 25 years who has starved to death because nobody would give them food. Just one.

And don't point to some elderly person who starved to death because their relatives forgot about them and they couldn't call for help, that doesn't count because if anybody had known about it they would have taken immediate action.

[Kristie]

Nobody starves in America. Nobody.

False

Prove it. Show me one person in the US in the last 25 years who has starved to death because nobody would give them food. Just one.

And don't point to some elderly person who starved to death because their relatives forgot about them and they couldn't call for help, that doesn't count because if anybody had known about it they would have taken immediate action.

Um, you said 'nobody'.

[MrJonno]

Don't have too many rights in your first year (but its illegal to fire and rehire after 1 year) after that its gross misconduct to fire someone on the spot , anything else and you have to show a fair and reasonable approach to a person's failures at work. Guidelines are given to what counts as fair, its not compulsory to use them but if you are found guilty in an unfair dismissal claim penalties will be increased.

UK employment laws are generally pretty flexible compared to the rest of Europe but I know for a fact no one is going to fire me because I forget to charge my mobile when I'm on call (I might expect a warning for that) but if I turn up drunk and punch my boss I'm probably don't have much of a future at the company

http://www.lawdonut.co.uk/law/employmen ... es-30-faqs

[Coito ergo sum]

That too sounds like an idiotic law. Employees fucking their bosses' wives and that's not a terminable offense? It would be in a civilized country.

Redundancy is not the only reason to let an employee go. Lack of demand for product, reduced business, other economic realities, etc., all make perfect sense to let someone go. As does the fact that they just aren't performing well in their job. The whole idea that you can't sack someone unless they are committing some "gross misconduct" is ludicrous, and is probably a big reason why it may be so difficult in many jurisdictions to find employment. I mean, if I hire someone, I ought to be able to assess their performance and determine that they aren't needed. If, for example, I needed a person to perform a specific function and it turns out that they suck at it, they work too slow, or they just make too many mistakes, I ought to be able to get rid of them and replace them with another person who can actually do the job.

The sort of thing you describe sounds like a really big step backward. And, as a matter of public policy it would seem to me that it would seriously restrict new hiring of employees, because employers would have to keep a tight reign on new hiring in order to avoid locking themselves in to employees who don't cut it.

It is also perfectly reasonable for an employer to let someone go simply because they don't like the person. As a small business operator myself, I don't like the idea of having to spend my days with someone I don't like. If I hire someone to be my assistant, for example, and they rub me the wrong way, or if they just are unpleasant, I ought to be able to let them go.

Right so as a business operator you ought to be able to play with the lives of your underlings at a whim because it suits you.

I didn't say that. But, making me employ, work with, and pay for a guy who went and fucked my wife seems like allowing employees to play with my life on a whim because it suits them, doesn't it?

I was responding to the person who said that in the UK employees can have affairs with their bosses' wives and that wouldn't be a terminable offense. It sounds like a great reason to fire someone to me.

Letting someone go because of reduced business etc is redundancy.

Not necessarily. You may have reduced business in one area, and increased business in another, so the total number of employees is the same, but you want to shut down one area of the business and let those people go. Redundancy is when you have 2 or more employees around for the job fewer employees are needed to do.

And you can still fire someone for under-performing or whatever, but if you don't want to lose out to them for unfair dismissal, you're going to have be able to provide evidence, performance reviews etc, that their poor quality of work was significantly below that of someone else in the same position, significant in that it's harming the business, consistent over a period of time, and that you offered the necessary training to attempt to remedy the situation. If they really are under-performing that shouldn't be a problem.

I doubt that is an accurate assessment of UK law. But, often that is a problem, because very often an employee's performance can be subjective.

But, needless to say, unless there is a significant problem with employers just willy-nilly firing satisfactory employees for no good reason, to set up such a regime is a big waste of time and poor social, public and economic policy. Far better to guard against the significant problems, like race, sex, age, disability and religious(nonreligious) discrimination, etc., than to set up a trap door where every unsatisfactory employee gets to rake the employer over the coals claiming they really weren't unsatisfactory.

And the suggestion that workers rights reduces the hiring of employees is nonsense. You may be right that employers have to take a more considered approach, rather than hiring and firing left, right and centre, but that just makes for more stable employment. The overall level of employment is still going to be determined by the demand for the business.

False. It's the main reason why the US traditionally had lower unemployment rates than in countries with the kinds of systems being described here. Further, it's not just demand for the business, it's also governed by the "price" of the employees. Raise the cost of employing people, and you reduce the number employers will buy. They will "make do" rather than pay a higher cost, and these added restrictions definitely increase cost. What's nonsensical is believing that the ability to get rid of undesirable employees or the risks associated in doing so do not factor in to an employer's willingness to add another employee. Of course it does. To think it doesn't is to have no comprehension of what it means to run a business.

And if the bosses wife decides to sleep with someone else who happens to be one of his employees, the boss can devoice his wife, but why should he be able to fire the employee? It has nothing to do with the employees work life, and the employee might not have even know she was married.

Why should he be able to fire the employee? Because the working relationship is compromised by such behavior. Because the employee has shown a monumental disloyalty, a monumental dishonesty, a monumental lack of trustworthiness. I mean -- put yourself in the position of employer -- you run an office and you have employees. You have a male bookkeeper who sneaks around to your house when you're not at home, after hours, and bangs your wife. You find out about it. And, you think it is not a terminable offense? You'd want the bookkeeper coming into the office and sitting down and going over the books with you, across the desk, after freshly fucking your wife, and you think a reasonable system of laws will require you to keep him on? That makes no sense at all, and honestly, it sounds so stupid that I have to chalk it up to one of those instances where certain people on this forum just adopt whatever position is opposite mine. I mean, come the fuck on...

[MrJonno]

Nobody starves in America. Nobody.

False

I would hope the government would step in with welfare before that happened (most welfare goes to people who have work by the way to top up their low wages).
Someone on a £12k job in the UK with a family could easily get 50% on top of that in ''tax credits' that £6k the people who employ them should be paying. As a tax payer I'm effectively top up someone elses wages and while I don't resent welfare for those who are unemployed its taking the piss that its subsidising large multinationals

[Coito ergo sum]

My children went to a school once where it turned out that one of the mothers (who also worked as a classroom assistant there) was having an affair with the husband of one of the teachers. When it all came to be known, everyone (other parents included) put pressure on the assistant teacher to resign, to ease the feeling of tension in the school but the school couldn't have sacked her. She did leave voluntarily but that's because she knew if she stayed she would get daggers every day from parents and co-workers.

P.S. how did this get from there to here?????

It's about employee /employer rights, an employee has a right to have a reasonably constructive environment and an employer has duty to ensure it happens.

And employee has a right to a reasonably SAFE workplace, and that's it. If I want to tell an employee to sit at a desk and not move or speak during his/her shift, I have every right to make that demand and fire them if they refuse to comply. It's MY business, not theirs.

You're overstating the case. That isn't it, under current law. But, you may be referring to what you think "should" be the case.

[Coito ergo sum]

I have a female friend who left France 15 years ago on maternity leave and has been getting paid, and had her job held for her for FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS by the bank she worked for because she managed to get pregnant every three years...and live comfortably in the United States...until a year ago...when she missed the deadline on conceiving her last child and had to return to France and go back to work because she didn't get pregnant again.

I think that says more about American immigration laws that it does about maternity ones which are a basic in every 1st world and even much of the 3rd world.
Mr Poor employer I not going to employ a woman because I might make less profits, well you won't make any if you are in prison

Once more, in English, please.

[MrJonno]

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

[Kristie]

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 don't have maternity or paternity leave, per se. But, we have FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) which covers maternity and paternity leave. It also covers time off if you have an extreme medical situation with an immediate family member where you will need to care for them, time off for mental issues, lots of other stuff, too.

[Coito ergo sum]

So your rational argument supporting a perpetual obligation to provide for an employee boils down to "because I say so?"

That's really the best you can do?

But it's not me, it's society, it's democracy, it's a system of laws created over a period of time by people cooperating together to achieve more than they could alone.

Very true. Which is why we have public policy debates. And saying "it's democracy" doesn't mean it's always better policy to enact more and more laws designed to make it harder and harder for employers to lose employees they don't want.

It is decidedly bad policy, in my view, to make a rule that an employer has to run a system of proofs and evidence on every employee he's letting go. Far better and more efficient for the system to generally be one of mutual consent and volition, with protections for significant problems (like race and sex discrimination, etc). Good public policy (a) reduces barriers to entry into the workforce, (b) keeps the costs associated with employing employees down as much as possible, and (c) increases the ability of employees to move from employer to employer as needed and maximizes their opportunities. Onerous severance requirements and onerous requirements that employers prove in every case that they had a "good" reason to let an employee go defeats all these goals and more -- it makes business less flexible, less able to reduce costs when needed, creates higher barriers to entry into business for small businesses, makes it harder and more expensive to employ more employees, and does that while not really doing anything to protect persons who have been wronged signifiantly.