I keep reading these sort of articles and wondering why the American people seem so opposed to basic employment law.
Here in Socialist Yurop, the Working Time Directive means that no employer can compel an employee to work for longer than 48 hours per week. All workers are entitled to a legal minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday.
You all seem to agree that you work too long and don't get enough holiday. I've never once heard anyone say that they're happy with two weeks vacation and unpaid overtime. I'm not asking rhetorically, I genuinely want to know why the most basic sort of collective bargaining is absent from the political culture of the US.
Given that e.g. the unemployment rate in Spain is 23% [1] and Greece is bankrupt, it seems a little quixotic to be highlighting European entitlements for workers, when the more pressing problem is obviously the huge numbers of people who are not working and cannot find work and to whom those entitlements are a bad joke. Indeed, some people might even posit a link between entitlements and the current economic mess in Europe...
The countries in Europe (Germany, France) that are bailing out other countries (e.g. Ireland, Portugal), are the ones with long holidays bailing out the countries with short holidays.
Ireland is a great example of bare minimum employee law to meet EU standards, and light touch regulation that needs to be bailed out by 35½ hr-a-week France.
I've heard from real people interviews why they do not work long or hard in France. They officially have one month of vacation more than the working class in US. The reason people told is they think tomorrow is not going to be better than today so why work?
And they themselves find it depressing which they accepted in the interviews.
Greeks work more hours than Germans [1] (in fact they're the 2nd hardest working people in the world according to an 2008 OECD study) and have shorter holidays (23 vs 30 days) [2].
With 20% unemployment not sure how people are going to work.
Just so you know the underlying theme at France and Greece. Intellectual people in France know that their number of work days are not sustainable but as of now if government tries to make a change, they will not survive the election because people have taken these holidays as their right. So they cannot make the change even if they want to.
Greece has the similar socialism problem of big government, high government salaries and unrestrained spending no doubt they have high unemployment.
We are headed in that direction under current administration where government is growing without bounds and we have unemployment rate of almost 9%.
Is Greece any different, bloated government, high unemployment, high government salaries and where did it go? Default on its financial obligations. You would know that if you were aware of what is happening but seems you don't.
"All workers are entitled to a legal minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday."
Heh, at my current job I won't be eligible for paid holiday until eighteen months after my date of initial employment, at which point I will receive five days of paid holiday for one year, and then ten days of paid holiday for the next four years. That's a pretty stark difference, I'd say.
In Socialist Yurop as well, in most countries, there are different rules on when and how much paid holiday you get in your first year, meaning you cannot get hired and take a month paid holiday, it has to accrue. So you would get a week after a few months, for example, then more, and so on. It looks fair to me.
And yeah, in all tech hubs I know of, everybody's looking to hire, the market is, maybe not red-hot like Silicon Valley, but pretty hot anyway.
I'm a programmer in the US, and I get 4 weeks paid vacation plus 2 weeks paid sick leave plus 10 paid holidays.
At my previous job I got 4 weeks vacation (it would have gone up to 5 weeks after 4 years) plus (I forget how much) paid sick leave plus 6 paid holidays.
At the one before that I got 4 weeks vacation plus unlimited (within reason) paid sick leave plus 10 paid holidays.
In other words, you don't need to move to Europe. You just need to find a better job.
> I keep reading these sort of articles and wondering why the American people seem so opposed to basic employment law.
Because, for quite a few cultural and structural reasons - e.g. our strong culture of individualism, pluralistic civil society, and common-law as opposed to civil-law tradition - Americans are relatively skeptical of allowing a priori regulatory intervention into the immediate circumstances of their lives.
People here generally believe that they ought to be free to make their own arrangements without outside intervention, that law should only be used as a failsafe mechanism, and that legislation/regulation are only necessary where the existing constraints within civil society and case-by-case judicial process have not successfully averted a significant problem.
There are plenty of exceptions to this, of course, but what you call "basic employment law" is quite often regarded as an unjustified intrusion into people's private affairs.
> You all seem to agree that you work too long and don't get enough holiday.
Sounds like a case of "the van is always at the corner". Some people may complain; but most people do have more than adequate vacation time, and, apparently, there are more people who choose not even to use all of their vacation time (36%) than there are who complain of overwork (33%) [1]. Despite what the consultant quoted in that article says, it does appear that it's usually a voluntary choice.
Comments
I keep reading these sort of articles and wondering why the American people seem so opposed to basic employment law.
Here in Socialist Yurop, the Working Time Directive means that no employer can compel an employee to work for longer than 48 hours per week. All workers are entitled to a legal minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday.
You all seem to agree that you work too long and don't get enough holiday. I've never once heard anyone say that they're happy with two weeks vacation and unpaid overtime. I'm not asking rhetorically, I genuinely want to know why the most basic sort of collective bargaining is absent from the political culture of the US.
Given that e.g. the unemployment rate in Spain is 23% [1] and Greece is bankrupt, it seems a little quixotic to be highlighting European entitlements for workers, when the more pressing problem is obviously the huge numbers of people who are not working and cannot find work and to whom those entitlements are a bad joke. Indeed, some people might even posit a link between entitlements and the current economic mess in Europe...
1. http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/03/spains-budge...
The countries in Europe (Germany, France) that are bailing out other countries (e.g. Ireland, Portugal), are the ones with long holidays bailing out the countries with short holidays.
Ireland is a great example of bare minimum employee law to meet EU standards, and light touch regulation that needs to be bailed out by 35½ hr-a-week France.
I've heard from real people interviews why they do not work long or hard in France. They officially have one month of vacation more than the working class in US. The reason people told is they think tomorrow is not going to be better than today so why work?
And they themselves find it depressing which they accepted in the interviews.
I love how you conveniently leave out Greece.
Greeks work more hours than Germans [1] (in fact they're the 2nd hardest working people in the world according to an 2008 OECD study) and have shorter holidays (23 vs 30 days) [2].
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/12/euro...
[2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,763618,00....
With 20% unemployment not sure how people are going to work.
Just so you know the underlying theme at France and Greece. Intellectual people in France know that their number of work days are not sustainable but as of now if government tries to make a change, they will not survive the election because people have taken these holidays as their right. So they cannot make the change even if they want to.
Greece has the similar socialism problem of big government, high government salaries and unrestrained spending no doubt they have high unemployment.
We are headed in that direction under current administration where government is growing without bounds and we have unemployment rate of almost 9%.
Is Greece any different, bloated government, high unemployment, high government salaries and where did it go? Default on its financial obligations. You would know that if you were aware of what is happening but seems you don't.
How about Germany, Norway, Sweden? I don't know about Spain, but 40 hours week was least of Greece's problem.
"All workers are entitled to a legal minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday."
Heh, at my current job I won't be eligible for paid holiday until eighteen months after my date of initial employment, at which point I will receive five days of paid holiday for one year, and then ten days of paid holiday for the next four years. That's a pretty stark difference, I'd say.
Is Europe hiring software developers?
In Socialist Yurop as well, in most countries, there are different rules on when and how much paid holiday you get in your first year, meaning you cannot get hired and take a month paid holiday, it has to accrue. So you would get a week after a few months, for example, then more, and so on. It looks fair to me.
And yeah, in all tech hubs I know of, everybody's looking to hire, the market is, maybe not red-hot like Silicon Valley, but pretty hot anyway.
I'm a programmer in the US, and I get 4 weeks paid vacation plus 2 weeks paid sick leave plus 10 paid holidays.
At my previous job I got 4 weeks vacation (it would have gone up to 5 weeks after 4 years) plus (I forget how much) paid sick leave plus 6 paid holidays.
At the one before that I got 4 weeks vacation plus unlimited (within reason) paid sick leave plus 10 paid holidays.
In other words, you don't need to move to Europe. You just need to find a better job.
Is Europe hiring software developers?
Yes. Like the USA, there is a shortage of developers.
There are tons of developers jobs in U.K., companies always seem to be on the look out.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
-- John Steinbeck (disputed according to wikiquote)
All workers are entitled to a legal minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday.
This is incorrect. In the Netherlands, at least, 20 days is the legal minimum, though most people get 25.
In the UK the minimum is 20 days.
A significant proportion of people get 25 days + 8 public holidays
> I keep reading these sort of articles and wondering why the American people seem so opposed to basic employment law.
Because, for quite a few cultural and structural reasons - e.g. our strong culture of individualism, pluralistic civil society, and common-law as opposed to civil-law tradition - Americans are relatively skeptical of allowing a priori regulatory intervention into the immediate circumstances of their lives.
People here generally believe that they ought to be free to make their own arrangements without outside intervention, that law should only be used as a failsafe mechanism, and that legislation/regulation are only necessary where the existing constraints within civil society and case-by-case judicial process have not successfully averted a significant problem.
There are plenty of exceptions to this, of course, but what you call "basic employment law" is quite often regarded as an unjustified intrusion into people's private affairs.
> You all seem to agree that you work too long and don't get enough holiday.
Sounds like a case of "the van is always at the corner". Some people may complain; but most people do have more than adequate vacation time, and, apparently, there are more people who choose not even to use all of their vacation time (36%) than there are who complain of overwork (33%) [1]. Despite what the consultant quoted in that article says, it does appear that it's usually a voluntary choice.
[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/reuters-money/2011/08/04/overworked...