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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

Is this going to be the fate of every worker protection law? Why even bother making it a law, if the company lawyers will simply sneak a waver into the mile-long employment contract, buried between the NDA and the promise that you will help train your H1B visa replacement?

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Good protection laws likely have stipulations that they cannot be overridden by other agreements. Some laws don't even hold if such conditions aren't included, such as unreasonable anti-compete clauses. Best to always talk to a lawyer :)

Some countries in continental Europe have amazingly pro-employee legislative environment. I know several people who don't read the fine print of of the work contracts, because they know that any clause that gives disproportionate advantage to the employee without due compensation will be considered predatory, and thrown out in an instant if it goes to the court room.

Is this going to be the fate of every worker protection law?

Isn't this what the "gig" economy is leading us to? Uber is very similar: you aren't an employee, so no Social Security, no workman's comp, none of the hard-fought labor gains of the 20th century.

If you don't have good alternate options for earning your income, they can always shaft you one way or another.

If you have good alternate options (eg another startup trying to hire you etc), you can demand better conditions.

Much of the stuff you sign when you take a job is unenforceable. But they have you sign it anyway, because you remember signing and think "what's the point in talking to a lawyer?"

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