U.S. Ranked Worst for Workers’ Rights Among Major Economies | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Ranked Worst for Workers’ Rights Among Major Economies

bloomberg.com

82 pointspaulpauper56 comments

Does not surprise me. As a Norwegian I have experienced working for smaller companies getting bought up by US multinationals in many occasions.

The new American bosses tend to be surprised that employees have rights.

I remember they went through their employee handbook covering the rules we should follow.

Some of the rules they had on the books which was illegal in Norway:

1. Ban talking about politics and religion at work. Illegal in Norway as freedom of speech is a protected by government.

2. Drug tests of employees. Also illegal unless you operate heavy and dangerous equipment and have been given special permission by government to do such tests.

3. Criminal background checks. Also illegal unless you work with say children or in the military.

Of course we also kept hearing stories about how our colleagues in the US offices got treated. Not very nice. People got fired on the spot and kicked out.

In Norway you got to give a 2-3 month notice. You cannot suddenly spring on people “you are fired!”

And the reason for firing has to be legitimate. Insubordination e.g. isn’t a valid reason to be fired in Scandinavia. You have to be clearly neglectful of your job, or there has to be economic hard times.

Hence you don’t have to be worried about getting fired for say pissing off your boss as long as you are doing a decent job.

> The new American bosses tend to be surprised that employees have rights

This reads like bad fanfic - you are relying on people’s ignorance of Norwegian law and stating things that are just not true. For instance

Employers can ask employees to not discuss politics on work time except as it relates to the job, both countries have the same exception and rules for this.

Employers can require drug testing in Norway though it is less common - the law you are referring to is about full medical examinations and specifically excludes substance testing.

> Ban talking about politics and religion at work. Illegal in Norway as freedom of speech is a protected by government.

I'm all for freedom of speech, but there are certain policies that make me uncomfortable. Like talking about sex should be freedom of speech, but is taboo in the workplace.

It's all about protecting everyone's rights to feel comfortable (by banning topics that enrage people.).

> Criminal background checks.

This is common practice as people don't want to hire workers who will steal or cause other issues.

What's wrong with that?

> People got fired on the spot and kicked out.

Sure, that's pro worker, but not pro business. If someone isn't doing their job, they gotta go. Not 2-3 months. Now.

You seem to underestimate the level of productivity and willingness to bring the company forward, that comes from a good worker/business relationship. And a good relationship requires good management and trust from both sides.

I would try to explain that in more detail, but I feel like your opinion is already very much set in stone.

Strange not including China as a major economy. I thought they were huge!

Headline: U.S. Ranked Worst for Workers’ Rights Among Major Economies

Sub-head: Labor union survey ranks every other G-7 country better

First and second sentence: The world’s largest economy is ranked a 4 ... Every other Group of Seven country ranks 3 or better.

G7 mentioned in sub-head and 2nd sentence.

The illustrated map indicates China is worse.

It's a badly written article and headline. The US was ranked worst among the G7, a very specific group of countries.

Yeah, basically among the first-world countries. Which the US probably is no more.

In my opinion, the US is basically two countries due to the inequality.

For professionals, it’s possibly the best place to live in the world.

For the working class, you’re better off elsewhere.

The article said major developed economies. If you read t he article it is pretty clear what they are talking about.

Don’t just comment after reading the headline.

Read the article and commented on the headline ;)

They are no.2, this article is kinda bs. US is 1st, China 2nd, which means this article is off by at least 1 place for US.

No, read the article. It clarifies in the beginning what sort of countries they are ranking. I suspect you only read the headline.

This is going to catch a lot of flak because it's a rather cynical observation. It's interesting that almost all the best countries for workers rights on the map have stagnant GDPs in the past decade outside of Uruguay and Ireland.

Yet another hint we shouldn’t consider GDP to be the benchmark for economies.

That would be an interesting observation if it was true but it's not (from 2013 to 2018 at least): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_...

Worker protections are most needed in countries that have high unemployment and low job mobility.

The US (aside from covid) had one of the world's lowest unemployment rates (around 4%), with the highest salaries in the world.

Workers in the US are exceedingly mobile, so things like job security protections are actually counter-productive.

Interestingly it's also ranked one of the highest for average wages: https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/average-wages.htm .

That is a bullshit measure. That is an arithmetic average pulled up by the excessive compensation to the 1% in America.

Look at e.g. the wage of a McDonalds worker in the US and it is among the lowest in the west.

I think e.g. in Norway you make 3-4x what a US McDonalds worker makes.

It also does not take into account that US workers have almost no vacation and long work days.

US workers don’t have they high hourly wage. They just work their ass off while Europeans are at the beach enjoying life with their family.

Ok, a simplification but life is not great for American workers and they ought to demand better treatment.

You are combating one extreme with another. 1% vs McDonalds workers.

Look at the middle 90% - they are the highest paid in the world with a record low 4% unemployment rate (covid-excluding).

THIS is why worker protections are not priority. Employment mobility in the US, combined with the highest salaries makes them almost useless.

America is a third world country with iphones.

https://outline.com/4EDx3n

While at the same time this is the real headline “U.S ranked first as country most desired to immigrate to among all countries”.

Conversely: “Highly paid tech workers in the US believe Marxism will do wonders for the average person”

> Conversely: “Highly paid tech workers in the US believe Marxism will do wonders for the average person”

People equating things like workers rights or even modest social safety nets with Marxism is incidentally probably doing more to "promote" Marxism than anything else.

>> U.S ranked first as country most desired to immigrate to among all countries”

This is because US has very good marketing and most of the numbers are deceptive. I think if you ask typical US immigrants how the reality corresponds with their prior expectations, I think the theme will be disappointment.

Huge US salaries sound very attractive to people from other countries, but I think that when they actually arrive on the ground and they realize how high the costs of living are (especially rents), and they realize that they have almost 0 negotiating power due to visa requirements, the salaries don't look so good anymore.

The same can be said about big cities in any developed country. People leave small towns in droves to live in big cities with big salaries but it's only when they arrive there physically that they understand how terrible a deal it actually is. A person who lives in a small or medium-sized town is able to buy multiple houses with land on a small salary and even rent them out to others for profit. In big cities, a typical highly paid worker can barely afford a single shoebox-sized apartment for themselves.

I've worked as a software developer all over the world (Australia, Russia, The Netherlands, UK, Germany) and I worked remotely for a US company for 1 year and have spoken with hundreds of people about this so I should have a pretty good idea of how it works.

I read a profile a few years ago about a poor Mexican town whose male residents almost all spent the early part of their working years in one particular rural area of Delaware. They would work hard and send back a substantial amount to their families in their hometown, then they would return home a few years later with enough money to buy a home or open a business.

I found it interesting that most expressed a sense of gratitude toward Delaware and the U.S., even though they were doing unenviable jobs and earning unenviable wages.

But it certainly seems like there was still the potential for a type of arbitrage: earn as much as you can in a place where earnings are comparatively high, while keeping your cost of living as low as possible, and then take all your savings back home, where the money goes a lot farther.

>I think if you ask typical US immigrants how the reality corresponds with their prior expectations, I think the theme will be disappointment.

Do you have any numbers on what percentage return home?

One paper showed about 1/3rd. Source: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/1/116/tab-figures-data

Yea, that paper is trying to prove their novel way of estimating emigration flow. I couldn't find anywhere that their numbers were proven with hard reported numbers.

>Huge US salaries sound very attractive to people from other countries, but I think that when they actually arrive on the ground and they realize how high the costs of living are (especially rents), and they realize that they have almost 0 negotiating power due to visa requirements, the salaries don't look so good anymore.

On the contrary, they realize they can make a lot of money here and then bring their friend and relatives to come here.

When you compare that salary with what they get in their home country, it really put it in perspective.

I don't know why you think its the marketing, in fact usa actively discourage and make it really difficult for people to emigrate here.

I wasn’t referring to tech workers. I’m referring to the bottom half of the world.

US needs to emulate more worker-friendly nations like South Korea and Japan.

It's horrific to read, but it's true. I hear terrifying stories about the work culture and expectations in South Korea and Japan that make me feel sorry for the people who work in those countries, but I have far worse ones about working in the US (personally, from the news, from lawsuits, and from government investigations) that I could tell people in South Korea and Japan that they could never imagine happening in their countries.

edit: they're just very different. Workers have very few rights at all in the US. I'm pretty sure all we have left is the right to annoy our employers if we feel they've treated us in a racist, sexist, or homophobic way. We'll never get a settlement out of it if we carry it through to the end, but maybe they'll give us a few bucks and admit to nothing in order to save the money they would have spent on lawyers and lobbyists to crush us. You don't have that recourse at all if the employer just decides to fire you one day because they just don't like your face.

>South Korea

Wow you Sir are the blindest of the blinds...really South Korea and Japan???

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190501000216

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi

He was clearly joking, but Japan’s suicide rates have dropped. Meanwhile countless Americans are dropping out of life, overdosing on drugs, and their deaths are counted as a separate statistic. There were about 46,000 suicides in America in 2016 and 70,000 drug overdose deaths in 2017.[1] Looking at rates of unemployment, depression, and other problems, I doubt the overwhelming majority of those are completely accidental. If someone were to close their eyes and slam the gas pedal and accept whatever happens, we’d rule that a suicide, but we try saying drug overdoses are just accidents. It’s time to take it seriously and recognize that something in life is driving people to accept the risks of dangerous drugs. Including them in the statistic would be enough to push the American suicide rate to about double Japan’s.

But to focus on the actual topic, most of the problem in Japan is social pressure. Workers have actual legal rights. Employers are required to offer vacation time and workers can’t be fired without good reason. It’s actually incredibly difficult to fire someone.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/prescription-drug-overdo...

> Including them in the statistic enough to push the American suicide rate to about double Japan’s.

Including all drug overdoses in suicides would be a very far overreaching fabrication requiring knowledge that you can never possess about the person that died (you have to know their state of mind and intent at the time of overdose). It also does a disservice to the aspect of how extraordinarily dangerous opioid drug addiction is and how easy it is to overdose by accident (especially if fentanyl is involved).

If we're going to play that game, then you have to use that god-like power to remove all suicides that didn't really mean to do it and all accidental drug overdoses.

Magically the number just dropped by 2/3.

Suicide is defined by a successful attempt to kill one's self. The fact is you have no idea what the intent of all the people that overdose on drugs is, so conflating them is plainly incorrect.

I agree with you, and I'm reminded of this experiment which I think adds evidence to the idea that drug use and perhaps other vices are tied to how happy / fulfilled people are in life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

>but Japan’s suicide rates have dropped.

Yes as everywhere in the world.

>He was clearly joking,

Why? Because the US is so much better? It would be acually a joke, IF the US is much better...

EDIT: And im really no shure why you point to drug abuse...

Clearly the original poster was being sarcastic, in reference to those places being ranked as better for workers' rights in spite of being terrible places to work by most accounts.

The ITUC report itself rates South Korea below the US, placing `Korea (Republic of)` in the category of `No guarantee of rights`.

edit: https://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/ituc_globalrightsindex_2020...

Honestly when it comes to international cultureral sensitivity, I don't feel the hacker news crowd is exactly the most woke. I quite often see statements like these that are completely oblivious to the actual reality in other countries

The comment you're replying to was being snarky about Japan and South Korea.

Well, I certainly can think of more worker-friendly nations. Isn't Japan known for its toxic work culture?

That won't work until super rich & their puppet politicians continue to harass poorer masses with crap like socialism=communism

I hate to say it but, at this point this kinda stuff comes across as anti-American propaganda to me.

It’s always an assertion that the U.S. is terrible on some metric that upon further digging was measured in some arbitrary way to get the desired conclusion.

Here’s the thing: living in the United States, for a significant percentage of the population, is pretty awesome.

For people not within that group, maybe it is easy to believe that the U.S. is dystopian.

But IMO the solution might really be to keep working at extending the awesome to the rest of the people. Not be disingenuous about the awesome, that makes people want to tear everything down.

It's interesting to me that you perceive the US getting a bad evaluation as some sort of deliberate smear against America. If that were the case, you would expect to see the US mentioned in some detail in the actual report [1]. It's not; they primarily focus on labour violations in the developing world. The rating the US gets is pretty incidental.

While it's easy to see life in the US as awesome from our perspective, we work in tech. The median US income is about $40,000, and the lower quartile is $22,000 [2]. Fully a quarter of Americans live in the $0-$22,000 income bracket, and another quarter live in $22,000-$40,000.

> But IMO the solution might really be to keep working at extending the awesome to the rest of the people.

Then surely workers' rights are exactly what we should be discussing, right? Labour activism is what drives wages up in profitable industries. How is it "anti-American" to discuss problems which we're trying to solve -- if anything, it's pro-American, since it's part of an effort to improve America.

[1]: https://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/ituc_globalrightsindex_2020...

[2]: https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-individual-income-perce...

Whether or not the report targeted the US, the article certainly did.

It’s not clear that “worker’s rights” legislation and regulation is in any way related to spreading the awesome.

People tend to do as you just did, assert this as self evident, but that glosses over a whole category of political and social philosophy that strongly disagrees.

The United States is fantastically prosperous, and the relatively unregulated hiring environment may have been a component.

And I’m not talking about workers in tech, I don’t think their life is that awesome. I think people living in a small town in Kentucky with a beautiful little house and great food, plenty of nature, surrounded by friends and family. That’s the awesome so many Americans have.

The poorest states in US have higher wealth than the GDP/capita of say UK and other western EU countries.

What does that tell you?

> The poorest states in US have higher wealth than the GDP/capita of say UK and other western EU countries.

> What does that tell you?

Nothing.

Why would you compare wealth of a state (the aggregate of a stock) with GDP/capita, a per person flow. I mean, it's true, but it's also true that the poorest EU country has greater wealth than the GDP/capita of the richest US state.

Heck, the poorest country even in the process of joining the EU, Montenegro, has $26 billion in wealth, the US state, territory, or federal district with the highest GDP/capita is D.C. with $200,277, which is ~5 orders of magnitude less.

Putting aside that you're comparing the wealth of a state (a single amount of value) with a GDP (an amount of economic activity per year) per person, which makes no sense at all [0], it tells us that the GDP per capita can be horribly misleading; especially in countries known to have unusually high levels of economic inequality.

Bill Gates walks into a dive bar; that bar suddenly has the richest clientele in the city, but almost all of them are the same poverty stricken people they were ten seconds previously.

[0] It's like comparing a hundred dollars with fifty dollars per year spread amongst four people - the units of comparison just don't match at all.

Name an EU state that will charge you $275 for insulin.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47491964

People in the UK don't live in trailer parks

What is wrong with a trailer park. I’ve lived in a trailer park.

Is this just a random classist dig? Or are you under the impression that trailer parks are an unmitigated hell?

Some people in the U.K. do live in public housing, don’t know what it’s like, perhaps it is way nicer than a trailer park. But I don’t know, do you?

Maybe the perception is different but to me living in a caravan however big feels like one step above living in a motel which seems to be another thing that hand to mouth Americans have to put up with. You'd think that in a country as big and rich as America that workers could afford a home.

"Trailers" in trailer parks are not portable like a caravan or recreational vehicle.

They are full modular homes that are delivered by truck, yes, so they're initially on a trailer. But once they are "installed" they are full homes. They can't be moved on a whim, it would cost thousands of dollars to relocate a trailer home.

In other words, it's just a factory-built home that's delivered via truck in one piece.

Think of like a nice three bedroom apartment, that's what a brand new mobile home would get you. You can also get doublewides that are delivered on two trailers and put together into one home. Here's an example:

https://www.redmanhomesofindiana.com/home-plans-photos/advan...

Mobile homes can be built on an owned plot of land, or on rented space ("trailer parks").

Mobile homes may be one of the best values in America in terms of comfortable, detached living at a low cost. The idea that people in mobile homes live in squalor seems to me to be somewhat discriminatory.

Fair enough, I still don't like the sound of them one little bit though. No one in this country would consider one of those a house though, however well appointed they are. The way people living in them are portrayed on TV/film doesn't help either though.

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