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That is very bad. I was always curious how life is in Europe (being the first world) but didn't think that's how the state of affairs would be.

Is it because of unions?

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It's also because of unions that far few people are losing their life at the workplace. Seems like a reasonable trade-off to me.

It's not "Europe", it's parts of it. France is particularly bad I hear, supposedly paralysed by unions. In the UK things are much better because unions lost a lot of their power in the 80s under Thatcher.

Unions are not universally bad. As with all things it's a matter of dosage. Germany has pretty strong unions, too...

FWIW, France has a lower proportion of unionized workforce than the US, and a lot lower than the UK in the public sector. It's more about cultural differences than any single thing like unions.

Oh, I didn't know that. I've just heard bad things about it.

Although I might be confusing this with the government business laws in France, which are also a bit messy. There's a reason lots of French companies have exactly 49 employees.

I found it amusing that, when in college, the only people who objected to the on-campus bar's pool table usage scheme - "winner stays, loser pays" - in the whole four years I was there, were French :)

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