Just following on from this: https://lemmy.nz/post/1134134
Ex-Tesla employee reveals shocking details on worker conditions: 'You get fired on the spot.'
I'm curious about how far this goes.
You can't get fired on the spot in NZ, unless you like, shot someone or set the building on fire or something really bad.
But it seems that in the US, there's little to no protections for employees when their bosses are dickheads?
Also, any personal stories of getting fired on the spot?
It's not that there aren't any, it's that the protections for workers are abysmal compared to protections for businesses.
For example, if I stole money from my employer, they could have me arrested and press charges for theft.
On the other hand, if I am able to prove that my employer hasn't been paying me fairly and has been shorting my paychecks, I can spend a lot of money to take them to court, and in most cases, all that will happen is the business will have to... pay you back exactly what they already owed you. They won't pay fines, no one will go to jail, and it's an "oops" and then slap on the wrist kind of deal.
Worker protections exist, but the deck is stacked against us.
Doesn’t even have to be directly stealing money, “time theft” can be prosecuted.
wage theft is literally the largest form of theft in the WORLD by the way
You're thinking of wage theft. "Time theft" is when you slack off on the job.
Or you could file a complaint with the DOL and let them take care of it -- they do not fuck around.
Basically the case, yes. It varies state by state and there are some federal laws but, the enforcement is lacking to say the least and funding tends to be gutted to make it worse. Effectively, since Reagan, there's been an unending attack on labor rights and regulations. Currently, multiple states are passing laws to bring back child labor and workers who try to unionize are getting axed with no real repercussions.
Got a source on the child labour thing? Not doubting you, but as a non-American I'm confused as to how the hell youse aren't in open revolt.
EDIT: Responding individually later. In short, fuck. In long, thanks all for sending me those links, I'm gonna go wash my eyes out with bleach and attempt to un-know all that I now know
You likely won't see this on the coasts, where riots would definitely occur, but throughout the middle of the country all kinds of wild shit can happen and we're so disconnected from each other at this point that it basically feels like it's happening in another country.
The union is weak is how it's being got away with is my take on it.
Yeah... Others really beat me to it. It's pretty fucked up.
It was still a constant fight but, union membership was at 23.3%, annual strikes and work stoppages were measured in hundreds, wages increased proportionally to productivity gained through technology, and executive salaries were 5-10x average workers'.
Reagan, who had benefitted from membership in the Screen Actors Guild, launched a political war against unions and labor rights, starting with the firing of 11k striking air traffic controllers who he banned from working for the Federal government (a ban only lifted in 1993) and dissolved their union (a fun sidenote to this being that PATCO were the only union that endorsed Reagan and a final "fuck you" cherry on top was the renaming of the DC airport to Reagan National). This showed business that, at least under a GOP government, strikebreaking was again allowed.
All that precipitated rapid decline in union membership for workers in the US, leading to a cycle of increased share of wealth to the top, which was used to buy more legislation to erode labor's power and roll back protections, which increased the share of wealth to the top...ad infinitum. Now, union membership is 11.3%, exec pay is 400x that of workers, and compensation has completely decoupled from productivity and stagnated.
And a reminder that Biden, supported by the dems including “good” politicians like AOC (lol) smashed the rail strike just this year
It’s bad folks
This exactly. Breaking that strike was pure betrayal and clearly showed that, while more left than others in the Democratic party, she's still going to go to bat for business over workers.
“Preventing us from exerting our right to strike as union workers, Congress has imposed this contract which was voted down by most of the freight rail workers in the United States,” said freight conductor Nick Wurst
Looks like that's a "no".
Uhh that hurts to read. Because I imagine the unions must have otherwise made up for the lack of a legal safety net
I live in an at will state.
I once got fired when I couldnt remember which toolbox i got a wrench from in a large warehouse lol.
Honestly that's legal grounds to mail them human feces in a package carefully designed to leak once it gets into their mail pile.
I was under a guy who managed the warehouse by himself for like 15 years and he could not conceptualize someone who didnt understand it as well as he did. The wrench was the final thing, but the guy had some weirdo problems with people.
I was also fired after i toom a 3 week long vacation in Vegas in feb 2020. Covid had not quite hit yet but it was clearly building. I returned and my job called me the day before i was to come back to work and simply told me not to bother. I was never given a reason.
At will states are pretty fucked up. Employers can turn your shit upside down on a whim.
At-will worker here. One time I got fired for not remembering my boss's son's birthday (a son who I had never met and was also 6 years old)
It's tyranny. It's having a king who can take your home and even the food from your mouth at a whim.
That's not what "at-will employment" means. It's an agreement between employer and employer that they agree to employment, and they both have the right to terminate for any or no reason. I have fired employees and been fired myself by employers based on this. Why use "false pretenses " when you don't have to. "You're fired." 'Why?" "Because you are." End of story.
What? My dad was in law enforcement, kinda. I work in facilities maintenance, not remotely inherited. But whatever you want to tell yourself.
Did you read the part where I was also fired from jobs and it was no big deal? Why wouldn't I need to fight it? Not everything and everyone is evil bigot sexist racist corporate. Sometimes employees need to be terminated for reasons beyond what exists in your preprogrammed little mind. Protected class terminations is not what we're discussing here. Take your soap box elsewhere. And have a nice day.
Wow. I hope you feel better about yourself. Clearly you need it. I have no interest in continu ing this. You are wrong about me on almost every count but I'm not interested in justifying myself to you. Go back to reddit/Twitter, please.
The problem is you legally don't have the right to "terminate for any reason" when it comes to a number of protected classes, but these laws make it so we have to rely on you being stupid enough to create a massive trail of evidence (easy part with small business tyrants), but also litigate it for potentially years on end - harder
You're wrong. Employers do have the right to terminate members of a protected class as long as it's not because they are a protected class.
I fired someone in a protected class maybe a year ago. They were, by their own admission incompetent. They were also falsifying their time card. All documented. I've done the same with a straight white guy. Is that my prejudice?
Look, I know it happens wrongfully. But don't accuse me of shit that you have no basis for. It detracts from your whole argument.
and they both have the right to terminate for any or no reason
except there's a bit of a power dynamic here isn't there
There doesn't have to be. I don't see or treat it that way. Yes, my employer has power over me (I'm not a business owner). As do I over them, to an extent. But it doesn't have to be an adversarial relationship.
You're delusional. Your quote is not remotely what I said. That's disingenuous, at best. Idgaf what the rest of the thread says. Many people can group together and be wrong; it's fairly common. Again, I do not own a small business or any other form of business. You are utterly clueless in this conversation. You seem like a troll and will be treated as such.
At-Will Employment yeah you can get fired pretty much on the spot for no reason
edit: like yea there's labor protections if you're a protected class but if they fire you for a bunk reason it's up to you to sue the business and prove that in the first place which most of us can't do for obvious reasons
If you aren't part of a union in the US, you're probably working without a contract in an agreement called 'at will' employment where this is 100% legal. This is how the vast majority of jobs operate
There's a single benefit there, and that's not having to read through contracts which are boring as all hell, but totally necessary for a modern society.
Theoretically yes, but they’re set up in such a way so that there’s always a work around or technicality or means testing that, in reality, means that poor, marginalized, disabled/ neurodivergent people, or non-English speakers are basically totally fucked
they exist, but breaking them will net you a letter from the court telling you to stop breaking the law, and like a 1000$ fine so...
If I had a nickel for every time my boss fired somebody so humiliatingly that they forgot to take their jackets with them on the way out the door, I'd have two nickels.
I didn't observe this myself -- she e-mailed everyone she didn't fire asking if any of us wanted a jacket and went on to describe the ones her victims were wearing just last week.
There's actually quite a few at the federal level -- not enough, but they exist. There's a decent overview of the federal labor laws available here. Individual states also have additional laws, and shockingly "liberal" (in the American sense) states tend to have stronger worker protections than "conservative" ones.
Of course scumbag employers count on most people not knowing those laws or how to report violations and will actively push misinformation about them.
Edit:
As a bonus, have a Walmart
anti-union propagandatraining video, because Walmart cares about you..Wow, that made me feel icky to watch. And not just because of the 10p resolution.
Being fired on the spot hardly ever happens. Usually the problem is that employers demand additional work for no increase in pay or better working conditions while maintaining a toxic or outright dangerous work environment because they know most people won't quit or even complain. That goes double for immigrants who are either undocumented, and have little recourse, or need their job to maintain their visa. Being fired on the spot sounds sort of quaint compared to what we usually see happening in American workplaces.
Some people are glossing over that "at will" is a double edged sword. Everyone talks about how the employer can fire you on the spot. The employee can also leave on the spot. In comparison. some countries require the employee to stay at the company for a period of additional time before they can quit. This could be months depending on how long they've been working.
Now does this employee benefit make "at will" worthwhile? Probably not.
At will employment is really the crux that erodes all other possibilities of strong worker rights. In most European nations, firing employees functions on a sort of whitelist principle. You may not fire your employee except in one of this specific set of situations. This also puts a burden of proof on the company to demonstrate cause for dismissal. The situation in (most of) the US is more like a blacklist: all reasons for firing an employee are valid except for this specific set of situations. Now the burden of proof is on the employee, to show his situation was part of the blacklist.
If any (or) no reason for dismissal is a valid reason, it takes the tooth out of any worker's rights law you might seek to enforce. If you cause trouble for the company you can simply be fired (for "no reason" of course). Yes, that's technically illegal, and you can sue and/or contact the department of labor. They now have to investigate and find proof that you were fired for an illegal reason. Whether you get justice now depends on whether the department of labor is adequately funded, how good (expensive) your lawyer is, how well the company covered their tracks...
This is why many people in the US complain that "they have labor laws, the main problem is lack of enforcement!" The structure of the system is such that good enforcement is required for workers to benefit, but businesses benefit from bad enforcement.
I don't really disagree with any of this, I'm just saying at-will is a bi-directional street, which I haven't really seen mentioned in this thread. Being able to quit at any time is technically a right that benefits the worker.
Now in practicality does this benefit most people? No.
Yes, but I'm pretty sure the only time that you can't just walk out is if you're literally a slave.
I thought we were talking about legality, not physical restraint. For example, in Belgium an employee can be required to give notice of up to 13 weeks.
You should know that when you want to leave, they will want you to leave too.
I mean if you're a nice person you'd train someone or make tech transfer, but that doesn't take months... So you being paid slackin around or you leave quite quickly?
The other double edged quality is that businesses may be more hesitant to hire anyone who is seen as risk if protections are too strong. Take France, where the youth unemployment rate is chronically around 18%. Some find work in the informally economy, where paradoxically they have even fewer protections.
