Reply to post: Re: This is unnecessary

This always-on culture we're in is awful. How do we stop it? Oh, sorry, hold on – just had another notification

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: This is unnecessary

I don't think legislation is the answer to this at all. It's about organizations treating their employees like adults

Like most employment laws.

The problem is that while most employers will act decently, there are always the minority who don't. Look at the plethora of employment laws in this country (UK) and you'll see that a large proportion of them fall into the "don't really apply to most because for a decent employer it just makes sense". Rules that effectively say "don't injure or kill your employees, and do all you can to stop them injuring or killing themselves" are just common sense for most because it's just good business sense (there's a real cost to injuries) - but for a minority, providing safe working conditions is just a cost and you can always pick up another employee when one's no longer fit to work. Similarly, there is an explicit law about not making deductions (other than agreed and mandatory ones) from wages - again, a decent employer will know that stealing from your employees isn't good business sense, while some would see it as an opportunity to reduce the cost of running the business.

So this one is (mostly) about making sure that all employers do it - not just the ones that are good enough to be sensible & fair anyway.

And BTW - I've experienced different ends of the scale. I've worked for employers who have good (e.g.) sick pay policies - you know, they realise that having someone go into the office with a bad cold means that they'll give it to everyone else, so you get full pay for those odd days off (but have a discussion with HR if you take the wee-wee). And I've worked for an employer where nothing was anything more than the minimum imposed by law - so you had to juggle being sensible (i.e. not being a Typhoid Mary) and paying the bills (technically, non-statutory sick pay was at the discretion of the boss - guess how often he paid anyone for odd days off !)

And I've witnessed bullying where a manager stood over a junior and told him "sign this new contract now, or I;ll take back that extra pay you've had - and I can". The junior signed a new contract, taking away pretty well all his rights, because he couldn't afford to risk saying no - another colleague, more important to the company and with enough experience to know his rights, told the same manager where to put the new contract. I did report the bullying, but as with the other cases I reported - nothing happened because ... small company, the person you complain to is ... the person who's the problem.

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