SENATE BILL: Worker Retention and Firing Act (At Final Vote)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I will sponsor.

Senators have 24 hours to object.


You realize you can make and declare adopted things like sponsorship motions yourself, right Ontario?

Also final vote, tabling (with second) and a number of other motions, opening amendment and final vote motions etc etc.  In fact the only thing I haven't delegated is creating new threads to avoid difficulties with topic lines being out of date. Just like I said last session, this filling in will be most necessary on Sunday/Monday when my work schedule is the heaviest, so please feel free to advance the ball on those days.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Without objection so ordered on new sponsorship.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What are the next steps on this bill?

[tmthforu94]

I applaud former Senator Tack for putting solid effort into bill writing, but once again I find myself on the opposite side on one of his bills. Based on my moderate knowledge of HR policies and procedures, this bill doesn't really change much from what is current law, especially under work protections. In fact, I would argue that this bill weakens workers rights, as businesses will continuously use Section 4, Clause H as a justification for firing:

h) If the business is currently experiencing a net loss, or would experience it if said employee was not fired.

This clause can't really be proven, especially the latter half.

I have a book at home that goes through labor laws, but current federal law already requires companies to give a 60 day notice for any mass layoffs (defined as a certain %), otherwise be required to provide severance pay. My recommendation would be that we make adjustments to that law, or determine that current standard is sufficient. Either tonight or tomorrow, I'll try and find the language in the bill in question that addresses this, then provide more details and alternative solutions.

[Mr. Reactionary]

I have a book at home that goes through labor laws, but current federal law already requires companies to give a 60 day notice for any mass layoffs (defined as a certain %), otherwise be required to provide severance pay. My recommendation would be that we make adjustments to that law, or determine that current standard is sufficient. Either tonight or tomorrow, I'll try and find the language in the bill in question that addresses this, then provide more details and alternative solutions.

Its called the WARN Act. The last time we amended the WARN Act in game was part of the "We should help workers act" when we set a uniform statute of limitations for bringing claims under it. I think the main difference between that and this bill is that the WARN Act only applies to employers with a minimum number of employees, excludes government employers, and only applies to "mass layoffs" defined as x number of layoffs in like a 6 month period or something like that ... its structured so you cant easily avoid the requirements by structuring the layoffs over a period of months. WARN Act stipulates minimum advanced notice with penalties I believe (i may be misremembering) payable to workers calculated per day of inadequate notice. For instance if I am supposed to give you 60 days notice but I only give you 58 days notice each affected worker is entitled to 2 days worth of penalties.

Its been a few years since I had employment law.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I applaud former Senator Tack for putting solid effort into bill writing, but once again I find myself on the opposite side on one of his bills. Based on my moderate knowledge of HR policies and procedures, this bill doesn't really change much from what is current law, especially under work protections. In fact, I would argue that this bill weakens workers rights, as businesses will continuously use Section 4, Clause H as a justification for firing:

h) If the business is currently experiencing a net loss, or would experience it if said employee was not fired.

This clause can't really be proven, especially the latter half.

I have a book at home that goes through labor laws, but current federal law already requires companies to give a 60 day notice for any mass layoffs (defined as a certain %), otherwise be required to provide severance pay. My recommendation would be that we make adjustments to that law, or determine that current standard is sufficient. Either tonight or tomorrow, I'll try and find the language in the bill in question that addresses this, then provide more details and alternative solutions.

A scenario that could play out as well, is one where a company hires a bunch of lower wage people to put themselves into a deficit and then use that to layoff the hire paid help. I can see many companies using that exploit.

[Former President tack50]

I applaud former Senator Tack for putting solid effort into bill writing, but once again I find myself on the opposite side on one of his bills. Based on my moderate knowledge of HR policies and procedures, this bill doesn't really change much from what is current law, especially under work protections. In fact, I would argue that this bill weakens workers rights, as businesses will continuously use Section 4, Clause H as a justification for firing:

h) If the business is currently experiencing a net loss, or would experience it if said employee was not fired.

This clause can't really be proven, especially the latter half.

I have a book at home that goes through labor laws, but current federal law already requires companies to give a 60 day notice for any mass layoffs (defined as a certain %), otherwise be required to provide severance pay. My recommendation would be that we make adjustments to that law, or determine that current standard is sufficient. Either tonight or tomorrow, I'll try and find the language in the bill in question that addresses this, then provide more details and alternative solutions.

Well, this bill does try to force businesses to give out severance pay regardless of notice. That's the biggest difference between the WARN Act Mr. R described (and which I think is the current law) and this proposal.

Regarding 4.H, I agree it probably needs some work, both to avoid the abuses Yankee described and to make it something that can actually be proven. Maybe require 2 years of consecutive losses? An alternative would be to borrow more from RL and try to get a "mass layoff in case of big losses" regulation in here somewhere, though that would make the bill harder to comprehend of course (hence why I decided to consolidate that big procedure into just 4.H)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Regarding 4.H, I agree it probably needs some work, both to avoid the abuses Yankee described and to make it something that can actually be proven. Maybe require 2 years of consecutive losses? An alternative would be to borrow more from RL and try to get a "mass layoff in case of big losses" regulation in here somewhere, though that would make the bill harder to comprehend of course (hence why I decided to consolidate that big procedure into just 4.H)

Trying to restart the interaction here:

When it comes to matters when you are have to deal with a lot of stuff and also need a minimum level of complexity, sometimes you have to split it up or at least start by addressing the first level of issues before proceeding to the next. This was and is the approach taken on health care since just the public access/insurance reform aspect is very complex on its own and one can see how long a bill just dealing with that was and you still have areas that need to be beefed up and whole other aspects of health care (delivery, drugs, etc etc) that were barely touched or not at all simply because if we had the bill would be longer than my combined posting history on Party Switch/Static/Evolution discussions across three or four different boards stretching back to 2013.

On some issues you have to build tall as they say in the Paradox game community and that means you have to focus less on expensiveness and more development of a narrower area.

[Former President tack50]

Well, the reason I didn't want to borrow the "mass layoff" regulations from RL is simply because mass layoffs are bad for workers (even if they can be unavoidable in the cases of recessions and what not).

Maybe a possible solution would be to simply change that to something like this?

h) If the business has experienced a net loss over the last fiscal year

Or possibly over the last 2-3 fiscal quarters. I'm pretty sure even the smallest family business still does some accounting and proving a net loss isn't hard at all.

Another way out would be to simply get rid of this exception entirely, but that would lead to big problems in the labour market once we hit a big recession. Companies would have to fire employees with compensations, which might threaten the existance of said business in the first place and would lead to more bankrupcies.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Well, the reason I didn't want to borrow the "mass layoff" regulations from RL is simply because mass layoffs are bad for workers (even if they can be unavoidable in the cases of recessions and what not).

Maybe a possible solution would be to simply change that to something like this?

h) If the business has experienced a net loss over the last fiscal year

Or possibly over the last 2-3 fiscal quarters. I'm pretty sure even the smallest family business still does some accounting and proving a net loss isn't hard at all.

Another way out would be to simply get rid of this exception entirely, but that would lead to big problems in the labour market once we hit a big recession. Companies would have to fire employees with compensations, which might threaten the existance of said business in the first place and would lead to more bankrupcies.

Its a tricky balancing act, because we are essentially forcing the companies to finance an already unsustainable employment model for an extra period of time depending on number of quarters decided on and thus in doing so the risk of bankruptcy and even more layoffs increases dramatically, depending on the circumstances.

People would also be more reluctant to hire in the first place for fear that if things go badly or even just not as planned, they will be forced to retain workers they could afford previously but cannot now.

An example I like to refer to is the collapse of the Penn Central in the late 1960's. They had merged two competing railroads but were bound by union contracts to retain employees and were unable to reduce any of the duplicated lines because of federal regulation. The end result was that the company was drowning in red ink and had to resort to financial trickery that is now super illegal post-Enron just to delay the inevitable. After two years, they asked the government for a bailout and were denied, so they declared bankruptcy. The people placed in charge by the court came to the same conclusion immediately, and asked for help both with the regulations and financially and were denied. So they announced they were shutting down the railroad, and liquidating it, depriving the entire NE and most of the Midwest of rail access. Finally Congress got the memo, deregulated the lines, relived them of the union contract burdens and created Conrail to absorb the bankrupt lines until they could be sold off.

I am very much understanding and concern about mass layoffs, but at the same time it has to be realized that companies decline and fail all the time, and if you aren't careful you can create a mess that is even worse, like a liquidation instead of say a restructuring.

I don't want workers treated like cattle or machines, I feel that way myself as it is where I work and I hate it. There has to be some way to ensure that workers are protected without causing a worse mass layoff in the process.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It says check thread for a reason in the topic line.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Grrr!!!

[Devout Centrist]

Alright, proposing the following amendment:

SENATE BILL

To discourage firing employees and give compensation to employees fired without cause

Be it Enacted by both Houses of Congress assembled

Worker Retention and Firing Act

SECTION I: NAME
1) This bill may be cited as the Worker Retention and Firing Act

SECTION II: DEFINITIONS
1) A fixed term contract shall be defined as a contract where the employee's relation with the employer expires after a limited amount of time
2) An indefinite contract shall be defined as a contract where the employee's relation with the employer lasts for an unlimited amount of time until the employee or the employer decide otherwise.

SECTION III: WORKER PROTECTIONS
1) Employers shall have the right to terminate a contract with their employees at any time they desire
2) Without regards to the above, employers shall pay the equivalent of 20 days of salary for every year the fired employee has been employed at the company.
3) Employers shall not pay any compensation whatsoever if the firing is declared a justified firing. Causes for a justified firing shall include:

a) Repeated absence or lack of punctuality to work
b) Lack of discipline or obedience at work
c) Physical or verbal offences against the employer, co-workers, or the relatives of any of them
d) The breach of good faith or abuse of the employer's trust regarding the fired worker's job performance
e) Continuous and voluntary reductions in work performance
f) Drunkenness or impairedness at work
g) Harrassment to co-workers, the employer, or any of their family members based on ethnic, religious or gender based reasons
h) If the business is currently experiencing a net loss, or would experience it if said employee was not fired.

4) Employees who voluntarily resign shall not receive any compensation whatsoever.
5) Employers shall not pay any compensation for the expiration of fixed term contracts, but they will still need to pay the required compensation for an early unjustified firing.
6) No employee may be hired by a company for more than one year under one or several fixed term contracts. When the contract expires, said employee may not be hired again by the same business during 1 day for every 2 days under a fixed term contract, unless the new contract offered is an indefinite term contract.


SECTION IV: IMPLEMENTATION
1) This bill shall become effective inimmediately after passage
2) The period considered eligible for compensation under section III.2 shall start from the day this bill is signed by the president of Atlasia, or his veto is overriden as specified by the Atlasian constitution

[tmthforu94]

Whoops, we let this slip! DC's amendment is a good step in the right direction.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Sponsor feedback?!!!!

[ON Progressive]

The amendment is friendly.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

SENATE BILL

To discourage firing employees and give compensation to employees fired without cause

Be it Enacted by both Houses of Congress assembled

Worker Retention and Firing Act

SECTION I: NAME
1) This bill may be cited as the Worker Retention and Firing Act

SECTION II: DEFINITIONS
1) A fixed term contract shall be defined as a contract where the employee's relation with the employer expires after a limited amount of time
2) An indefinite contract shall be defined as a contract where the employee's relation with the employer lasts for an unlimited amount of time until the employee or the employer decide otherwise.

SECTION III: WORKER PROTECTIONS
1) Employers shall have the right to terminate a contract with their employees at any time they desire
2) Without regards to the above, employers shall pay the equivalent of 20 days of salary for every year the fired employee has been employed at the company.
3) Employers shall not pay any compensation whatsoever if the firing is declared a justified firing. Causes for a justified firing shall include:

a) Repeated absence or lack of punctuality to work
b) Lack of discipline or obedience at work
c) Physical or verbal offences against the employer, co-workers, or the relatives of any of them
d) The breach of good faith or abuse of the employer's trust regarding the fired worker's job performance
e) Continuous and voluntary reductions in work performance
f) Drunkenness or impairedness at work
g) Harrassment to co-workers, the employer, or any of their family members based on ethnic, religious or gender based reasons
h) If the business is currently experiencing a net loss, or would experience it if said employee was not fired.

4) Employees who voluntarily resign shall not receive any compensation whatsoever.
5) Employers shall not pay any compensation for the expiration of fixed term contracts, but they will still need to pay the required compensation for an early unjustified firing.
6) No employee may be hired by a company for more than one year under one or several fixed term contracts. When the contract expires, said employee may not be hired again by the same business during 1 day for every 2 days under a fixed term contract, unless the new contract offered is an indefinite term contract.


SECTION IV: IMPLEMENTATION
1) This bill shall become effective inimmediately after passage
2) The period considered eligible for compensation under section III.2 shall start from the day this bill is signed by the president of Atlasia, or his veto is overriden as specified by the Atlasian constitution

Sponsor Feedback: Friendly
Status: Senators have 24 hours to object.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The amendment is adopted.

[Devout Centrist]

I think this resolves many of the concerns brought up earlier in this thread? Any more comments on this?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I motion for a final vote, Senators have 24 hours to object.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A final Vote is now open on the underlying legislation, Senators please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.

[Devout Centrist]

Aye

[Comrade Funk]

Aye

[Vern]

Aye

[ON Progressive]

Aye