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

[Former President tack50]

Thank you! This bill intends to protect workers from arbitrary firings by imposing penalites and a severance pay on firings that are done without a reason. I modeled it somewhat off a real law here (though this is common across Europe), with very similar exceptions albeit with some differences:

>Severance pay is reduced to 20 days per year (33 RL). Mostly to ensure a softer transition period, but this could be adjusted in the future.
>Added an exception for businesses experiencing losses. I think there's already one in RL law, but it's a lot more complicated and would add too much complexity (it's a game after all )

I also made the bill start counting only from the moment it is passed, in order to ensure a soft transition and avoid a spike in unemployment when it is passed.

I will probably have to ammend this, probably to eliminate/alter III.1 to ensure that firings under discriminatory reasons (like firing someone for their race, or firing a pregnant woman for being pregnant) are still illegal.

I would probably also add smaller severance pay for other kinds of contract terminations; like for example for the expiration of a contract, or some other forms of justified firings I didn't include and just learned about (like say, justified absences/delays or bad performance at work)

[Former President tack50]

Do you consider having your driver's license suspended if its required for your job to be allowable?

As the bill currently stands, it would be considered unjustifiable (though it's certainly a justified cause).

Though the business could make a case based on reason a), but it probably wouldn't work. Probably a good idea to include it to be safe

[Former President tack50]

Can you explain to me what Section III, clause 6 does?

That part has an slightly different intention from the rest of the bill (albeit still very related) and is probably one of the most original parts (as opposed to RL inspired).

It tries to give workers extra job security by mandating that no term limited contracts can be longer than a year. If you want to keep your employee longer, you have to give them an indefinite contract. Otherwise they are out. Presumably the 1 year temporary contract would be more than enough for the business to determine whether the employee is a good one they should keep, or a bad one they should replace.

If you want to hire them again with a term limited contract, you have to wait for at least half a year (assuming the contract lasted for the whole year). This exception is intended for seasonal workers where it wouldn't make sense to hire them for a full year (say, a job at a ski resort, where you could hire the worker for 6 months, then rehire him the next winter). Maybe the cooldown could be tweaked to a 3:1 or even 4:1 ratio as opposed to 2:1 (so a teacher can work for 9 months and be hired only 3 months later after the summer)

[Former President tack50]

Can you explain to me what Section III, clause 6 does?

That part has an slightly different intention from the rest of the bill (albeit still very related) and is probably one of the most original parts (as opposed to RL inspired).

It tries to give workers extra job security by mandating that no term limited contracts can be longer than a year. If you want to keep your employee longer, you have to give them an indefinite contract. Otherwise they are out. Presumably the 1 year temporary contract would be more than enough for the business to determine whether the employee is a good one they should keep, or a bad one they should replace.

If you want to hire them again with a term limited contract, you have to wait for at least half a year (assuming the contract lasted for the whole year). This exception is intended for seasonal workers where it wouldn't make sense to hire them for a full year (say, a job at a ski resort, where you could hire the worker for 6 months, then rehire him the next winter). Maybe the cooldown could be tweaked to a 3:1 or even 4:1 ratio as opposed to 2:1 (so a teacher can work for 9 months and be hired only 3 months later after the summer)

RIP my IRL job

If possible, could you give any specifics as for why it wouldn't work with certain jobs (including your IRL job). I tried to avoid a situation where employers could get around this new bill by say, simply renewing one week contracts forever (actually, that would be counterproductive).

[Former President tack50]

Not really sure what the point of this bill is...surely a boss can just say someone was drunk at work and not have to pay the compensation, regardless of the truth?

Also most employees are paid on a bi-weekly basis, so "20 days" is an awkward amount of time.

The burden of proof would be on the side of the employer, not the empolyee. So if a boss just fired someone on those grounds without proof, there would be a trivial lawsuit and the employee would easily win, with the employer being forced to pay the compensation.

As for 20 days, didn't realize employees were usually paid bi-weekly (do you mean twice a month with that?). I agree in that case it's an awkward amount of time.

I'd say 21 days instead of 20 (equivalent to one and a half paychecks) would be a good number then?

[Former President tack50]

So I work for a local government. Ive been in continuous employment with them for more than a year but my contract always expires at the end of the fiscal year (they agreed to renew it another year last week). There tend to be a lot of jobs like that in Government because finances change and the people's representatives have to decide what gets cut and renewed each year based off finances. If told they could only create new jobs if they lasted less than a year or were permanent expenses a lot of government employers would opt for caution and not create that job to avoid getting trapped with a job they may not want permanent. Based off the summary, my employer would be required to lay me off for what 6 months before rehiring me? I couldn't afford to be unemployed for 6 months. I dont like some distant bureaucrat interposing themself between my employer and me to kill my job, a job both me and my employer agreed to. Contracts need a certain degree of flexibility and I just dont see much benefit in effectively outlawing a common form of employment contract just to try and bluff employers into making hiring decisions they dont want to make. It will likely end up with a lot of us with constantly renewing job contracts losing those jobs. I think those of us involved should be trusted to enter into our own contracts rather than having the federal government say regardless of what both the employee and employer want, the feds have decided that I am not allowed to work for 6 months and its apparently in my own best interest and im just too stupid to notice.

Im also uncomfortable with this bill redefining what is justified in firing an employee and reducing it to a short, purportedly exhaustive  list. I've overseen the justifiable firing of bad employees for reasons not listed. While I respect the goals of this bill, it creates a lot more issues than it solves and represents a big change in Atlasian employment law.

Well, I'd argue employees deserve job security, and constantly renewing contracts is literally the opposite of that. There are people who are locked into weekly or monthly contracts who can't know if next month they will see their contract renewed.

If an employee is a good employee, they should be given a permanent position, and just fire them when they are not needed with the due compensation. If an employee is a bad one, just don't renew their contract of course. One year should be more than enough to try out a new employee.

Remember this bill doesn't make unjustified firings illegal, it just makes employers have to pay a compensation. This also doesn't make temprorary/seasonal jobs illegal either.

I guess there are more justified reasons for firing someone, but I imagine making an exhaustive list would be very hard if not impossible.

I also agree this is a very big change to employment law. In fact I won't lie and I will say that this bill will probably increase unemployment over time slightly (so the "new normal" would be say 6% unemployment instead of 4%). The question is whether it's worth it to have 2% more people unemployed so the remaining 94% have better working conditions.

The most surpring part about that actually is the fact that constantly renewed contracts are not just a thing in the private sector but also by government employees to be honest.

Mr. Reactionary essentially is confirming my fears with regards to what would be the outcome even if it be unintended in this case. We simply have a situation where in the question to try and protect some employees who may be in an unfavorable situation, we would be eliminating not only their jobs but the jobs of many others who are yes in constantly renewed contracts but at the same time are not being taken advantage of in some way. I mean is anyone going to say that Mr. R is being taken advantage of in his situation?

I will be the one arguing Mr. R is being taken advantage of, even if it is voluntarily

I don't think this would kill that many jobs. For jobs in those situations I'd hope and expect employers to transition their employees to permanent contracts for the most part, and if they need to fire someone down the line just fire them (or cut hours or something).

[Former President tack50]

Before I leave the Senate, I would like to present the following ammendment after taking note of all the initial flaws

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; firings done by discriminatory reasons shall be considered illegal and the worker readmitted to their workplace as soon as possible. This also includes the firing of pregnant women or parents of children below 9 months in age.
2) 3) Without regards to the above Section III.1, employers shall pay the fired employee the equivalent of 20 21 days of salary for every year the fired employee has been employed at the company.

3) 4) 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.
i) If the worker is suddenly physically or legally unable to perform his job duties, unless said inability is caused by a workplace related accident or injury

5) The required compensation to pay shall be reduced in half if the worker is fired for the following reasons:

a) Lack of adaptation of the worker to changes in his workplace; as long as the worker has been given appropiate preparation to adapt to those changes
b) Justified absences or lack of punctuality that account for at least 25% of days in 4 months (consecutive or not) over the last year

4) 6) Employees who voluntarily resign shall not receive any compensation whatsoever.
5) 7) Employers shall not pay any compensation equivalent to 7 days of salary for every year at the company for the expiration of fixed term contracts, but they will still need to pay the full 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 6 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 inmediately after passage
2) The period considered eligible for compensation under sections III.2 III.4, III.5 or III.7 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

Changes:

Added protection against discriminatory firings, including those of pregnant women or parents of babies.

Changed from 20 to 21 days of compensation (one and a half paychecks) in order to have more rounded numbers

Added an extra exception for Mr. R's example of a worker who suddenly is legally unable to do his job (like a truck driver who loses his license) or physically unable (say, a cook who suddenly loses an arm), with an exception for workplace injuries or accidents.

Added 2 extra exceptions where the compensation would still be paid, but only in half (75% of a paycheck)

Added an small extra compensation for the expiration of fixed term contracts, equivalent to half a paycheck.

Reduced the cooldown time from 2:1 all the way to 6:1; so a person whose year-long contract expires would be able to be rehired after only 2 months.

[Former President tack50]

I will sponsor.

Thank you!

[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)

[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.

[Former President tack50]

When a bill you propose 2 Congresses ago still hasn't veen passed

Aye