Comment by belval
4 years ago
> She had been working 6-7 days a week for over a month, but wage theft was keeping her under 40 hours a week paid.
There are already laws against wage theft, if her current employer is already ignoring the existing laws, what exactly will improve with an additional one? Bad work environment won't be improved by a ham-fisted legislation around when your employer is allowed to talk with you.
This kind of good intention laws can only be used by employees that already have some leverage and are in a decent work environment. Say the no-text-after-5 law is implemented in the US, what exactly do you think will happen when your relative quotes it to her employer? In an at-will state she'll get fired, in a not-at-will state she will get fired for a bogus reason.
Powerless people don't magically gain power with shitty edge-case laws like this. Create a social net that allows her to quit without dying of starvation one month later or going bankrupt from lack of insurance. That will give the poorest among us some actual leverage.
>Create a social net that allows her to quit without dying of starvation one month later or going bankrupt from lack of insurance.
That's a very good point! And true. But it's not a xor situation, you can have both as they handle different things. Regardless of any social security net, you can still be bullied or manipulated into yielding your free time. It's good to have it written into law that it's against the law to contact a worker outside their contracted hours.
> But it's not a xor situation
I did not argue that it was, I meant that the counter argument of the person I was replying to was moot. Vulnerable people stay vulnerable and those laws are just basically just cosmetic.
> Regardless of any social security net, you can still be bullied or manipulated into yielding your free time.
Yes, but I am old fashioned and that's where I break from some of the takes in thread. If you can say no, then it's your responsibility to say no. If you are bullied at work or manipulated while having a social net and you choose to endure then I think the responsibility lies with you as you make no effort to improve your situation.
Now my last point is entirely an opinion based on my values, I can recognize that, but I hope it clears up why I believe in a social net that prevents abuse while also opposing laws like the one discussed.