Comment by mflaherty22
2 days ago
Very reductionist comment- if you're an elected representative and you leave early to take a vacation knowing you'll be missing votes, you're not doing your job..
2 days ago
Very reductionist comment- if you're an elected representative and you leave early to take a vacation knowing you'll be missing votes, you're not doing your job..
> knowing you'll be missing votes, you're not doing your job
If you knowingly miss a vote, that’s part of the job. If your OOO gets played, that’s fucking up.
Perhaps there should not be a vote while so many representatives are absent, unless it’s about a truly critical issue, like war.
They did not know this, this was an emergency vote literally injected two days ago.
Ever worked with Europeans? This is how they treat work. In their culture taking vacation and actually switching off is part of the job. I'm not making a value judgement but their approach to work is very different to what some of us are used to.
So they should prorogue the entire Parliament and they all take a month off together. Why the fuck should some particular province or riding or whatever miss out on representation on an important issue just because their rep is out for a week on an island somewhere? Could they not have a proxy / surrogate??
They are already doing that. There is an official summer break until September 02.
taking vacation and switching off is actually the sane thing for a person to do. the problem is that there is no provision for your post being covered while on vacation, and it's a problem in the enterprise/organization.
imo that a representative of the people misses a vote should just not be acceptable under any circumstances.
that's of course if we had to take "democracy" as an actually meaningful representation of the people. this was a cheap political maneuver to get a bill passed. happens everywhere. they would have gotten the bill through by any other means anyway.
that would be in an ideal democracy, though, in reality european parlamentarians don't even draft laws, they are only able to sign off on laws drafted by shady appointees of an equally shady and largely unelected (by the people) comission, take it or leave it. that, photo ops and declarations is their whole job, it shouldn't be too complicated to have a fucking substitute when on vacation.
I don’t consider these politicians typical employees.
Do you think CEOs take vacation where they cannot be reached? If it does happen, it is a very rare exception.
This. When I need to take my summer vacation, I need to request it to my manager in due time so the team can plan customer deliveries accordingly, and in my last day before leaving I need to do a handover of my open tasks to whoever will do the work in my absence. I can't just spontaneously decide one day that tomorrow I'm leaving for 2-4 weeks on vacation with no notice and no handover to my team.
What's stopping MEPs from having to do that? Do they have literally zero responsibilities and accountabilities? Because their job is pretty critical for our society an security, even if a trained monkey could do it in theory.
Oh, so it's also your fault when you plan, and get approved a vacation, and then in the middle of it (lets's say on week 2 out of 4) you're notified that in two days you must be in the office, or, according to you, you should get canned?
I don't know... I'm not European so I don't really care, but I feel like there are some jobs that have an existing overlap of _duty_. I was in the military, and PTO was viewed as a privilege, and sometimes leave was cancelled, but that makes sense because of the position. Other civilian jobs, like firefighters, police, maybe some medical practitioners, might have this same thing. Politicians I would say is definitely one of those positions, where you should actually be in "public service". Officials in a democracy are supposed to be elected not because we need people to fill vacant jobs, but because we need people to be on duty to make the hard decisions.
Basically, I don't think politicians should be held to the same standard as some SWE making note-taking apps.
4 replies →
It is my limited understanding this is other way around - you plan your vacation, you get it approved, then on your vacation an emergency vote to reduce your salary is called and you automatically voted yes.
> I can't just spontaneously decide one day [...]
Sure you can. What unstoppable force is going to prevent you?
You might find out there are undesirable consequences if you make that choice, but that is only if the employer decides to bring undesirable consequences. MEP employers in particular are generally apathetic about having an employee on staff. Extremely so — to the point that they won't even take a minute out of multiple years to say "hi" to the person they hired, never mind give any direction to the employee.
It doesn't have to be that way, but when the employer doesn't care, that is the way it will be.