Why do American employees allow themselves be exploited?

Soon, I will have worked for a year remotely for a US company and the more I learn, the more I see the employment laws are truly horrific with employees having next to no rights, especially the lower-paid employees. I have fought tooth and nails with the HR department in my company to get the employees benefits, which should not be benefits at all but rights. Unfortunately, I can not affect the other departments. When looking at the local laws and laws neighboring countries, the lack of employee rights in US truly makes it look like a 3rd world country, where the employee exploitation is a commonplace.

Health-care as a benefit should be mandatory at any job, at any hours. A healthy employee is significantly more productive compared to a sick employee and a lot of illnesses are preventable. I could not imagine being in a constant stress of being one sickness away from bankruptcy or having no health insurance at all. There are companies who provide it, but generally such benefits goes towards higher paid employees.

Vacation time should be mandated by law. People need time off to relax. Not taking a day off in years, is not something to be proud of, but a stupidity, not caring about ones health. I have heard horror stories of people being fired due to having family emergency, going to a funeral or wedding. Even going to a doctor can lead to PIP or other issues at work for many. In most EU countries, you are mandated to take at least a month in a year, but even more in many. I personally receive 56 days each year, 28 mandatory including one 2 week vacation and 28 as benefit.

There should be unlimited paid sick leave. A sick employee can not work well and can potentially infect other employees or customers. In many cases, working while sick can cause long-term health issues. Some years, ago I created a thread in rant about an employee coming in sick. I was extremely close to firing him for his recklessness and stupidity. If a young child falls ill, a parent should be able to take time off to take care of them without repercussions at work. I recently found some post online, where some company stated: "Sick pay is for an employee. Your child is not employee." No humanity in my eyes..

New mothers should be able to care for their children during the first year or years of their children. It is incredibly important for the development of the child. Here the paid maternity leave is 564 days and company needs to keep your position for 3 years.

The so-called at-will employment is one of the worst concepts, I have ever heard. It also tends to be one-sided. Company can fire you any time, but if you do not give proper notice, you are unlikely to be able to use the company as a reference. One of my friends was fired for refusing to do unpaid overtime, as he had family appointment after work.

Why do so many Americans let themselves be exploited by their employees, sacrificing their health, family and personal life for the companies. I know many will call such laws socialism and will bring up the importance of free market, but as it is visible, the free market is not bringing the benefits to a large part of Americans, while European countries are just as competitive globally and the employment rights do not interfere with the unemployment rates.

The American MSM and Public schools do wonders for educating present and future workers. 😃

Just look at the results for the last 60 years. 😊

a reply to: Cabin

Those all sound like great ideas, but try running a small business profitably with all of those benefits. At the end of the day, not one is forcing anyone to work where they don't want to.

a reply to: peter_kandra

Small businesses in most European countries survive and the small business sector is thriving. Anything is possible, if you adjust your business model accordingly.

I would say no one is forcing anyone to work where they do not want tends to be more of an illusion than reality. Finding a job, especially for young people, in todays market is not easy. One needs to have a roof over their head and food to eat. There are many desperate people out there, who simply do not have much choice, especially if you could not afford higher education, have mental health issues or illnesses. Most of the low-paid employees would change their job immediately if they had an option. There are also many people working 2 or even 3 jobs just to survive due to low salary and high cost of living.

As a European living in the US I agree 100% . Work conditions are thousands times better in Europe. I hate living here honestly , but I'm stuck here atm due to circumstances. The whole mentality here around work is soooo depressing, luckily I'm not stuck in some brick & mortar job.

If you look at the happiest countries in the world, it's all European countries at the top. The US is far below.

Yes, great ideology and in the perfect world, that would all be a thing. But as Kandra above stated, try running a small business. Or any business for that matter. Your scenario lays out the best of the best options for an employee. It costs a lot of money to run a business. But your ideas may not be what everyone else wants. Some might be happy with a $3/hr raise.

But here's the thing. The rights you are given as an employee are directly related to the demands of the employees. How the employees band together and request their benefits package has a lot to do with how effective they are at gaining said benefits.

That's why unions were established. They are supposed to represent the employees as a whole and push for employee demands. Employees who unite and make their wishes known with the threat of serious harm to production and/or income can effect the changes desired. One also has to prioritize the benefits they want. What's most important etc. and then learn to compromise.

So don't blame the companies. Blame the employees for not banding together, not putting the effort necessary to effect change. Bitching and moaning about what you don't have doesn't get you far.

And to the pro-European business practices, I believe those benefits are paid for one way or another. I believe taxes in many countries are much higher than the USA. Nothing comes for free. And if it isn't taxes, it's profits. Profits can usually be modified but people are greedy. And there are tons of companies crying out for employees.

As an example of the power of employees, I worked for an American Legion post during the early years of the Covid outbreak. Their members are older and the employees were younger. The board members wanted to require all the staff be vaccinated. As the manager, I let them know that would be a really bad idea. Since all the employees had previously agreed we didn't want to be vaccinated and if requested to do so, we would leave.

I let the board members know in our meeting of our position. They hemmed and hawed but had to give in. A small town has a difficult time getting employees as most people are in their desired employment positions, the young people move away and new people rarely move in.

a reply to: Cabin

Finding a job, especially for young people, in todays market is not easy.

The Nursing industry is crying for workers. There is a massive shortage and some Nurses are saying they will leave the field because of over work.

There are millions of jobs in the Trades and will continue to be, due to older workers retiring.

There are plenty of jobs, but no one wants to get their hands dirty. They all want a corner office and 1 million a year starting salary, because they've been brainwashed into thinking that college degree is worth far more than it actually is.

originally posted by: peter_kandra
a reply to: Cabin

Those all sound like great ideas, but try running a small business profitably with all of those benefits. At the end of the day, not one is forcing anyone to work where they don't want to.

That's part of the American Sickness.

We're so indoctrinated by BS from school and our Boomer (and older) generations that everyone thinks that they can start a business, which dilutes the market and makes them less profitable. A Convoluted law book with additional business taxes and brackets as opposed to other countries makes them suffer. The majority of government interference with the individual and business market makes everything significantly more expensive - healthcare, for instance. Government interference took insurance which was affordable for everyone and cheaper than government (tax payer) sponsored care in other countries, and jacked the cost of it via deductibles increasing over 1000% in some cases with reduced coverage, through the roof. The larger corporations, if they didn't focus on quarterly profit INCREASES (which is absurd and knowingly unsustainable to anyone with a brain) and instead focused where it mattered, would be able to afford these above mentioned mandates and worker benefits. Government interference in wages has also been predominately to the detriment of the employee and average person (see the 10,000 plus employees laid off in California recently over wage laws).

Basically, our constant strive to produce cheaper quality sh!t for higher prices and the uppers lining their pockets while the government encourages this behavior, mixed with people being too stupid to see all of this happening right in front of them, is going to be our downfall. Nobody is forcing people to work when they don't want to, but they are inadvertently forcing people to quit and not work, at the very least preventing them from reasonable employment.

Settle down Karl.

You lost me when you said you would fire a “sick man” based on your none existent medical opinion.

Glad you found hill to die on even if it is a garbage dump.

People are not equal. Different people deserve different things at different times. There is no baseline quality of life , sadly it’s a bottomless pit in which just very recently we have gained the ability to peep out of.

The free market dosent bring the benefits to many Americans, BECAUSE they don’t deserve it. Thats it plain and simple. They are not worthy.

The worthy do just fine, thrive even. The dregs well the flop around in poverty getting high and fighting about who’s sports ball team beat who.

a reply to: Cabin

What are you willing to do to earn money? How much money is enough for your particular lifestyle?

Maybe your job blows, but even prostitutes are called working girls.

a reply to: Cabin
the job market was awful when I was in my early 20's. I did hard labor with no insurance benefits etc for garbage pay.
It was common knowledge back then that certain fields had benefits, insurance, paid vacations etc. I retooled for one of those careers and it paid off. I'm guessing its not a lot different today really. The old roofing joke is if you fall off a roof, your fired before you hit the ground.

I will play devil's advocate with your OP.

Employer provided health care insurance over time is the reason healthcare is so crazy expensive in the US. Different states setting different regulations. Incredibly complex billing procedures, most providers cannot (or will not) give you an honest and upfront out of pocket cost for any procedures ahead of time. There is a ton of money made just in the business of medical billing.
Now say you're paying cash money for a procedure and you can usually get a quote.
I remember when a standard doc visit was paid out of pocket and it was reasonably affordable. Even a short hospital stay was. Health Insurance then was for major issues, serious illness. And it was affordable. And optional. Now because of insurance like it is, it has to cover the cost of a medicine that costs a dollar a dose to produce, at a cost of 10 dollars a dose to the insurance company, and likely 50 a dose of you weren't covered and the profits of multi billion dollar companies continue to soar.


Vacation time. Now a smart employer will allow a person to take a reasonable time off. Rest and relaxation will keep an employee from burning out and turning out poor quality work. But I believe you are referring to paid vacation. I don't really understand how it became standard practice to pay an employee to not work a couple of weeks a year. Why not just pay a little more and make it the employees responsibility to save to cover their time off? To me it has to work out in the employers favor financially or it wouldn't exist.

Unlimited sick time? I'm going to say there would be a lot more sick employees that are sick a lot more often. Back to the insurance, there is short and long disability insurance available, but like health coverage stop with the employer provided and make the rates affordable and let the individual purchase in the free market.

I know that doesn't cover all you mentioned but those are what stood out to me.

After thinking it through, if you honestly believe all that you posted then I ask you, why the employer?
Why not the government?
Why not have the federal government support all the benefits you mention, then everyone would have what they need even if self employed, or unemployed? It's been tried.

because the law sides with commercial interests since the 14th amendment applies to them too, so its become ingrained into our culture to work hard and accept what you get, to not demand more or disrupt others from doing their jobs. various court rulings allow corporations to act against workers or local governments in many different ways without too many restrictions, because they are people too legally. lots of those rules you and others are all about usually get overturned for being unconstitutional, and amending the constitution to fix that would lead to the various civil rights laws passed since 1866 all being overturned. so neither the left or right or even the middle have much incentive to do such a thing.

Why do American employees allow themselves to be exploited? Because to continue having a job with the way the laws are set up here, you end up complying or getting fired. You are told you can quit and go work somewhere else if you don’t like it at company xyz. However company abc likely won’t be much different. I do believe things are improving here at growing companies so when you feel like things are improving even if this seems like light years behind other countries, you don’t complain.

It would be nice to have more vacation time. Most working Americans can’t imagine having as much vacation time as Europeans do. I once worked a job where the work demands by the boss stayed the same even if I was out for a week of scheduled vacation. That meant I had to work a lot of extra hours on a salary the week or two before and the week after. Basically to take 40 hours off or a whole week, I had to put in an extra 80 hours over 2 to 3 weeks. Then you would hear comments after taking a week of vacation, was it worth it? That is taking a whole week off at one time. The boss thought it was fine to still expect all the work to still be done. I believe this was the boss but it was also related to the manager expectations. Work the employees to death to make themselves look better.

I don’t work there anymore. Some corporate executive decided to do a cost savings and let several experienced hard working employees go. I figure their cost savings cost them a lot more. I’m making a lot more now. I’m sure the 3 to 4 new employees it took to replace me make a lot more in total. New employees cost a lot more than the hard working employee squeaking by making the tiny cost of living adjustment that could be frozen one year due to corporate cost controls or as high as 3% in a good year if you had put in at least 50 to 60 hours a week and got all your assigned projects done.

a reply to: Cabin

EEEK, yeah, no.

Rights are granted by God, not by man.

It is not a "Right" if it requires the actions of someone else.

That's called an "Entitlement" or a "Privilege".

a reply to: DAVID64

I'll hire a young person if they've come from the military.

I forgot to mention at many companies if not most in the US, you don’t get severance pay if you decide to leave a company. So if you work somewhere for 15 to 20 years, you tend to put up with whatever hours the new boss may want you to do if you are old school like me. I heard not many people work that many years at one company anymore. I never will again. I will be retiring unless I am still working in my 70’s and I don’t plan on doing that. Although the company I work for now has a few people working temporary hours after they retired. The company values experience and quality work.

It is basic supply and demand in regards to employee skillsets. Many companies have phenomenal benefits and compensation.

Employers have to compete for talent... just as employees compete amongst themselves.

America is a competitive place and those that want to succeed will often work harder than those who may be comfortable or content. This is just a fact of life. This is why our productivity is so high.

It’s tradition
Treat em like crap and they’ll keep coming back.

Though, I think a lot of it has to do with the “ghost of loyalty”
There was a stretch, I’d say right at the end of WW2, where loyalty went both ways.
Employee/employer, with a fair wage and some decent benefits. Some carried on even after retirement.
I think people’s le still believe this happens widely. But not so much anymore except government gigs.

Currently the expectation of loyalty is one way only, and that’s loyalty to an employer that will cut you loose if the shareholders whine a little. In a heartbeat.
Plus new and creative ways to not give benefits, paid time to off, even a 40 hour week.
Everyone is a part timer, or a 1099 (self employed contractor no benefits)

When speaking on European countries I think it's a great rule of thumb to remember that Germany is barely the size of Texas, to put things into proper perspective with just how large european countries are in relation to the overcrowded country of the United States of America.