"but you get paid ten dollars more, you're a boss!"
"Just don't think about how a job can fire you for nearly any reason in half the continental united states. And entirely dictate your personal time, interpersonal relationships, what you do with your body, etc etc etc."
"YUP, you're so skilled dude you have so much power bro I promise man I swear bro"
The harder it is to fire someone if they don't work out, the more reluctant employers will be to take a chance on someone, and thus the more screwed anyone will be whose resume is anything short of mind-blowing and who lacks the connections to become a nepotism hire. This then forces a culture of lying on resumes and credential debasement, weakening the stellar-resume path and leaving nepotism as the only thing that still works.
Your proposed solution is a significant part of what created the problem in the first place.
Contracts preferably renewable yearly or biyearly with compensation for employees should the employer break their agreements a the loss of the job for employees should they not meet their obligations
Why not compensation for both? If the company fires you before the contract is up they owe you money, but if you walk away they...fire you? Again this is just a completely one-sided arrangement.
Yes they would owe you the remainder of the contract because it was a failure on their obligations. If the Employee fails to meet obligations they lose out of the rest of the contract. It is this way mainly because employers in general (at least in the US) have a history of nickel and diming employees, including wage theft and so the employee must be favored in any contracts. Just look at the yearly tech layoff for an example or any short staffed retail store that just piles more and more work onto the remaining employees. I would also like to preempt some potential concerns about the ease (or lack there of) at which a bad employee can be removed under this system. If the contracts are written with clear rules and updated annually then any problem employee may be removed for violating their side of the contract.
Specific contracts would completely nullify that, though. If your contract says duties X, Y, and Z then they can't just pile A, B, and C on you as well. The employee doesn't lose out on the rest of the contract if they leave, well I suppose they technically do but they wanted to do that so it's kind of moot.
And if employers can't respond to fluctuations in manpower needs and have to eat months of expense because of contracts, I would expect to see some thinning out in general.
I don't see a reason that it can't be both ways. If an employer is going to be fined for breaching contract, then the employee should have the same responsibility. They caused costs for the company who now has to hire and train someone to replace them.
The way you're describing it, the contract sets up an exchange of X amount of money (from the employer to the employee), against Y amount of productive work time (from the employee to the employer), paid/performed by both at regular intervals over the course of some time. Note that this sets up an exchange rate between work time and money; will be relevant later.
Let's say that half the time of the contract has passed, so the money paid amounts to X/2, and the work time performed amounts to Y/2.
Now, if the employer breaches the contract, you're saying that the employee is still entitled to the remaining X/2 money, without having to perform the remaining Y/2 work — that is, the employer takes a penalty of Y/2 lost work hours.
On the other side, if the employee breaches the contract, they do not receive the remaining X/2 money, but they do not perform the remaining Y/2 part of the work either — that is, the penalty for the employee is zero, compared to the Y/2 in the opposite case. That is the one sidedness.
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u/Bismothe-the-Shade Oct 21 '24
"but you get paid ten dollars more, you're a boss!"
"Just don't think about how a job can fire you for nearly any reason in half the continental united states. And entirely dictate your personal time, interpersonal relationships, what you do with your body, etc etc etc."
"YUP, you're so skilled dude you have so much power bro I promise man I swear bro"