Le Placard

[Zam-Zam]

What happens when an employees cannot be fired? Unintended consequences, of course:


There's a practice in France called being sent to the closet — "le placard."


It's when your employer makes your work life so miserable that you are forced to quit.


“A friend of mine is in the closet right now at his company,” says Pamela Druckerman, an author living in Paris. “His boss has stopped replying to his emails.”


She gives another example of a banker who found that his desk had been moved into a hallway. He gradually realized that his colleagues had been told not to talk to him at all.


“You reach a point where no one can tell you that you’re in the closet, because it’s technically illegal. It’s considered moral harassment,” she says. “But you eventually figure out what is happening. It can last for years.”


Being sent to the closet is a pretty awful practice, but it's something that a number of French employers resort to because it's so hard to fire people legally there.

Many workers in France have contracts called CDIs — contrat à durée indéterminée — or contracts of indeterminate length. Once you have one, you can lose your job only in very limited circumstances.


But with the French economy struggling, the government is trying to make it a little easier for businesses to lay off staff when times are hard.


It has just pushed reforms through the lower house of Parliament that would allow people to be fired when a company is losing money. The bill still has to go through the Senate before it becomes law.


Complete text: http://www.globalpost.com/article/6...rassment-drive-employees-away-not-much-longer

 

[freyasman]

Didn't they do something like that to a guy in that movie "Office Space"?

 

[Lukey]

Ah, another glorious success of the socialist agenda! When will we adopt that here? What can possibly go wrong???

 

[as seen on tv]

US employers practice this too. They move your desk, and stop assigning you work.

but the motive here is simply to dodge an increase in unemployment taxes, which go up if you dismiss too many people.

 

[connieb]

What happens when an employees cannot be fired? Unintended consequences, of course:


There's a practice in France called being sent to the closet — "le placard."


It's when your employer makes your work life so miserable that you are forced to quit.


“A friend of mine is in the closet right now at his company,” says Pamela Druckerman, an author living in Paris. “His boss has stopped replying to his emails.”


She gives another example of a banker who found that his desk had been moved into a hallway. He gradually realized that his colleagues had been told not to talk to him at all.


“You reach a point where no one can tell you that you’re in the closet, because it’s technically illegal. It’s considered moral harassment,” she says. “But you eventually figure out what is happening. It can last for years.”


Being sent to the closet is a pretty awful practice, but it's something that a number of French employers resort to because it's so hard to fire people legally there.

Many workers in France have contracts called CDIs — contrat à durée indéterminée — or contracts of indeterminate length. Once you have one, you can lose your job only in very limited circumstances.


But with the French economy struggling, the government is trying to make it a little easier for businesses to lay off staff when times are hard.


It has just pushed reforms through the lower house of Parliament that would allow people to be fired when a company is losing money. The bill still has to go through the Senate before it becomes law.


Complete text: http://www.globalpost.com/article/6...rassment-drive-employees-away-not-much-longer

Its ridiculous that these employers have to be reduced to this.

I think people do not understand how destructive to productivity and employee morale it is to keep a "bad" employee around. Even if the "bad" employee's work isn't bad but they are unpopular or disliked by the other employees - they are toxic to the work environment. Actual good employees leave. Others don't work to their full capacity. If you have an employee who sucks or simply just doesn't gel - unless they perform something really particular and can easily be ignored, its much better for the organization just to toss them.

So, anything keeping an employer from doing that - simply makes for a less productive unfavorable work environment.

connie

 

[Boltlady]

US employers practice this too. They move your desk, and stop assigning you work.

but the motive here is simply to dodge an increase in unemployment taxes, which go up if you dismiss too many people.

People don't realize how onerous those unemployment taxes can be. There were a couple of times that we (at my company), had people leave abruptly for a couple of different reasons which were their own. Then because we stayed friendly with them they applied for unemployment insurance. They didn't understand why we didn't back them. They figured it would be no skin off our nose when that's not the case at all.

We did have an employee some years back who had a legitimate reason to collect unemployment and we paid dearly for it. Our insurance went way up and stayed there for several years even though she was the only one. We repaid the state several times over for whatever she collected from them.

 

[Queen Titania]

People don't realize how onerous those unemployment taxes can be. There were a couple of times that we (at my company), had people leave abruptly for a couple of different reasons which were their own. Then because we stayed friendly with them they applied for unemployment insurance. They didn't understand why we didn't back them. They figured it would be no skin off our nose when that's not the case at all.

We did have an employee some years back who had a legitimate reason to collect unemployment and we paid dearly for it. Our insurance went way up and stayed there for several years even though she was the only one. We repaid the state several times over for whatever she collected from them.

Still going on, getting worse all over Europe, and not being reported -----

 

[connieb]

People don't realize how onerous those unemployment taxes can be. There were a couple of times that we (at my company), had people leave abruptly for a couple of different reasons which were their own. Then because we stayed friendly with them they applied for unemployment insurance. They didn't understand why we didn't back them. They figured it would be no skin off our nose when that's not the case at all.

We did have an employee some years back who had a legitimate reason to collect unemployment and we paid dearly for it. Our insurance went way up and stayed there for several years even though she was the only one. We repaid the state several times over for whatever she collected from them.

We tried to fight unemployment for an employee we had for like 4 weeks and fired for cause. It was ridiculous. They had already decided they were giving her the unemployment and nothing short of proof of outright theft was going to get it denied. That banged our rate for a while too.

IN MD you even get dinged if your employee leaves takes another job and doesn't work at that job long enough before getting canned or laid off. If they haven't been there for something longer than 18 months, when they get canned, then they ding the employer who most recently canned them then they go back until they have covered 18 months of employment. We got our rate dinged by an employee who left us and had two other jobs before getting canned but he hand't worked for more than 18 months after us. Its ridiculous.

connie

 

[Queen Titania]

Didn't they do something like that to a guy in that movie "Office Space"?

Did they do this?

All over Europe - Eastern Bloc -Africa - It's kicking off man!

 

[Arkady]

What happens when an employees cannot be fired? Unintended consequences, of course:


There's a practice in France called being sent to the closet — "le placard."


It's when your employer makes your work life so miserable that you are forced to quit.


“A friend of mine is in the closet right now at his company,” says Pamela Druckerman, an author living in Paris. “His boss has stopped replying to his emails.”


She gives another example of a banker who found that his desk had been moved into a hallway. He gradually realized that his colleagues had been told not to talk to him at all.


“You reach a point where no one can tell you that you’re in the closet, because it’s technically illegal. It’s considered moral harassment,” she says. “But you eventually figure out what is happening. It can last for years.”


Being sent to the closet is a pretty awful practice, but it's something that a number of French employers resort to because it's so hard to fire people legally there.

Many workers in France have contracts called CDIs — contrat à durée indéterminée — or contracts of indeterminate length. Once you have one, you can lose your job only in very limited circumstances.


But with the French economy struggling, the government is trying to make it a little easier for businesses to lay off staff when times are hard.


It has just pushed reforms through the lower house of Parliament that would allow people to be fired when a company is losing money. The bill still has to go through the Senate before it becomes law.


Complete text: http://www.globalpost.com/article/6...rassment-drive-employees-away-not-much-longer

The US also has employment contracts, but they tend to be confined to higher-end workers. For example, CEOs nearly always have contracts that make it pretty much impossible to fire them without paying them a "golden parachute," no matter how incompetent they've been. For example, Chuck Prince, of Citigroup, led the company to absolute disaster, when in 2007 it lost $11 billion on its mortgage-backed-securities gamble. His "punishment" for that stupidity and recklessness was a $28 million "golden parachute." Even disregarding every other payment he got over the years, he "earned" as much, just for getting fired through gross incompetence, as ten median households together would earn in a half century. Crazy stuff.

 

[Zam-Zam]

Its ridiculous that these employers have to be reduced to this.

I think people do not understand how destructive to productivity and employee morale it is to keep a "bad" employee around. Even if the "bad" employee's work isn't bad but they are unpopular or disliked by the other employees - they are toxic to the work environment. Actual good employees leave. Others don't work to their full capacity. If you have an employee who sucks or simply just doesn't gel - unless they perform something really particular and can easily be ignored, its much better for the organization just to toss them.

So, anything keeping an employer from doing that - simply makes for a less productive unfavorable work environment.

connie

Everything has a price. If you make it too easy to fire an employee, some will abuse the system in order to keep from paying out pensions. If you make it too difficult, as apparently is the case in France, you make for a toxic atmosphere. Somewhere in between is a happy, albeit imperfect, medium.

 

[Zam-Zam]

The US also has employment contracts, but they tend to be confined to higher-end workers. For example, CEOs nearly always have contracts that make it pretty much impossible to fire them without paying them a "golden parachute," no matter how incompetent they've been. For example, Chuck Prince, of Citigroup, led the company to absolute disaster, when in 2007 it lost $11 billion on its mortgage-backed-securities gamble. His "punishment" for that stupidity and recklessness was a $28 million "golden parachute." Even disregarding every other payment he got over the years, he "earned" as much, just for getting fired through gross incompetence, as ten median households together would earn in a half century. Crazy stuff.

Corporations offer "golden parachutes" for the same reason sports franchises often over-pay for what they perceive to be the best athletes - they are attempting to outbid one another for 'top-tier' talent. They want to win - although it doesn't always work out as they had planned it.

Ideally, the employer-employee arrangement is entered into for mutual benefit. If at some point it ceases to be that, the arrangement becomes irrational.

 

[connieb]

Everything has a price. If you make it too easy to fire an employee, some will abuse the system in order to keep from paying out pensions. If you make it too difficult, as apparently is the case in France, you make for a toxic atmosphere. Somewhere in between is a happy, albeit imperfect, medium.

Since I think the pension system is a dinosaur, I think this will be and shoudl be a smaller and smaller consideration. If employers have a benefit plan they should make annual contributions to a portable plan and that is it. That way - they have no unfunded liabilities, and the employee gets their cut as they earn it.

But, I don't really think there should be much standing in the way of an employer canning an employee -for any reason. The bottom line is the more cohesive the work environment can be, the more productive. So even getting rid of people who other otherwise good employees - who don't mix well with other staff should be an acceptable reason and one the employer alone should be balancing out.

connie

 

[Arkady]

Corporations offer "golden parachutes" for the same reason sports franchises often over-pay for what they perceive to be the best athletes - they are attempting to outbid one another for 'top-tier' talent. They want to win - although it doesn't always work out as they had planned it.

Ideally, the employer-employee arrangement is entered into for mutual benefit. If at some point it ceases to be that, the arrangement becomes irrational.

I have a suspicion it's a lot more crooked than that. Keep in mind that CEOs have a big role in choosing board members, and are also in a position to enrich the Board members by influencing the activities of the corporation. A crooked CEO can be much better for you than an ethical one. If he is reliable about signalling members about company activities in a way that helps them profit, personally, then that's going to be a lot more valuable than if he's merely watching out for the rank-and-file shareholders (much less other stakeholders like the employees). If he makes sure the Board members' talentless kids get plum jobs right out of college, and that the Board members' mistresses are hired on in positions that provide good cover, and that meetings are held places that let everybody golf and write off the travel expense, etc., that all has great value.

Until I realized that, I was often befuddled by why some of these guys were considered "top-tier talent," who'd need those golden handshakes to attract them. Often, when you researched their backgrounds, they were actually bruised fruit -- guys who come from tainted career backgrounds at places like Enron, PG&E, Tyco, Countrywide, etc. Yet, somehow, despite their failures in their prior jobs, they get big promotions with a golden parachutes attached. That doesn't make sense if you see their role as maximizing shareholder value. But it makes perfect sense if you see their real role as knowing how to "play ball." If they can be relied on to discretely send the right buy and sell signals to the right people, and to do high-margin company deals with the side concerns of board members, they're worth every penny, even if they kill the company.

And the golden parachutes are a key aspect of that calculus. If you're the Board and you fire the CEO, you know that he's a guy who knows where all the bodies are buried, and so he can probably bury you, too. You don't want him running to the SEC, FTC, OSHA, etc., and blabbing about all the corners the company is cutting, just to get revenge. And so you want him to have a golden parachute structured in such a way that he's kept fat and happy even after he's fired, but with money at stake if he speaks out (e.g., deferred compensation and un-vested stock awards tied to company performance).

 

[Fast Eddy]

Government and Union workers are next to impossible to get fired. They become unresponsive to the customer and demotivated to do good jobs. Its a huge problem everywhere.