NationStates Jolt Archive

The proposal was posted today, 15 July 2006, and should, at the time of posting, be the newest or one of the newest proposals. The idea is that it replaces "The 40 Hour Workweek"; it should be less restrictive in some ways and more clear in others. It also closes some loopholes, such as the idea of people changing the definition of the word "hour," though I suppose that, if people were really not dedicated to a resolution, they could find loopholes or even create them if they felt like it.

The advantage to this resolution is that it covers employees of all types, regardless of how they are paid. It also serves as a small attempt to stregthen the resolution concerning child labor (that resolution prohibits child labor in specific industries; this one prohibits it across the board) and it also prohibits the employment of illegal immigrants.

a link might help or even a copy of the proposal :)

UN Labor Bill of Standards
Category: Social Justice
Strength: Strong
Proposed by: Ice Hockey Players (http://www.nationstates.net/ice_hockey_players)

Description: WHEREAS the resolution "The 40 Hour Workweek" was recently repealed due to some controversial measures,

WHEREAS the UN needs a system of rules regarding labor practices such that adults, children, and students alike are protected from unfair labor practices,

WHEREAS the rules requiring compensation, benefits, working conditions, and employment restrictions need to be set in writing for hourly, per diem, salaried, and commissioned employees,

THE UNITED NATIONS:

1. REQUIRES all member states that do not use Earth time to establish their time standards and use their equivalents to Earth time;

2. DEFINES the standard work day and week as follows:
--the work day is eight hours, plus one hour set aside for employees to eat,
--the work week is five days, with two days away from work, with those two days away from work preferred to be consecutive days respectful of employees' religious practices, if applicable,
--this standard shall be used whether a person is paid on an hourly basis, on an annual salary basis, on a contracted basis, on a per diem basis, or on a commissioned basis;

3. ESTABLISHES that, for hourly or daily employees, any time worked beyond 40 hours in one week shall be paid at 1.5 times the employee's normal rate of compensation;

4. FURTHER establishes that no employee shall be required, coerced, or compelled to work beyond 40 hours per week, except on a strictly volunteer basis or, for salaried or commissioned employees, on an "on-call" basis;

5. REQUIRES that all employees shall be compensated for all time spent at work or "on call";

6. LIMITS the time an employee may require a salaried or commissioned employee to remain "on call", whether at or away from the work site, to one week per 30 days and to ten weeks per year;

7. ALLOWS employees to work beyond the set limits, including hourly and daily overtime and salaried or commissioned "on call" time, on a strictly volunteer basis, such that
--any employee may approach an employer and ask to work beyond his or her normal hours, and the employer may accept or decline, under the understanding that, if the employer accepts, the employer must compensate the employee as prescribed by local law and this resolution,
--employers may petition employees to work beyond scheduled hours, but if the time asked is beyond what local law or this resolution allows, employees reserve the right to refuse without the threat of losing their jobs or risking career advancement,
--any employee whose employer attempts to coerce or order him or her to work beyond the allowed mandatory time (40 hours per week for hourly or daily employees, or 40 hours per week plus "on-call" time allowed in Article 7) shall be subject to penalties, including fines and the termination of employment for all those responsible for forcing employees to work beyond required hours;

8. DEFINES "full-time" employees as those who work 40 hours per week 39 weeks out of every year, including time missed due to a documented medical problem, including illness or injury;

9. REQUIRES that employees compensate all full-time employees for time missed due to any documented medical illness that would prevent or impede an employee's ability to work;

10. FORBIDS employees from employing anyone who is not legally allowed to work in the relevant member state, including non-citizens and those who are under the age of 13 or the relevant age of adulthood in a member state.

Voting Ends: Tue Jul 18 2006

this has some good points.

point 10 will help stop child labour and illegal imigrants being smuggled into a nation to work there.

point 9 puts in place sick pay where it isn;t already in effect. I assume that paid maternity leave is also covered by this.

the rest seems sensible enough but my main problem is with the strict idea that a working day has to be 8 hours for full time staff.

some shifts are more than 8 hours and others are less than that period of time. if you get a chance to redraft this i would suggest that the period of time before overtime kicks in (ie the shift being worked) is declared to be decided between the employer, the employee and unions if they are in that nation.

I would also suggest taking into account that people in their nations military don't always have fixed shifts and that military jobs can sometimes be different. An army cook can do completely different hours to a chef in a hotel.

Kaigan Miromuta
Ambassador for the Empire of Kirisubo

10. FORBIDS employees from employing anyone who is not legally allowed to work in the relevant member state, including non-citizens...
There's nothing stopping illegal immigrants from starting up their own businesess and become self-employed, or did you not intend to cover that area?

in the Empire a person can't work until they have the appropriate visa and theres nothing stopping a person from being self employed once they have a residency visa.

If you're not a citizen and you don't have a work visa then you can't be employed in the Empire.

So point 10 does cover illegal immigrants.

First off, thanks to Party Mode for copying the proposal here. It's been a while since I wrote a proposal.

Second off, as for illegal immigrants starting businesses, it wasn't really the case that I was trying to allow them to start businesses or anything. The purpose of this resolution had less to do with starting businesses and more to do with employment with existing businesses. If I were to cover starting businesses, I would start a separate resolution.

Also, there were a few things I had to omit from this resolution due to the character limit. I had an entire section dedicated to benefits, but I think that's just as suited for a separate resolution and it won't apply in a lot of cases, considering that a lot of places have universal health care.

For Hok Tu, there are a few questions that, I think, you raised that should be adresses, or already are.

For maternity leave, that's a documented medical condition, so it's covered. I know I'm sort of acting as a Supreme Court here, but being pregnant's a medical condition, isn't it? People go to the doctor and the hospital for it, so it's a medical condition.

Also, Article 7 covers the ability of people to go beyond the standard work week. Yes, some people work three 12-hour shifts, such as nurses. Employers would be allowed to encourage people to take these shifts, and employees can take them. However, employers are not permitted to COERCE people into these shifts. If people want to work the 8-hour days for five days a week, they are allowed to insist on it. I don't think that most people are going to insist on this for every job, but granted, the occasional pain-in-the-ass probably will. Every job has a pain-in-the-ass like that, so I don't think it's that big of a deal.

Keep this in mind, though - the rules state that the hours are set at eight hours a day, five days a week. It doesn't state WHAT those hours are. People can be obligated by business demands to work from 7:30 PM to 4:30 AM Saturday through Wednesday if the business needs those hours covered. The resolution doesn't say anything about that.

WHEREAS the UN needs a system of rules regarding labor practices such that adults, children, and students alike are protected from unfair labor practices,
Incorrect. At most, there needs to exist in some form rules regarding labour practices such that adults, children, and students alike are protected from unfair labour practices. But it doesn't follow that that has to be at the UN level. Private contracts should remain private; national legislation should remain national. You need more justification in your preamble, or else you'll just end up with some capitalist fuckwit asking you why it's any of the UN's business.

So why is it any of the UN's business?

Anyway, we would normally vehemently oppose such a proposal. However, the delightful confusion of "employee" and "employer" in the final two clauses amuses us so, we hope it passes: it renders clause 10 meaningless (thankfully - I mean, banning all child labour, are you insane? You never did a paper round when you were a kid, I take it - never needed to, maybe. And stopping children in rural areas helping at harvest is just...silly), and it'll be real fun to see every worker in a company required to compensate every other for their time off, whilst not a scrap is taken off their employer.

Otherwise, we'll have to step up our efforts to get "Individual Working Freedoms" to quorum, so the workers of the UN don't forget too soon that at least someone still cares about their liberty.

~Rono Pyandran
Chief of Staff
Capitalist Fuckwit

Also, what is this about illegal immigrants? That's DEFINITLY not for the UN to be discussing. In some countries, there is no way to be an illegal immigrants. If something is illegal in a country, there's no need for the UN to say "If it's illegal, then the UN makes it illegal" as Clause 10 says.

10. FORBIDS employees from employing anyone who is not legally allowed to work in the relevant member state, including non-citizens and those who are under the age of 13 or the relevant age of adulthood in a member state.Believe here the term EMPLOYEES needs to be EMPLOYER as an employer hires employees not employees doing the hiring.


WE like the idea you added the 'or relevant age' to this as here citizens become such at age ten and thus have the right to work as well as own a business that hire others.

Micromanagement.
Not the UN's business.
Makes inadequate allowance for military necessity, fishing crews, and various other situations that can't fit neatly into 5-day/40-hour weeks.

The government of the St Edmundan Antarctic does NOT approve this proposal.

The government of St Edmundan Antarctic did not read my clarification of the proposal. I stated very clearly that employees had the right to amend their schedules in order not to work the standard 5-day, 40-hour week. Employees just cannot be forced to do so. The one exception would be traveling workers...and I just realized that I had an entire section dedicated to such situations that I had to omit due to space constraints. I was actually going to add another proposal to this that detailed such things as traveling workers, and such exceptions would be made.

Also, I am proposing, whether people like it or not, to eliminate all child labor. That does mean that kids have to wait until age 13 to get a paper route, but it's not the end of the world. Kids don't need to be worrying about getting jobs until that age anyway.

Also, the bit about illegal immigrants is not applicable for all nations. Any nation that has no concept of an illegal immigrant isn't affected; however, if a nation has such rules, this part of the resolution is just another catch-all measure to ensure that this measure is followed. Some of the time, legislation barring illegal immigrants from working is ignored. The idea behind that clause is to establish that all member states either need to enforce illegal immigration laws or eliminate them.

Also, I am proposing, whether people like it or not, to eliminate all child labor. That does mean that kids have to wait until age 13 to get a paper route, but it's not the end of the world. Kids don't need to be worrying about getting jobs until that age anyway.
Bullshit, complete fucking bullshit. Maybe in white bread suburbia in some high and mighty developed nation, but in many, many situations, that wouldn't be true. If their parents are living on very low pay, a child might want to work something like a paper route, to earn some pocket money. To have the UN stomp in and ban that is the most sickeningly short-sighted, arrogant shit.

I have a particular aversion to those who would "save people from themselves", or whatever.

~Rono Pyandran
Chief of Staff

Also, I am proposing, whether people like it or not, to eliminate all child labor. That does mean that kids have to wait until age 13 to get a paper route, but it's not the end of the world. Kids don't need to be worrying about getting jobs until that age anyway.
And what about those nations whose populations might not live to be 13, your proposal if passed would render their entire population unable to work.

Timothy Schmidt
UN Rep. (pro-tem)/Bob Flibble's PA

If their parents are living on very low pay, a child might want to work something like a paper route, to earn some pocket money.Also, there's issues of farming families.

Also, also, this could be used by those filthy commies to stamp out, once and for all, those enterprizing children with their lemonade stands.

Doctor Denis Leary
Too Lazy For The Photo
The Federated Technocratic Oligarchy of the Most Glorious Hack

Also, there's issues of farming families.

Also, also, this could be used by those filthy commies to stamp out, once and for all, those enterprizing children with their lemonade stands.
Heh-heh. Those children are usually 14, though...

But yes, farming families is an obvious concern.

The government of St Edmundan Antarctic did not read my clarification of the proposal. I stated very clearly that employees had the right to amend their schedules in order not to work the standard 5-day, 40-hour week. Employees just cannot be forced to do so.

The ambassador for the St Edmundan Antarctic did read your clarification of the proposal. Employees have the right. Individually, voluntarily. That is not suitable for the armed services, especially in wartime.

To be honest, I think working conditions and hours are too complicated to be legislated on at the same time. We should never have repealed "The 40 Hour Week" in the first place and we should spend time firstly coming up with a more comprehensive labour laws document, focusing exclusively on labour laws and subject to input from everyone, Capitalist paradises to Socialist utopias alike. Then we should legislate on employment hours again.

This resolution however, doesn't come anywhere near to satisfying the requirements for either of these key issues. So Compadria is opposed.

May the blessings of our otters be upon you.

Leonard Otterby
Ambassador for the Republic of Compadria to the U.N.

Also, there's issues of farming families.

Also, also, this could be used by those filthy commies to stamp out, once and for all, those enterprizing children with their lemonade stands.

Doctor Denis Leary
Too Lazy For The Photo
The Federated Technocratic Oligarchy of the Most Glorious Hack


God-damned lemon juice peddling little brats....

Heh-heh. Those children are usually 14, though...

But yes, farming families is an obvious concern.

And family-run small businesses.

Firstly, I would like to point out that there is no medical leave pay in our country. Our national animal also happens to be the source of our medicine, and it is them that you go to see when you are ill. They can work wonders on nearly all diseases and ailments within a handful of days, and our nation enjoys a very large continual percentage of healthy people. It is usually no longer than a week's absence before someone can return to working in whatever fashion they have chosen. And considering how very small our nation is, and the very close-knit way in which we take care of each other, it is not a large loss to be away from work ill without pay for a week.

If they are incapable of healing you--that is, should you have a terminal disease that has gone beyond fixing, or something that would permanently cripple you to the point of uselessness--then you are ceremonially run down and slaughtered in the Straggler's End Dance, and your life-praises sung to the moon. The only exceptions to this are non-residents of this country, who we have no End Dance jurisdiction over.

I do not intend to vote for a proposal that declares I must give pay to someone who is essentially a walking dead man.

Mephi, High Clawlord of Lycanthropa

2. DEFINES the standard work day and week as follows:
--the work day is eight hours, plus one hour set aside for employees to eat,
--the work week is five days, with two days away from work, with those two days away from work preferred to be consecutive days respectful of employees' religious practices, if applicable,
--this standard shall be used whether a person is paid on an hourly basis, on an annual salary basis, on a contracted basis, on a per diem basis, or on a commissioned basis;
What exactly does this do? It makes it the standard, but does it force all companies to follow this? Follow it most of the time? Or what?

3. ESTABLISHES that, for hourly or daily employees, any time worked beyond 40 hours in one week shall be paid at 1.5 times the employee's normal rate of compensation;
Meh. I'd like a bit more leeway, like 50 or 60 hours, and then urge nations to set it at 40 if you want.

4. FURTHER establishes that no employee shall be required, coerced, or compelled to work beyond 40 hours per week, except on a strictly volunteer basis or, for salaried or commissioned employees, on an "on-call" basis;
OK.
5. REQUIRES that all employees shall be compensated for all time spent at work or "on call";
Please specify that work on call does not have to be compensated at the same rate as time spent actually working.

6. LIMITS the time an employee may require a salaried or commissioned employee to remain "on call", whether at or away from the work site, to one week per 30 days and to ten weeks per year;
Nope. Some jobs require that workers remain on call 24/7: think of a small business with only one IT person. I don't feel this falls into the realm of workers rights.

7. ALLOWS employees to work beyond the set limits, including hourly and daily overtime and salaried or commissioned "on call" time, on a strictly volunteer basis, such that
--any employee may approach an employer and ask to work beyond his or her normal hours, and the employer may accept or decline, under the understanding that, if the employer accepts, the employer must compensate the employee as prescribed by local law and this resolution,
Why do they have to approach the employer? What if the employer just says they can always stay on the job longer and just record it on their time card. This doesn't allow for flexibility in the employer-employee relationship.
--employers may petition employees to work beyond scheduled hours, but if the time asked is beyond what local law or this resolution allows, employees reserve the right to refuse without the threat of losing their jobs or risking career advancement,
Suppose a nation has laws such that employers may fire workers without reason?
--any employee whose employer attempts to coerce or order him or her to work beyond the allowed mandatory time (40 hours per week for hourly or daily employees, or 40 hours per week plus "on-call" time allowed in Article 7) shall be subject to penalties, including fines and the termination of employment for all those responsible for forcing employees to work beyond required hours;
Hold on. Suppose the employer is the owner of the business. How does he terminate his own employment? What if the person who coerced the employees was ordered by upper-level staff? Just say that nations must take appropriate action so that the violation ceases, to give us a little room to breathe.

8. DEFINES "full-time" employees as those who work 40 hours per week 39 weeks out of every year, including time missed due to a documented medical problem, including illness or injury;
This is too narrow.

9. REQUIRES that employees compensate all full-time employees for time missed due to any documented medical illness that would prevent or impede an employee's ability to work;
Revise this so that employers may set a limit on the amount of time compensated for injury. If a person is in a long-term coma/PVS for five years, the employer shouldn't have to compensate them.

10. FORBIDS employees from employing anyone who is not legally allowed to work in the relevant member state, including non-citizens and those who are under the age of 13 or the relevant age of adulthood in a member state.
Drop this. It's totally beyond the scope of the resolution.

I don't understand this fascination with the 40 hour workweek. Mandating an 8/5/40 schedule ignores the basic reality that there are some industries and professions that require more hours or different schedules, whether for customer service, public safety, or efficiency reasons. Examples follow:

1. The medical/public safety field.
a. Firefighters usually work a 24 on/48 off schedule. There are other reasons for this schedule, but the most basic is that this schedule requires the fewest workers. The municipality only needs 3 fire crews to staff a fire station with this schedule, if they were required to work 8 hour shifts, your would need to increase the number of crews by 2, probably requiring increased taxes. As firefighting is a sporadic profession with long periods of downtime broken up by emergency calls, this is seemingly the most efficient way to run firefighting shifts, as the crews (usually) have enough rest time during their shift.
b. Medical doctors, although they may have office hours and a "normal schedule", are also on call 24/7/365 in the event of an emergency (unless they specifically make other arrangements to cover a specified period). Between the proposed workweek and the new on-call rules, this proposal would severely limit the effectiveness of medical doctors. Would you like your orthopedist to stop in the middle of your knee replacement and say "Sorry, I just hit my hour limit, I can't continue this procedure for a few days."?

2. Information Technology (as already mentioned). Certain IT professionals need to be on-call after normal business hours to deal with mission-critical system outages. What if the enterprise cannot afford to employ enough IT professionals to cover on-call hours under this proposal?

3. Fishing (as mentioned earlier). Fishing in general is filled with small businesses and contractors, who work long hours over short periods of time. This is due to the nature of the work, as it is seasonal.

4. Commercial Trucking. Truck drivers are generally paid by distance driven. It should be obvious why this doesn't fit into a 40 hour schema, as it would severely limit the earning power of truckers. Most nations have other laws in place to enforce rest periods for truckers, but such laws do not limit them to a maximum number of hours per week.

5. Offshore/Petroleum/Other Maritime - Similar to commercial fishing, these industries work long hours for certain periods of time, with some time off before starting again. Restricting their daily/weekly hours would result in the need to hire more workers, reducing the efficiency of the industry and driving up prices.

There are other examples, but these are probably the most prominent.

I do realize the proposal has a "voluntary" provision, but in general, the proposal fails to show an understanding of how a large section of the economy operates.

should you have a terminal disease that has gone beyond fixingUm... isn't that the definition of "terminal"? It's not very terminal if you can be cured, after all...