Hey all!
Last night I saw a documentary about work life around the world. It was very mind blowing.
I live in The Netherlands, and we have very strict laws that ensure workers here a proper minimum salary, 5 weeks vacation minimum and the concept of sick days is a completely foreign idea for us.
In the documentary they talked about not taking vacation days, even if you have them. the possibility of getting fired on the spot at any time in some states. And I also saw a bit about a delivery guy who had actual camera's on him while he was doing his route to keep him under surveillance. (5 camera's inside his truck). All these things are forbidden in my country and I had some questions about these things as I thought that the US was a rather progressive country and I could not imagine these things happening there. The main point of the documentary was that it was about work culture that was established during the last decades. It seemed in this film that people actually chose to live their lives this way. I can not believe that this is true.
in The Netherlands we pride ourselves by hard working and I thought The Netherlands and the USA was the same in that regard. But here our employers are strongly regulated and it seems to me that in the USA they are not.
My questions:
-Is it really this bad, if you have no education and work as , for example, a forklift driver?
-How did this happen , are there fixed known reasons? ( a good book recommendation is also very welcome on this topic).
-Why do some Americans think that Europe is a 'communist' place, if the workers here have strong labor laws? (not in all countries off course but it seems that in the most European countries conditions are better).
-Do you think it is getting better or is it getting worse?
-What needs to change in the coming decades to ensure people get a good work/life balance.
I would love to hear your view on this subject, if anyone of you have any questions about our worklife/culture I am happy to awnser.
I understand I can also get some books etc. on this topic, but I would love to hear from the workforce.
Thank you all for reading/awnsering and have a wonderfull day !