Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Rolling back federal regs and limiting, via conservative judges, application of laws that create too much red tape. That's a mouthful, so I'll explain.
I had to cover HR for a 1900 person organization a few years back. You'd think this would be easy -- that the HR head would call in the rare occasion of a legal claim. Well, that was almost every claim. That fucking department annoyed the living shit out of me and everyone around it and in it. Lawyers came out of the woodwork every time anyone was terminated. It was whack a mole. Once a day, some fucking call, some complaint, some assertion of some right violated. The drag on resources was simply amazing. Few of the cases resulted in payouts, but the cost in hours expended where we could have been dealing with other matters was staggering. In the millions, easily.
Why? Because between labor and employment law, we've created so much fucking red tape that even the simplest grievance or complaint, the weakest EEOC filing, has to be addressed and this takes so much time. Add in workman's comp (because a lot of these folks who want to cash out work numerous angles at once) and you have the most fucking confusing mess of conflicting laws imaginable.
I consult for a few companies on how to handle problem employees. Some lazy pill eater's request for accommodations, and his comp claim, costs the company several thousand dollars by the time its done. I have to spend hours on the phone counseling on how to best paper the file.
It's fucking nuts. These laws work like an attractive nuisance, giving the laziest people in the workforce a way to get "on the dole." And it hurts the people with real claims. Because the companies say, "Fuck it. Fight them all."
And that's just HR shit. Tax, OSHA, environmental regs on disposal of med waste... It's a road to hell paved with good intentions. All it does is make money for us, the worst human beings in the economy. If there's any silver lining to the rule of law losing respect under Trump, it's that maybe, if we're lucky, people will start disregarding the approximately 10,000 laws on the books that have no business being there.
Where's the party that will advocate the following:
"Our first response to any problem shall never, under any circumstance, be, 'Let's pass a law.'"
I'd vote for that party regardless of the rest of its plank.
|
On the other hand, I help, via my employment group, a lot of tech companies deal with employment issues. There is some overhead, but frankly the market in that area is to treat employees a lot better than law requires, and the main place I see the laws actually bite is not so much in termination and severance as in discrimination and harassment. And companies get away with amazing levels of discrimination and harassment.
To me, the question is how to write effective laws rather than ineffective ones.
But I'd posit conservative policy toward the workplace (pay 'em shit and give 'em no protections, and bust every union) fits the bill of "assaholic" pretty completely. Indeed, the kinds of business that do the legal minimum (Wallmart, I'm looking at you) generally deserve the hassles they get, I just wish all those laws were more effective in keeping them from being assholes.
Have you seen "Superstore"? A light TV comedy that's actually pretty good at spoofing some of this stuff.
