Friday, March 31, 2006

Lazy French

Ok, this is incomprehensible to me. It's like labor unions run amok. I heard about this years ago; it is rather pervasive in Europe (less so in Britan). Basically once you get a job, you're pretty much guaranteed to keep it, short of the company going under or something. The government(s) protect workers jobs by making so difficult to fire someone that companies are forced to keep incompetent/lazy workers. This means that companies are somewhat less likely to hire someone since they won't be able to fire them if they are useless. The result of overprotecting workers is abnormally high unemployment (usually 2-5 times that in the US). (Incidently this also stifles innovation which is why the U.S., Japan, Korea, etc. tend to have growing economies and more research, and why Citroen will never beat Subaru for sales/quality/anything.)

Students are rioting opposing a bill that would change this (easing policy so companies can release dead wood). So they appear to be putting forth more effort now than they plan on doing once they get a job. Otherwise why protest? If you plan on doing your job well, then there would be little to worry about. Oh, well, this is one of those reasons why Europe will always lag the US in terms of economies, innovation, invention, research, unemployment... Yes, there will be accomplishments, but fewer and less significant. It's a shame too, because there is no reason to think the people there are any less capable than here, the environment is just not right.

No comments: