Life Desk :
In a bid to take labour-friendly laws to another level, UAE (United Arab Emirates) has taken the initiative to introduce a ‘reading break’ law. This allows employees to catch up with their reading for a couple of hours during working hours. Bookworms are not the only to have benefited from laws that do more than just censure or discipline them. If you look at some countries with interesting labour laws, you’ll be tempted to move lock, stock and barrel for good. Sample these:
Mandatory vacations
Possibly the best work law ever which can be found in Austria. After working for six months, every employee is entitled to an annual paid vacation amounting to 30 working days. In fact, what comes as the cherry on the cake is that this right is reserved for people who have been employed for less than 25 years. And if someone has more years of work experience to their credit, the number of vacation days increases to 36.
Catch up on your forty winks
Ever been caught napping at work? If yes, then you obviously know the consequences. But if you were in Japan, you would have been encouraged. They have actually coined a word for it – inemuri, which means ‘to be asleep while present’. And sleeping at work is extremely common in Japan. While napping at work will earn you a tag of being inefficient in other parts of the world, Japanese believe it to be a sign of hard work. The only governing rule for inemuri is that it requires the person to remain upright while dozing off.
To travel is your birthright
While we all have major travel goals, fulfilling them is not that easy given the 9-to-9 (revised in today’s context) work routine. But in Belgium, leaving your job to travel the world is an employee’s right. Known as ‘career breaks’, it allows employees to take off, perhaps even for a year. Now for the best part – the employee will not only be paid his/her full salary while on a career break, but also get a confirmation from the employer that he/she will be taken back on the job. Sounds too good to be true, right? But it does exist.
No work emails on weekends please
A proposed bill in the French National Assembly gives employees the right to disconnect and limit the use of digital tools as a way to ensure rest periods and vacations as well respect time spent for a life outside of work, which includes family. This proposed law is designed to protect the workers’ health and well-being, and empower them with the right to be away from work-related emails for at least 11 hours a day!
Travelling to work place is also work
The European Court of Justice has ruled that the time spent travelling to and from the first and last appointment should be regarded as work. The judgement came in the wake of a case reporting irregularity, where employers were violating work time regulation rules in the UK. This law came into being to not only protect the ‘health and safety’ of workers, but also from being exploited by their employers. The rule reinstates that no employee should be forced to work for more than the designated 48 hours
a week.
You can’t be fired!
Portugal is an employee’s heaven. Yes, and we mean it. Employers in the country can’t dismiss their workers as there is no termination period in the country’s employment law. And there’s more – if an employer does not want to retain the employee, he/she needs to offer a decent resignation package, beg the employee to leave and hope that the employees won’t make a fuss about it.
-TNN
In a bid to take labour-friendly laws to another level, UAE (United Arab Emirates) has taken the initiative to introduce a ‘reading break’ law. This allows employees to catch up with their reading for a couple of hours during working hours. Bookworms are not the only to have benefited from laws that do more than just censure or discipline them. If you look at some countries with interesting labour laws, you’ll be tempted to move lock, stock and barrel for good. Sample these:
Mandatory vacations
Possibly the best work law ever which can be found in Austria. After working for six months, every employee is entitled to an annual paid vacation amounting to 30 working days. In fact, what comes as the cherry on the cake is that this right is reserved for people who have been employed for less than 25 years. And if someone has more years of work experience to their credit, the number of vacation days increases to 36.
Catch up on your forty winks
Ever been caught napping at work? If yes, then you obviously know the consequences. But if you were in Japan, you would have been encouraged. They have actually coined a word for it – inemuri, which means ‘to be asleep while present’. And sleeping at work is extremely common in Japan. While napping at work will earn you a tag of being inefficient in other parts of the world, Japanese believe it to be a sign of hard work. The only governing rule for inemuri is that it requires the person to remain upright while dozing off.
To travel is your birthright
While we all have major travel goals, fulfilling them is not that easy given the 9-to-9 (revised in today’s context) work routine. But in Belgium, leaving your job to travel the world is an employee’s right. Known as ‘career breaks’, it allows employees to take off, perhaps even for a year. Now for the best part – the employee will not only be paid his/her full salary while on a career break, but also get a confirmation from the employer that he/she will be taken back on the job. Sounds too good to be true, right? But it does exist.
No work emails on weekends please
A proposed bill in the French National Assembly gives employees the right to disconnect and limit the use of digital tools as a way to ensure rest periods and vacations as well respect time spent for a life outside of work, which includes family. This proposed law is designed to protect the workers’ health and well-being, and empower them with the right to be away from work-related emails for at least 11 hours a day!
Travelling to work place is also work
The European Court of Justice has ruled that the time spent travelling to and from the first and last appointment should be regarded as work. The judgement came in the wake of a case reporting irregularity, where employers were violating work time regulation rules in the UK. This law came into being to not only protect the ‘health and safety’ of workers, but also from being exploited by their employers. The rule reinstates that no employee should be forced to work for more than the designated 48 hours
a week.
You can’t be fired!
Portugal is an employee’s heaven. Yes, and we mean it. Employers in the country can’t dismiss their workers as there is no termination period in the country’s employment law. And there’s more – if an employer does not want to retain the employee, he/she needs to offer a decent resignation package, beg the employee to leave and hope that the employees won’t make a fuss about it.
-TNN
