No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
If you accepted a remote job, you should have it in writing that the job is 'remote' work.
If your job wasn't remote initially, but assumed it would be remote going forward, you should have demanded that the job has changed to 'remote' in writing.
If your job wasn't initially remote, was temporarily made remote, and they are now changing back. Be prepared to walk.
In the US we have like no laws protecting labor. They'll just tell you to go into the office, or fire you.
I hate this line of reasoning. It's not something I subscribe to. We're not robots. We're not blindly following some set of logic rules. There's no humanity in that.
My job was remote to start. Even if it wasn't, this line of reasoning isn't something I would ever use. Just because it was or was not a thing does not mean we're forced to just accept things and not want life to be better. Especially if it's a business decision based on things that do not make sense. Squeaky wheels get the grease. C suite makes decisions on information and if all people never spoke up just because things were a certain way when they arrived then nothing would change.
I think you’re still kind of screwed if they want you in the office and you’re officially remote.
But - yes - if your manager changes that does kind of protect you from sudden expectations from them of coming in.
Depends on what you mean by 'screwed'. If they hired you with certain expectations, like in writing job is 'remote', then you can refuse.
If they fire you as a result, yes, you are 'screwed' in the case of you've lost your job,
But you then sue for wrongful dismissal, in which case you have some recourse.
But if you live in a country/state that doesn't allow you to do that, and offers no employee protections,
You were screwed from the beginning by accepting work in such a place to begin with.
Not in the US. "Remote worker" is not a protected class.
Yes, definitely the fault of every worker in the US for accepting work ... checks notes ... in the US.
You can still sue if you find a lawyer who is willing to do it.
Pennsylvania is an "At Will" state, so in theory my wife could have fired any employee just because she felt like it. However, the steps laid out by our lawyer for firing someone were quite extensive.
We needed to have extensive documentation of failures and performance issues on file before we could consider it.
That's also why my employer has such an extensive coaching and documentation process for poorly performing employees. The policy documents describe it as a way to ensure all employees have the opportunity and support they need to improve, but the real reason is definitely to protect against lawsuits.
Of course, if anyone in the US is thinking of moving to another state, this might be useful:
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/economic-justice/workers-rights/best-states-to-work/
I was going to suggest that you'd want to cross-reference other details as well, such as if the state allows doctors to refuse to treat you because they think their magic sky-daddy doesn't want them to.
It doesn't need to be a 'protected class'.
If you were hired as an accountant, and job description explains what the job entails.
The boss can't tell you to go out front and mow the grass, and fire you if you refuse.
It's not in your job description.
Same with remote work. If the job description said 100% remote work.
It would be the same as hiring someone in one city, and then demanding they move to another city, and firing you if you refuse.
Sure, they can let you go, but they'd be on the hook for compensation. (in most civilized places anyway)
[In the US,] Yes it does.
Yes they can.
Not compensation, but unemployment incsurance claims. If you're let go "without cause," you get to claim unemployment, and the business that let you go has to pay some portion of that. Unemployment insurance barely pays anything, though, so that's not going to be a very high amount for the business.
I've noticed a lot of job offers say like "Other duties as required"
You are not going to outsmart the corporate lawyers.
The rich have class solidarity.
Wrongful termination happens when your employer fires you for an illegal reason. Learn what qualifies as wrongful discharge and the actions you can take.
The bar for tort cases in the US is at an all time low but it's very unlikely you'd be successful suing for wrongful termination over RTO.
I'm grateful for being hired on during COVID for this. My job description specifically says remote.
Bonus is that I work for a union and they have our backs. Even as the company tightens down on cyber security and starts forcing people to use the Ethernet or else apps on their personal phones (big no from me) to log into certain things - even with that, the union has our back and is making the company give us options to remain fully remote.
Having that in writing won’t help a great deal. Even if somehow you make it binding, you’re still employed at-will. Unless you’re saying to make sure you have a full employment contract in place. Which, yeah, wouldn’t that be nice?
Not everyone works in the US,my friend. A lot of people don't have *haha, fuck you plebs" labour laws.
Great so tell me where you live and how enforceable a written note that your job is “remote” would be, and if you would be protected from dismissal when you couldn’t come to terms with your employer about where the work needs to be done.
Don’t know? Can’t bother? Just wanted to take a shot at the US?
I am literally a central European founder and current CEO and have been responsible for human ressource management for up to 150 employees before.
And yes, when I have a named primary workplace" in the work contract the employee can more or less say "haha,go fuck yourself" for a long time - until I have built a case to prove to the court why it impedes my business more than what is fair . Hint: Five years post COVID and none won so far - pacta sunt servanda for the Latin speaking folks here.
And protected from dismissal - almost every employee is. If I want to reduce my headcount of course I can - and I better not be hiring back on the side (then it's very likely age based discrimination). But if I just want Paul Workfomhome gone who has not done anything wrong? Good luck. The court will fuck you right over. Even dismissing someone who actually has done something wrong is quite formalized. Rightfully so.
And yes I wanted to take a shot at the US-centrism a few Lemmyists still have, cause, quite frankly,it's annoying and hidebound.
Written where? We don't generally have employment contracts in the US.
Excuse me but what the fuck?
Is this...a surprise to you?
Employees have very few rights/protections here. Employers have all the power
Yes it is. I knew that US people get fucked by the corporations and seeing how they vote seem to like it, but there must be some written agreement about the terms of the employment. Holidays, salary, list of duties, location, and so on.
Yeah we get an offer letter about salary and benefits, and a vague mention of the position you're working for (this may be more explicit for union jobs), and there's usually some company policy things we have to agree to every year.
But no, there "must" not be an actual agreement. All that shit can change at the whims of the company. We accept the position, and if things change, we are "free to leave". Some states might have more laws around this than others, but corporate money and gerrymandering have greatly tilted the political landscape against the worker
Barbaric. I had no idea it was that bad. Thank you for informing me.
You don't get a letter of employment offer?
There might be a written agreement of what the work, hours, compensation agreed to is, but that's not a contract for employment to the degree of "if the employee fulfills the conditions of this contract, they can't be terminated."
I did. That's not the same thing as an employment contract. And whatever is on that letter can be changed without much, if any, notice.