That this should come from a German politician’s mouth is somewhat ironic.
Spahn, a conservative heavyweight among Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats who recently lost a contest to become the party’s leader, described a knock-on effect of countries attracting doctors from neighboring countries, as is the case with Switzerland taking in German physicians.
That’ll be the “free movement of labour” thing that the EU is so much in favour of then.
Or is the deal that only low skilled labour should be allowed to move so as to keep a downward pressure on domestic wages?
“That cannot be right. We should therefore think about whether we need to create new regulations on the luring away of people with certain professions within the EU, and without fundamentally calling into question the freedom of movement within Europe,” he was quoted as saying.
Bill’s Opinion
The good news is, the Germans have relatively recent experience and understanding on what the solution is to this.
The bad news is, if Trump gets his budget passed, there’ll be a global shortage of workers with the skills to build it for a year or two;
If the State is paying the full whack of the training, including living expenses, some commitment or claw back, may, just may, be thinkable. I had to commit to 5 extra years in the Army when I was selected for an 18 month HND course, with military management, which I think was reasonable as they paid me full salary when I was on the course.
Under any other funding model the there is a well worn phrase, and believe me it doesn’t need translating in to German, they all understand it.
Yep, I think a similar scheme happens for nurse training too.
Perhaps I’m guilty of inferring conspiracy where there is none but it does seem a bit of a double standard to welcome in the unskilled but complain the highly skilled leave.
On the specific point of an employer having a hold over you, due to them earlier paying educational fees and paying you to attend, in civvy street they don’t and they cant even if you have an agreement they cant enforce it. If they tried to, you can simply start turning up to work with thongs and a singlet.
I am sure the Army is different though, as those fuckers could probably court martial you.
You’re probably right about the employment contract but this is a European politician making the statement. He’ll have a bunch of Eurocrats drafting the legislation as we speak.
Yes, no doubt he could get them with some kind of ownership of the individuals IP. Say someone like Dr Mengele was employed and trained by the state and the resultant IP was therefore owned by the state and that him moving to the Buenos Aires Infirmary without the states consent was therefore unlawful.
On that subject, if you ever make it to the current year and start consuming podcasts, there’s an interesting little series on the BBC called “The Ratline” about the escape route from occupied Germany to South America.
I am surprised you don’t “do” podcasts, what with all the travelling you do. You must have watched every movie on the plane by now.
Oh, Mrs. Bardon says you’re out of gin. Could you replenish it before my next visit please?
I don’t actually travel a lot, a normal year may have four international trips, 14 hr flight to Dubai, 7 hrs awake eating, drinking and watching movie, 7 hrs sleeping, no time for podcasts. Similar for SA and Singapore is virtually a shuttle.
The missus says that its time you got a new joke line.
I told her to say that to put you off the scent.
How long is your drive to work?
You are missing out on much of the current intelligent thought by not listening to Rubin, Rogan, Peterson, et al.
Where I see you commenting suggests that you are picking up their information in a very secondhand way.
You choice, obviously.
As I see it I voluntarily entered in to a contract and the other side has the right to enforce it. Yes, the military has its own judicial and penal system, but its still subordinate to the law of the land.
Maybe its a bit much to throw a doctor in to jail for not working for X years in the NHS or paying back part of the costs of training them, but it shouldn’t mean they can’t be held to a contract.
We have had this a lot in my firm where we put staff through expensive courses and on the boss’s time and get them to agree that they need to refund x if they resign before y, but our advice is that any recovery cannot be taken out of their final payout and to seek damages outside of this is not enforceable and unlikely to be worth the effort and expense. We still do it, i.e. get them to sign an agreement to this effect, but we know that if a push comes to a shove then chances are that we won’t recover. Taken to its extreme then what if the employee starts massively slacking off and then you want to get rid of them and that undoubtedly would not be enforceable. The only way to ensure that you have legal means of recovery is to arrange a separate commercial loan agreement with the employee, whereby you lend them a sum of money and they in turn use that money to pay for something, the loan then has a payment and termination term that reflects that early termination by the employee triggers immediate payout of the outstanding balance, which obviously is not the done thing.
It’s a bit like “non-compete clauses” they are very questionable at law. So, you sign one, then leave a firm and need to provide for you, your family and the taxman by honestly plying your trade with another similar firm in an activity that your had agreed not to compete in, how likely is it that your ex employer will succeed in taking action against you for just working for another firm, especially when you carefully set out what a complete bunch of cunts your previous firm were and how they were discriminating against you under threat of you cant get another job if you leave us. Knocking off IP, clients, staff and blatant competitive and illegal conduct, yes, that’s not on, but other than that, action is rarely taken nor successful.
When I signed up with my current firm it had a big non-compete clause in the agreement, I was fortunate enough to sit in an office next to a legal counsel for a major contractor at that time, he told me that non-compete clauses in general and as long as you were not doing anything criminal were unenforceable, he said I didn’t even need to bother striking it out. I went back to my future employer and said that I would take the non-compete clause on but needed x more $ to take on such a huge obligation, they agreed!
Re. non-compete clauses; Yes, I had similar advice from a lawyer friend early in my career. Basically, unless you’re on the wages of a bank CEO, the cost of the legal fight and probability of success means they won’t ever bother trying to enforce them.
Nice work on getting the extras as a consequence.
There’s something else the Army relies on, loyalty and personal integrity.
It amazed and saddened me when I left and realised how fast and loose civvies are with their personal contracts. In telecoms most notice periods are 3 months, both ways. This allows companies to find replacements whilst providing the employee with a level of protection in the event of redundancy. This seems to be fine when people are demanding their 3 month’s salary if they are made redundant, but expect to leave within a week if they get another job and throw a tantrum if it doesn’t happen.
Its been accepted for a long time that non-compete clauses are restraint of trade and won’t stand up in court. I knew one banker, I played gold with her husband, who was put on gardening leave for 6 moths when she resigned in the hope that her contacts and knowledge would be diminished before she started her new job with a competitor. That seems fair enough, there was a 6 month commitment the other way.
When I was consulting we used to get some weird clauses about using knowledge we learned on projects. I used to point out to clients that we really couldn’t unlearn stuff and its difficult to disentangle knowledge from different projects but the main point was that they were employing us precisely because of knowledge we’d picked up on other projects, even though we didn’t divulge sensitive information.
“There’s something else the Army relies on, loyalty and personal integrity. “
Agreed. But expecting employees to sign unenforceable and unfair contracts is not the action of an organisation that is demonstrating a reciprocal level of integrity.
Employment contracts are a game. Both parties know this.
@BiD
I worked out that between my notice period, another six month emergency leave in my contract, sick leave and other leave I could be absent from the workplace and refuse to talk to my employer for 15 months before I would need to return their calls in order to continue to receive my income albeit at the reduced rate of 85% of base on workers compensation until further notice. But I wouldn’t do that.
On long notice periods, they really do only benefit the employee. Lest face it if you get a good offer and you want to go at your own behest sooner then you will. No real harm done and it isn’t good for the employer to have an ex-employee in the workplace and it can work well for the employer not paying you to take gardening leave.
Exactly.
Also, retention bonuses for soon-to-be retrenched employees is stupid too, unless it’s an utterly silly number.
Why? Well, if I know you’re going to get a payout and you’ve lined another gig up, you want closure and start the new thing, often with a pay rise.