this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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But how would that work? They are gonna put you in jail for not working 2 extra weeks?
You get paid to work, if you fail to do so then you won’t get paid, that’s all there is to it.
Ummm. No. You are contractually obligated to work. You could get sued by not doing what you signed up to do, or in fact doing it negligently. However I don’t think that happens often.
Also, if you fail to fulfill your obligation good luck getting legal employment later.
It may sound weird to people living in certain country but remember the laws protect the employers as well as they do protect employees.
Yeah I guess it depends on the terms of your employment.
I was talking about hourly and salary employees. For those cases, unless you signed something special, you can just stop working tomorrow. The consequence would be not getting paid tomorrow (or any other day). You can try and sue anyone for anything, but chances of it working is very low.
Belgian here. The rules vary depending on the collective agreement the position falls under (hospitality workers' unions negotiate separately from construction workers' for instance).
Most people in most jobs are some variation of salaried (whether on a fixed or indeterminate duration contract) and the contract must be broken either upon natural termination (fixed contract or tryout period), with a predetermined amount of notice time, or due to an egregious fault (multiple warning notices, stealing from the employer, failing to pay the employee, etc.).
Contractors can be hired and fired willy-nilly, but they normally get paid enough for that not to be a concern. I'm not aware of "hourly" contracts in the way North-Americans usually mean them, AFAIK the number of weekly working hours must always be determined in advance. I just checked, in the hospitality industry there is obviously some regulated leeway for scheduling but the yearly average must be exactly 38 hours/week (hence why some Americans always complain that European waiters aren't kissing their boots every 5 seconds). Though there are many different collective agreements, each with enough different rules to keep the employment lawyers well fed.
"Odd jobs" are legal and not subject to those rules, but if you regularly employ someone for "odd jobs" then it is very likely that were they to challenge it in court, the judge would reclassify that as a salary position and rule according to that and even possibly fine the employer for unlawful employment. Generally speaking if someone can just walk away from a job with no repercussions in Belgium, I'd expect that it is either an illegal employment situation, some kind of odd/seasonal job, or a job where the employer just doesn't care enough to sue (if they were paying out the minimum wage, they certainly aren't going to get anything back by suing!).
Fellow belgian here.
While I agree with what you wrote here there are some other forms of employment too, which do not get the same protections: student jobs, interim jobs and I think flexijobs.
IIRC, not too long ago there was even quite a fuss about interim jobs being abused for long-term employment without worker protections.
Ok, im in Poland and I think the laws are similar enough across all of europe, but it’s true at least in Poland. Every legal employee has to sign a contract of employment with his employer, those fall into categories based on conditions of the work but most common is “contract of employment” which in fact is heavily regulated by law. Termination terms are one of the things that are regulated.
Pretty much it’s illegal to hire someone willy nilly, the state needs to know about it for the purposes of social security and taxation for example.
I’m in Canada and you can walk away from your job at any time. It’s common courtesy to give two weeks notice but you can give 1 day notice if you really wanted to.