What about minimum paid days off?

Mommyboo, you mentioned something that seems to be causing a lot of trouble and confusion in this country--"You cannot expect loyal employees who love you and work the best they can..." It's a JOB. A JOB, not a family, not a friend--people have families and friends and then there is their job. Jobs are impersonal, or should be. Just because you trade your time and skill for a financial reward it doesn't obligate your employer to have a personal relationship with you. (I'm not talking you, specifically, just a collective "you") People want their hands held all the time, they want everyone to love and respect them and can't separate business from personal issues. A person's job owes them nothing but a paycheck, plain and simple. Everything else is just gravy. The sooner people realize that they are responsible for their personal emotional fulfillment and don't expect anything like that from their employer, the better off they will be. Sorry, but you touched on one of my pet peeves there.

Well, it's frustrating as an employee to have to worry about not having any days off, or getting in trouble if you ASK for one off. The US is really about the WORST as far as employer/employee relationships and benefits. Despite all the wonderful things about living in the US, it seems that other countries take care of their people better. EVERYBODY gets health care. EVERYBODY gets several weeks off work.... probably at the least, 3 weeks, in addition to sick pay. Yes it frustrates me. You cannot expect loyal employees who love you and work the best they can if you just run them into the ground and pay them nothing....

Maybe those others countries would be better to live in then. So fair, offering so much to their citizens. Huge benefits packages like Greece (we helped bail them out). Universal healthcare for everyone like many European countries (they do not tolerate immigration whatsoever). I can only speak for myself, obviously, but I'd rather live in a country where I had to go at life alone, experiencing full freedom to actually go at it, than to accept crumbs as trade to allow a government to control more of my life. In the long run, it seems easier to hop across the pond than to keep rallying for that particular brand of change in America - wanting the USA to be more like other countries. With a federal government trying desperately to control 50 states, millions upon millions of illegal immigrants, unions with a stranglehold on public education, huge industry and government working hand in hand - we're like a Rubik's Cube in a sense: one way to get it right but millions of ways to get it wrong. A lot of people want their pie-in-the-sky, let's-be-like-Holland healthcare and windmills and guaranteed jobs for life with benefits, etc, but no one seems to want to do all the work it would take to get there. Folks seem to want to push new furniture into the living room without cleaning out the junk that's already there. Another possible suggestion for workers feeling undervalued - become a boss. I did.

I also think that the only people who should ever suggest what businesses should or should not do should have to prove that they have run or managed a successful business themselves.

So what is your opinion about work place safety?

I generally say that government needs to stay out of business too EXCEPT for two things - the amount of profit a business is allowed to make - and if they stiff employees in order to make the profit, OR something like this. I think it is reasonable to have 'minimum paid days off', just like there's a law about large corporations having to provide their employees with health insurance and family leave. Smaller corporations can somehow get out of providing those things, which makes it somewhat iffy working for a small company unless they pay you enough so you can pay for those things out of your pocket. Very few people can.

Business will offer better pay and more benefits when they need to attract more or better employees. Henry Ford did it when he started his company. He paid more per day than any other auto maker so that he could attract the best workers and so that his employees could afford to buy his product. Not because the government said to do it but because it made good business sense.

In Tampa, FL the county had a mandate saying that any county employees who worked over 20 hours a week MUST get paid time off. As a result all the county agencies dropped all the part time employees to 19 hours a week without the option to work ANY extra hours so they could skirt the issue. Anyone who doesn't think private businesses would do the same thing is kidding themselves.

Agreed. I can't speak from a standpoint of a legitimate business owner, but I know from outsourcing a lot of my work that I will NOT hire someone taking 4 days to complete a job as opposed to 2, or someone who wants more money for the same job than someone else with the same qualifications. I guess I'm probably just impatient and greedy. I should value people more and allow them to earn more money for less work and give them more time to do it. I could probably do that if I collected taxpayer money from on high instead of paying with profits earned from a product produced. It's confusing to me how some people understand "business" and "money" and the like. Moore's not alone in the whole "national resource" bit.