General Assembly Resolution #527 “Protected Working Leave” (Category: Regulation; Area of Effect: Labour Rights) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.
Lauding
GA#527's intent to protect workers' economic and social security, yet aware of GA#527's many shortcomings, the General Assembly repeals GA#527 for the following reasons:
- GA#527 contains a slew of imprecise, vague, and exploitable language, including but not limited to:
- guaranteeing workers returning from paid leave the same or a comparable job as to what they had before "should their employer reasonably be able to provide such," effectively undermining the goal of that subclause by allowing employers to hurt workers with unjust demotions per the word reasonable,
- "serious illness" and "seriously ill," allowing workers to request paid leave on a whim per the vagueness of the words serious and seriously,
- requiring workers to give "reasonable notice" or alert their employers of any "serious health conditions" that may require them to take paid leave, yet more poor wording that causes unnecessary workplace trouble in the case of notices that disallow employers to adequately adjust, on top of the concerns with using "serious" as listed in the above bulletpoint,
- how employers may not impose "unnecessarily onerous conditions" for paid leave, an easy way for employers to restrict workers' rights and prevent employees from taking paid leave per the ambiguity of unnecessarily onerous,
- how member nations may place the burden of compensating workers on paid leave onto the workers' employer if the employer can provide it "without significant financial strain," which could result in small businesses and large corporations carrying the same weight, increasing bankruptcy risk among small businesses and thus creating social and economic instability for the owners of said bankrupt smaller businesses and its employees,
- the vagueness of a "comparable job," which doesn't specify how the job is comparable, thus opening the door to salary decreases, a change to a field the employee is uninterested in, a different necessary skill set for the job, a combination of these factors, or other factors, and
- how subclause 5a only protects workers from "unnecessarily onerous conditions" from employers, leaving room for malign member state actors to oppress its workforce due to the lack of restrictions on their placing of conditions upon workers filing for paid leave,
- GA#527's definition of worker fails to differentiate between employees on perpetual contracts and non-perpetual contracts, ultimately allowing employees on time-limited contracts to request paid leave on the first day of their employment and remain on paid leave until the end of it,
- GA#527 forbids employers from not giving employees the same or comparable jobs on return even when impossible but additionally allows exceptions for when it is both impossible or "unreasonable," contradicting itself, and
- Clause 2 of GA#527 states employers must give workers "a reasonable duration of paid leave" if they request it under certain poorly-worded conditions; one example being "to care for a seriously ill or physically or mentally disabled spouse, child below the age of majority, parent, grandparent, or dependent should they require such care [to the extent necessary to adequately service this condition]." Such wording allows for excessive paid leave; a worker caring for their infant offspring (who cannot live independently) will receive paid leave for years, and a worker caring for their mentally disabled parent (who again needs care) may receive paid leave for even longer. Moreover, a business, perhaps one with considerable leverage over an employee, may argue "reasonable" and "adequately" to mean, for example, a period that wouldn't allow an employee to recover fully from a "serious illness" to not endanger their fellow employees. The lack of a minimum or maximum paid leave length requirement only worsens this.
