wateroverfire posted:

Chilean labor law is pretty dumb in a lot of ways. Below are just a few:

1) It is very expensive to lay an employee off. Employees on a fixed term contract have to be paid out to the end of their terms whether they're performing or not. Employees on an indefinite contract accrue a month of severence plus one month per year worked. If an employee challenges their lay off as "unjust" (which they will) and wins (which they will) they can get another 50% in penalties and might even get their job back so that the whole process starts again. This creates some really perverse incentives compared to, for instance, an American style unemployment insurance system or even a more generous european system. But it's rooted in the cultural animosity between workers and management and so is untouchable.

2) Medical leaves of absence may be taken at any time, with doctors' permission, for anything from injury to stress, for an indefinite sequence of 1 week periods. While on leave an employee can't be replaced and they're entitled to return to their old job at their old pay plus whatever seniority they accrued while on leave. In theory this would be sort of ok but FONASA (the state insurance plan) gives no shits about fraud and the system is rampantly abused at great cost to the state and employers. When an employee decides they're outie it's not uncommon for them to take a year's worth of paid leave to pad out their eventual mandatory severence payment.

3) Chileans have to work a fixed schedule set by contract, and deviation from that without a bunch of paperwork is a violation for the employer if the employee complains (whether it was to the employee's benefit or not). Flex time is legally dubious. Allowing people to work from home is legally dubious. Allowing alternate schedules is illegal. Basically, we can't be modern about how people work. It frustrates everyone and yet it's untouchable because ARE WORKER PROTECTIONS.