Anglo American Platinum fired 12,000 striking miners

[The Grand Nudger]

I wouldn't call that captive. Captive to me suggests that there is no way out for them, which isn't true. There are just steps that ensure an employee can't screw an employer over. Notice periods are more important in small business, where less time and money is available for hiring people.

Retention and replacement are the costs of doing business. I personally don;t see the need to subsidize someone else's investments in this manner (and I couldn't..with a straight face, ask someone else to subsidize mine in this manner...particularly the motherfucker I'd be levying the fine against....).

I'd think a fine would be good. However, you are correct in that fining a frycook for not showing up to work is absurd; if the company can easily replace someone (as they can with a frycook), it probably isn't in their best interests to go to court over it. The best they can do is give a bad reference if the frycook ever tries to use them as such. However, if you are the head chef or are some other person of importance in the kitchen, it would definitely be in the company's best interests to take them to court for breach of contract. Finding a good head chef isn't as easy as finding a frycook, and there may have been things only the head chef knew about the running of the kitchen. The company may lose a lot of business, and they deserve compensation for that (provided a notice period is stipulated in the original contract).

Isn't it in the company;s best interests to properly screen and interview prospective employees and then take steps to ensure they have good retention rates? I'm not personally sure that a binding contract of labor is what's called for in the retention dept.

Well, I think the only times when a company can dictate where and when an employee can go are within work hours. For instance, my work may require me to be in the office from 9-5 unless I am unable to make it (traffic, sickness, etc.). However, after those hours, they have no control over me, and cannot. Of course, I get one hour for lunch, when it is also up to me where I go.

You can also leave between the hours of 9-5, I'm guessing, without being fined. The companies in question btw also felt that they should be able to dictate where a person was under penalty of fine during the hours that their contract was in effect. Just so happened that their contract was in effect all the time. There were a lot of fun things in their contracts, none of them enforceable (not even by a fine) anymore.

As in, physically walk out? Yes, of course. Legally they are in breach of contract, and could be taken to court by the company in question, or given a bad reference, but other than that, the company can't legally hold them inside against their will if they want to leave.

Again I think this is a fundamental difference of opinion between us.

I'd guess they are set up to protect businesses, especially where the employee is mission critical. If those laws didn't exist, I could easily see a big corporation abusing them by hiring people to apply for jobs at a competitor, and then refuse to work or walk out on the first day, forcing the competitor to rehire...etc. How quickly could businesses (especially small businesses) be bullied out of the market if this was the case?

We have different laws to handle that...and IIRC it would be in the arena of fraud and malfeasance.

I'm not sure I understand where voluntary labor comes into this. Voluntary labor is unpaid; when you quit your job and have a notice period, you are paid your full salary for that entire period. Sorry if I led you to believe otherwise. A notice period can really be thought of as a clause in a contract to say that when quitting a job, you must give the company x amount of notice (usually 2 weeks, but it can be longer) before you actually "quit" and stop working.

If you "must" it is not voluntary. Further, if this "must" is enforced by legal proceedings and fines it has firmly left the territory of what I would call voluntary. I mean, sure, paying a speeding ticket is "voluntary" as well... The elephant in this particular room is what happens if said employee, upon quitting their job with no notice "voluntarily" decides not to pay the fine. There really isn't any way around having what you're describing called a compulsory obligation of labor. There are far shittier words for this. Here (and I'm assuming where you are as well) it's been decided that affording a business the power of the state to tell an employee what they "must" do, specifically with regards to their labor, is a recipe for tears. We have a long, violent history full of precedent that has led us to this decision. After the abolition of the most obvious form of compulsory labor (slavery) various other types of compulsory labor existed (in various industries) for quite some time. The most horrid examples, being contractual agreements.

(all labor here in the US, is, by law, voluntary - paid or unpaid)