Saturday 19 October 2019

UK Politicians Saving UK From Becoming Like America

If i had my way over the whole Brexit debacle i would cancel the whole thing and carry on as we are which has taken another step closer today as the politicians voted to delay Brexit until it has been agreed to stop Boris Johnson and his cohorts from crashing the UK out of the EU without a deal which is dangerous nonsense and does make me wonder exactly why they are quite so keen to do just that.
In an ideal world when the deal is attempted to be passed again, it gets turned down, we have a second referendum which reverses the decision and leaving is put down to a brief moment of madness and we stay in the European Union and it's all rainbows and lollipops forever.
Something which did crop up during the five hours of debates before the Commons decided that to leave the decision which will have profound effects for generations to Boris Johnson was like trusting him with your girlfriend, was how the Johnson deal would shift us disastrously towards America, particularly the American Health Care system, workers rights and food standards.
The American Health Care system we know all about, it's awful unless you are rich enough and we have had some knowledge of the food standards and how currently it is not up to the minimum standards for the EU and Britain would have to lower its standards to accept American chlorinated chicken, hormone fed beef, genetically modified fruit and vegetables and probably the most horrifying, the allowed 30 insect fragments per 100g of food products against the current zero EU regulation which make you wonder how more Americans are not dying of food poisoning.
The Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) estimates that each year 3,000 Americans die from food poisoning against the 225 deaths in the EU reported by The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) so actually, they are dying more from it unsurprisingly.
The workers rights i was not aware of but the Foothold America website explains that American employers don't pay workers for their lunch break so an eight hour day would become an eight and a half hour day if you take a 30m lunch, while we have 20 total working days of annual leave and eight public/bank holidays, there is no minimum paid vacation or paid public holidays for American workers with paid leave being at the discretion of the employers but the average number is 10 days after 1 year of service, 14 days after 5 years, 17 days after 10 years, and 20 days after 20 years.
While in the USA there are 12 weeks of maternity pay, there is no paternity leave which is set against 52 weeks for mothers over here and 2 weeks paid paternity pay for fathers.
Minimum wage in USA is £5.58 ($7.25) while in the UK it is £8.21 ($10.66) but the biggest difference between US employment law and UK employment law is that the US has something called 'at will employment' which means employers can terminate an employment relationship without notice, for any reason, so long as doing so is not a violation of a protected class such as on grounds of pregnancy, race, religion, sex or age.
Taken altogether, you can see why we have a lot to thank our politicians for today if the American health, food and especially employment laws is where this Conservative Government want to take us.

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