Coincidentally, Asia is a lot more receptive to AI as well. Turns out having strong job protections means that companies actually need to figure out how to make humans more productive with AI, instead of replacing them.

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zarzavat 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Are you talking about Japan? Because when I think of "Asia" strong job protections are just about at the bottom of the list.

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johnnyanmac 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Most of my reference is Japan and South Korea, yes. You're relatively hard to fire there unless you genuinely in the red as a company. They have their own loopholes around this, but you can't just do forever layoffs for no reason like the US.

My much less researched understanding of China is that there's much less protections in terms of well-being (no federal minimum wage, absurd work hours as standard, etc), but China also comes down much harder (at least, compared to the US) on companies that violate laws. Actual punishments will depend on loyalty, but companies take care to avoid that situation to begin with.

I can't speak at all for the rest of SEA.

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Cookingboy 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> much less protections in terms of well-being (no federal minimum wage, absurd work hours as standard, etc)

There absolutely is minimal wage but is set by local governments, because different places have different cost of living.

There are better protections for work hours for salaried workers than America. Anything above 40 hours get paid at 1.5X and anything above 60 hours get paid at 2x.

For layoffs in China, you have to pay N+1 of months of salary in terms of severance. N being the number of years an employee has been there.

And talking about absurd work hours, SK and Japan aren't better than China.

So China overall has far better labor rights protection than the U.S.

	▲	johnnyanmac 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>talking about absurd work hours, SK and Japan aren't better than China. On paper, no. Japan has overtime bonuses too, but you're culturally discouraged from reporting overtime. So 12 hour days are common with no OT. And thats not including "optional" after work outings. Yet, it's also not uncommon for Japan to bring about the "appearance" of working more than really working. Whether you judge that appearance of work as more or less stressful than China's work standards is a more personal question. Either way, my main comparison was Asia to the US rather than countries within Asia. US has higher salaries, better minumum wage (but still nowhere near good), and usually better hours. But stability without unions is non-existent as we've seen the past decades.

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orphereus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't want to make this sound rude. I'm curious what job protections are there in various Asian countries?

	▲	johnnyanmac 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Most of my understanding is based around studying Japanese law, so I wouldn't extend it to all of asia. But the main protection is that much of Asia is not at-will employment. So you can't easily create mass layoffs like the US without good reason (some regions won't do that because wage floors are pathetic or non-existent, but it's still some protection).