It's entirely possible that I am a poor communicator, but I have never had anyone else with as much trouble interpreting my writing as you display.
The law in our jurisdiction requires the employer to provide a minimum amount of notice or severance when terminating employment. The law also provides that companies going through bankruptcy can ignore that law. The law also allows the company to get away with not paying out the 30% deficit in the employee's negotiated pension plan when they are going through bankruptcy. The thing they negotiated and the thing that was promised them under the law, are both being taken away by the bankruptcy laws.
I was clearly addressing the fallacious notion that absolute adherence to law is somehow a basis for claiming moral superiority. Many of our laws are based on morals, many are based on preserving the assets of the people with the greatest amount of power in the country. The commonly misused phrase that possession is nine-tenths of the law refers to the fact that the vast majority of our codes are about preserving wealth for those who already have it and how to decide who something belongs to when there is conflict.
Trying to blame the employees for not having negotiated something that was already provided for in law is quintessential victim blaming and does not incline me to think any better of your stand regarding law and morals.
So it's the dual of the competing laws. That's more than unfortunate but it's understandable in some ways. What needs to change is the classification of the worker related contract obligations. The wages are pretty much covered and seen as debt obligations. I don't know why pension payments aren't seen the same way. Notification and severance are two areas we could disagree about. Severance may be doable under the structures of the pension, but notification is especially thorny as you don't want a company telling all their employees that they will be shutting down in 2 months, and then expect that company to complete any outstanding contracts. If you did require notification I do believe you would also need to require the employee work most to all of the time until closure. In fact it would almost be necessary as often penalties for not completion would be paid in advance of any settlement of workers claims. So if a company has a million dollars they have to pay in penalties and they own the workers, say 500k in pension payments, if they told the workers before they completed the contract and the workers left -- causing them to fail to complete and thus incur the penalties, the 1 million would be lost to the workers and it would be hard to see how the company could then pay them 500k. That's the problem with telling the workers that you are going to close. Of course nobody wants to show up on Monday to a locked gate, but both sides do suffer either way. In addition, most states have pension insurance whereby the insurance payments not made are made by the insurance company upon the default of the company. Unfortunately some states do not, and some companies are registered in those states specifically to avoid the pension fund insurance costs (among other things).
But under all your concern is, I think, a philosophical distinction which may not be more than personal choice. You do seem to think that the workers are inherently worth more than the bankers. Why is that? If a bank loses money people at the bank lose their jobs. So if you set things up so that the banks don't get repaid their loans, you may have helped one set of workers, at the expense of another. When the resources of the bankrupt company are insufficient to pay those who are owed, how to distribute fairly boils down to what you think is fair. When the word "fair" enters into the conversation there isn't much objective evidence one can offer for one;s version of fairness.
AJ
PS. Wrote that yesterday, today I add that "apparently" implies that the thing claimed is clearly there. So if you say I "apparently" think something you are, in fact, saying that the evidence for believing I think that is clear enough to be apparent (implying apparent to all). You seem to have, in my opinion, assumed the direction of my comments would lead me to support the practice of having bankruptcy laws nullify other laws regarding worker rights. Bankruptcy laws negate a lot more than those laws and protect a lot more as well. Individuals make promises to pay certain things back and then default. When they default long enough the bankruptcy laws allow them to walk away from debt obligations, AND to keep certain assets even if those assets have liens upon them. If, for instance, you own your home and make payments, but have huge credit card or other debt obligations, when you go bankrupt the creditors cannot kick you out of your home and sell it for their debts. A second home, yes, but not your primary residence. Same goes for your car. And your tools if you are a craftsman. Corporations have fewer protections. The right to forgo debt obligations by a corporation is about the same as the right to declare bankruptcy an individual enjoys, though a bankrupt corporation can loose all it's assets, including any real estate, even if it is necessary for the business activity of the ongoing firm.
Most states have laws that say you have to repay loans. Failure to do so results in actions by the parties to whom the debt is owned and governed by the processes put in place. Bankruptcy says you can "put aside" the debt and thus, as a concept is using the bankruptcy laws to set aside other laws requiring your to fulfill the contract you signed.
The only positive thing that can be said about bankruptcy is that without without it individuals, not matter how fraudulent the bankruptcy might be, would end up in "debtor's prison." If a corporation were to do what some individuals do in the process of declaring bankruptcy or in anticipation of it, the management would land in jail.
Just some thoughts on bankruptcy and the law.
AJ
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