In article , HeyBub wrote:
Peter wrote:

I thought that in the U.S. and U.K., anyone can take any job they
can get hired for, at any wage and benefits that they can negotiate.

Uh, no, not by a long-shot.

First, you have minimum-wage laws and all sorts of nanny-state
workplace rules. Then there are unions. Next is government licensing
and permitting for many occupations. Some jobs are intrinsically
illegal! On and on.
How does that change the basic fact that anyone in the U.S. can take
any job they can get hired for? You are arguing that the hiring
playing field is not level. That's a completely different issue. Bottom
line, you are free to change jobs to any job an employer is
willing to pay you to do. Restrictions on the employer's hiring
choices is a different subject entirely. Stop changing the subject
every time someone catches an inaccuracy (or worse) in what you say!

No, restrictions on the employer interfere with the negotiations.

Further, the restrictions apply to the applicant also. For example, an
applicant cannot demand to being paid less than the minimum wage or insist
on not wearing the government-mandated safety helmet.

If I was impacted by a mandate to wear a stinking helmet in order to
work a job that I could get hired for and that I desperately needed, I
would wear the steenkin' helmet!

I would rather do that than demand to be paid 50 cents an hour less
than the minimum wage - heck, I beat minimum wage in a job where I would
rather wear a helmet, the law has yet to require one my way, and I like my
helmet in my "day job"! (Delivering restaurant food by bicycle in the
University City area of Philadelphia - and Philadelphia has its way of
having no shortage of bad drivers and genuorous jurors and lawyers.
Meanwhile, I would rather work for a living than get paid to survive a
skull fracture / brain injury that can get blamed in court on someone
with a deep pocket.)

So I spend on average adjusted-for-inflation about $7-$8 per year on
helmets, even when spending more for more aerodynamic ones or to get
hardshell ones (better survivability of hits by low tree branches and
being knocked down from a popular risky short-term-storage shelf 2 meters
above the floor). I even spent a little more for my most recent helmet
purchase, for better fit and better feeling of fit and better appearance
according to my sense of of how well I sense it to make me "look good"
according to some bit of sense of clothing appearance that I recently
developed.

--
- Don Klipstein )