Brazil: A look into Latin America’s largest startup ecosystem (2017)

Re:Brazil: A look into Latin America’s largest startup ecosy... by chrisbennet on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @02:46AM (#17957631)

”Labour protection here is insane too. It's not cheap for small and medium companies. And there is a thing that makes it even more complicated for startups: legally, the owner of the company is in charge of the labor debts even when the company is broken. So, if your company broke, you can't close it until you pay all the labor debts, and if you don't pay, you can lose your home or other assets that belong to you, not to your company;”

This is pretty normal, you need to lay off people before you run out of money to pay them. You don’t gamble with your employees paychecks.

As a business owner, you get the upside if business is going great. The downside is that you, the owner, only get paid if there is money left over after you pay your employees.

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Re:Brazil: A look into Latin America’s largest startup ecosy... by diegoholiveira on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @09:56AM (#17959712)

But I'm not talking about wages. I'm talking about other rigths that an employee has, for example: if you bankrupt and need to fire you employees, you'll be forced to pay a fine of 40% of the FGTS (FGTS it's like a saving account the company is obligated to pay in name of they employees).

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Re:Brazil: A look into Latin America’s largest startup ecosy... by rescbr on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @01:53PM (#17961863)

Speaking as a fellow Brazilian: so account for it beforehand, in the same way you should account for 13th salaries and other "hidden" worker rights, which are liabilities in the accounting sense.

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Re:Brazil: A look into Latin America’s largest startup ecosy... by kikoreis on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @04:01PM (#17962817)

Yeah, that's how we have always hired, and I don't see a big problem with CLT (the Brazilian employment law), perhaps with the exception of how vacation time and union membership is handled.

It's bizarre that the threads on this post seem to straddle "founders are only in it to make money off the back of their employees" and "worker's rights and compensation are onerous" simultaneously.

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Re:Brazil: A look into Latin America’s largest startup ecosy... by oddx on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @03:57AM (#17957900)

> This is pretty normal

Can anyone comment how common it is? Isn't normal in Europe? US? Other countries?

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Re:Brazil: A look into Latin America’s largest startup ecosy... by d4mi3n on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @04:17AM (#17957983)

I can’t speak for all of the US, but this is California law: a business owner is _personally_ liable for unpaid wages in the event of bankruptcy. The Department of Labor does not take kindly to people or business who cheat their employees out of a rightfully earned paycheck.

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