Know Your Rights covers employee rights in the Icelandic job market, with a focus on how employers use said employee rights as an economic weapon to abuse their employees. The book teaches you how to identify when your rights are being mishandled, and what you can do to push back against mistreatment by your employer.
Even if the book covers employee rights from the Icelandic job market, it’s fundamental teaching is applicable worldwide, as the normalization of economic abuse has infiltrated job markets all over the globe.
The book is split into 7 parts, each focusing on a specific topic that is important for individuals to know if they intend to begin pushing back against mishandling of their employee rights by their employer – and against mistreatment by their employer in general.
Terminology and Labor Law Examples
We often think that mishandling of employee rights happen after we begin working for an employer, but the mishandling usually begins well before that. The first part in Know Your Rights gives several minuscule introductions into terminology relevant to employee rights, and how you can begin noticing mishandling of your rights even before you begin working for an employer.
The second part of Know Your Rights dives into Icelandic labor laws, and lists how said laws are set up to appear as employee rights, while in fact only serving the employer, or even how labor laws can be actively circumvented by employers without any consequences from the government.
Employee Rights to Absence and Pay
The third and fourth part of Know Your Rights are the backbone of this book, as they cover most employee rights one can find in Icelandic labor laws and collective agreements.
Whether it be the right to absence from work, or pay for work done, all employee rights can be mishandled by your employer. It is important to not only know what rights you have, but to understand how these rights can be taken away from you – or even used against you – by your employer.
Third Parties and Workplace Culture
The fifth part of Know Your Rights centers on all third parties to the employment relationship, gives you information about how said third parties can, or will not, support you, as well as tries to give you solid ideas on how to circumvent any lack of support from these third parties.
The sixth part of Know Your Rights was written entirely for myself, as this is how I work. For years, I’ve been working as an HR consultant – now without borders – where my focus is on identifying and tackling abusive behavior in the workplace. This work isn’t done by sitting around and waiting for two people to start fighting, but rather by monitoring the workplace culture and identifying certain factors that can help pinpoint where possible abuse can be happening, and from whom, before an incident occurs.
All chapters about workplace culture give you information of certain behavior one can expect to see in abusive environments, as well as hints at how you can maneuver said environment.
Wrap Up
And finally, there is a short wrap up that hopefully helps you see the bigger picture of what Know Your Rights is about. Even if the book seems like a collection of random information, the purpose of the book isn’t to help you with one singular right and what to expect about it. The purpose is simple, to give you all the necessary tools to identify mishandling of your employee rights so that you can actively, and effectively, push back against the rising abuse culture that is happening in our job markets.
I hope Know Your Rights will proof useful to you. I hope the information in it will help you maneuver difficult settings, as knowing these things has helped me work through them. And I hope that with time, we will all see our job markets circumvent and actively begin moving towards healthier communication and behavioral patterns.
Know Your Rights is accessible on this website – free of charge – available to all as a .pdf document. Should you wish for another document type, please use the contact form.