Many countries also have their own laws to protect workers. Some countries have very strong worker protections, like Canada and France. For example, almost every worker in Canada is entitled to two weeks of paid vacation per year, if he or she has been at the job for more than a year. In France, all workers must be given a written contract of employment, and they can't be fired without a very specific and objective reason that is recognized under the law.
Worker Rights in the US: United States labor laws guarantee some basic rights. These include the right to be paid at or above the minimum wage and the right to a safe and healthy workplace. These basic rights were not automatically given to us, but were won over hundreds of years of struggle by working people. For example, until the late 1930s, there was no limit to how many hours a person could be forced to work in a week. Hundreds of strikes across the country in the early part of the century led to the establishment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which guaranteed the first minimum wage and the 40-hour work week.
