Snapshot · Planet Money
Director Fede Álvarez explained that in Uruguay, employers must pay at least one month of salary for every year an employee worked when firing them, making it costly to dismiss long-tenured workers.
Where this was said
At 32:27 · chapter starts 28:40
In the episode's most emotionally resonant segment, Fede Álvarez goes personal. He grew up in Uruguay during and after a dictatorship, where his parents had a survival instinct born of constrained choices. But paradoxically, Uruguay also gave him strong worker protections he took entirely for granted: free universal healthcare, 30 days of guaranteed annual vacation, and severance laws requiring at least one month of pay per year of service when firing an employee. [1] — Fede Álvarez "When Fede Álvarez moved from Uruguay to the United States to direct Evil Dead, he was stunned to find no guaranteed vacation time, no unive…" 31:00 When he moved to the United States to direct Evil Dead, he was floored to discover none of these existed. He describes the reaction of American colleagues to his confusion — laughing at what they saw as naivety — and says he was the one thinking, 'what is this dystopian society?' This personal contrast directly informed his drive to make a Weyland-Yutani that felt real and oppressive, not just cartoonishly evil.
When Fede Álvarez moved from Uruguay to the United States to direct Evil Dead, he was stunned to find no guaranteed vacation time, no universal healthcare, and no mandatory severance. Back home, firing a long-tenured employee requires months of severance pay. He called American work culture 'dystopian.'
Fede Álvarez said he was shocked to find that American workers don't get guaranteed vacation time, contrasting it with Uruguay's norm of 30 days of paid annual leave.
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