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Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

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Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#181

Post by Silhouette »

barbegal wrote: post #121
mnw21cam wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you decide not to sign the new contract, and they fire you because of it, you can take them to tribunal for it. It's illegal.

IANAL but it's not always illegal. If a company has a choice between going bust and imposing pay cuts on everyone then that is perfectly legal.

Citation very much needed. I have never seen anything in UK employment rights law that says "unless the employer is in trouble".

If the business is in danger of going bust because it can't afford to keep people on then it may need to make some of them redundant (and redundancy rights will then apply), but that's totally different to unilaterally changing the contractual terms of employment for the worse.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#182

Post by rusticpenn »

me_me_me wrote: post #68
bsanr2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistically-speaking, this will disproportionately effect women and minorities (low performance reviews !necessarily= low performance when implicit bias is present, which again, statistically-speaking, it is). Certainly these times suck for everyone, but there go the careers of black, brown, and female millennials with yet another black mark on their CVs before they've hit their 40s.

Having not worked in USA, I always wonder how valid such comments are. Never really felt such thing being anything but odd ball case in Europe.

Depends on where you work in Europe. There is definetly a glass cieling for minorities in companies like VW.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#183

Post by speedgoose »

chrisseaton wrote: post #161
dmichulke wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France, employees don't earn the trust of the CEO, the CEO earns the trust of the employees.

I don't know how other employees could trust an employee abusing their privileges like that, either.

It's fine if it's a common decision among active employees.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#184

Post by MangoCoffee »

Is it me or the traditional software vendor like Microsoft or Oracle is going to come out stronger than ever after the pandemic is over? all the layoffs seem to be in the none critical and nice to have category.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#186

Post by [deleted] »

onychomys wrote: post #136

Hospitals are having a surprisingly tough time of things. I work for a very famous hospital in a small town in the American midwest, and we've (our IT department, that is) laid off all our contractors and the rest of us have mandatory furloughs coming up too. They're doing everything they can to not let us go, but some of us will probably end up getting sacked. And this is maybe the richest and most well-connected ho…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#187

Post by Scarblac »

westoncb wrote: post #17
PaulRobinson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is looking 2001-dot-com-crash bad, but much, much faster. It's worth remembering there are plenty of companies not laying people off, and "normal" will return eventually. That said, I was watching The Big Short yesterday, and a line that I had noted before haunted me even more: "For every 1% unemployment goes up [in the USA], 40,000 people die". Stay safe, stay positive.

> This is looking 2001-dot-com-crash bad, but much, much faster. Also probably much more transient, no? Is there a reason to think this trend would continue beyond say... six months? (or whenever quarantine measures are mostly relaxed).

The Netherlands tested for antibodies in blood donor serum last week, preliminary result is that 3% of people have them. And not all of them show full immunity.

If we relax quarantine measures, the virus just comes back immediately. This is going to stay with us for years.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#188

Post by sneak »

omginternets wrote: post #175
sneak wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a violation of consent. Consent can be withdrawn at any time, with no further obligations or liability. That’s key in a free society. Employment is a transaction, like any other. Doing some business yesterday is no guarantee of business tomorrow.

By that logic, all contracts are violations of consent. You'll forgive us for not being convinced by your argument.

I’m not sure I follow that logic. Written, signed contracts where the agreeing parties are not being coerced is presently our gold standard for opt-in consent.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#189

Post by Silhouette »

memsom wrote: post #140
barbegal wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but it's not always illegal. If a company has a choice between going bust and imposing pay cuts on everyone then that is perfectly legal.

If they follow the procedure in the UK, they can do this AFAIK. Though, they might need to make the position redundant and offer another position at a lower wage. Either way, it's a contract change.

Claiming someone is redundant and then hiring someone else to do essentially the same job, but on worse terms and probably with a different job title or other deceptions to try to disguise what you're really doing, is a trick as old as the sun. UK employment lawyers and tribunals are likely to laugh you out of the building with an expensive lesson if you try it.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#190

Post by nemo44x »

McMini wrote: post #125
danesparza wrote: post #119

God this brings back memories of fuckedcompany.com Right after September 11th, that site got very popular among engineers like me -- seeing (on a daily basis) which company bloodbath was next. It was kind of fun, until it was our company.

What did the site show?

Companies that were fucked, as their name documents.

Got their start in the heyday of the .com crash as domino after domino fell and many companies were exposed for the unviable company’s they were.

The site took great joy in documenting (mocking) companies that were once tall and proud and quickly collapsed.

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