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Normalising Layoffs/Firing

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Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#41

Post by tibbydudeza »

We have very good labor laws much to the disgust of free market, libertarian and pro-business political factions, yes but it NEVER them or management who is fired so they can shove their philosophies.

There is a legal process when you need to reduce staff - the bare minimum offer is one week of pay for each year of service - got laid off after 19 years and company expedited the legal process if I volunteered for layoff by offer an extra half a week.

It allowed me to pay of my house, my car, short term debt and not worry for income for an entire year.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#42

Post by Zagill »

ttoinou wrote: post #11

Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections. If a c…

Except if too many companies are doing hiring freezes and mass layoffs, who's going to hire you? There's a limit to this and it's fair to be concerned about just how widespread these layoffs have been.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#43

Post by kioleanu »

jfoster wrote: post #17
butterNaN wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been in Europe for a few years now and my experiance is significantly opposite of what the parent comment claims.

That doesn't really make logical sense to me. Can you elaborate? If hiring is an irreversible decision for a company, why wouldn't consideration be required prior to any hire?

It's not irreversible in any sense of that word.

First of all, you have a trial period of 3 to 6 months where you can fire someone without even giving a reason.

Second of all, you can have fixed-term contracts, like 1 or 2 years - also with the trial period.

Third, you can still fire people after the trial period, you just can't go Trump-yelling at someone "YOU'RE FIRED!!!" because of some small mistake or if you don't like their face. It's not an easy process, but also not impossible. I very much prefer it this way.

I'm seeing this at the company where a friend works. They have an american branch that completely changed the employee roster twice (!!!) in the last two years. Everything they do is a mess, every new person that comes brings a different point of view of how things should be done. In the end, they always end up falling back to implementing what their colleagues in Europe did. The europeans have been working together for 6 years now

PS: for my current job, where I have a permanent contract, the interview in-all took 55 minutes. About another 15 minutes of talking to HR on the phone and bam, here I am.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#44

Post by emoII »

lostlogin wrote: post #19
ttoinou wrote: post #11

Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections. If a c…

> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In New Zealand it is fairly easy to start a company (in the sense that the required paperwork isn’t too difficult). It’s easy to hire people, but firing is hard. Why would ease firing mean ease hiring? Why would companies failing easily mean start ups are simple? It’s not so much that…

If it's easy to fire you won't have to be as thorough when hiring because if the new employee doesn't fit - just waste him/her. If it's difficult to fire the company will put potential employees through hell before deciding. I don't think there's any country where the actual process of hiring someone is a legal nightmare

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#45

Post by cm2187 »

ttoinou wrote: post #11

Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections. If a c…

Also the US corporate world has a good history of dealing with problems upfront, taking the pain and moving on, rather than living with their problems like it is done too often in europe. It seems destructive but the long term impact is a healthier economy and more jobs.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#47

Post by ttoinou »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #30
jfoster wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really make logical sense to me. Can you elaborate? If hiring is an irreversible decision for a company, why wouldn't consideration be required prior to any hire?

The premise of it being irreversible is wrong and far more complex. Case study. In my country, most individuals do benefit from a severance on a permanent contract. Getting a permanent contract happens after working for a year if you're lucky or in a high demand job. In other cases, companies will use their power to stall as long as possible where beneficial. Temporary contracts do not have the same severance benefit…

We shouldn't normalise pushing people to quit via bullying of course. But bullying and bad benefits result from a company/employee mismatch, which changing jobs fixes easily

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#48

Post by AndrewThrowaway »

ttoinou wrote: post #11

Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections. If a c…

This is just so wrong on so many levels.

> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily.

Unless it is another economical crisis and nobody is hiring?

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible

It is called "job security" - if you hired somebody, you "promised" them to pay a wage. If they are not needed anymore, you need to keep on promise and pay a wage. For at least some time. E.g. a few month of salary seems reasonable because a person has planned his future with you, now he needs to find a new job which will take some time.

So it is not impossible in Europe. It is expensive at most because it only looks reasonable.

> Companies are big and look financially stable

Unless you count all the mom and pop cafes all over the Mediterranean? All the Scandinavian startups? And etc.?

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#49

Post by ttoinou »

Fiahil wrote: post #35
ttoinou wrote: post #11

Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections. If a c…

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Europe is not a single country, anyway, here's what happen in France: Firing is tedious, but not impossible. Hiring people is easy, but you enter into competition with higher salaries - like the US - for remote jobs. > Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. Not exactly, they diverge when firing is made more diffi…

No they're the same coin. You didn't get me. When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult. There is no free lunch.

To fire in France you need a really good reason well justified, and prepare your company for the Prud'hommes trial. Of course you could say "but most companies are big and have HR teams and lawyers dedicated to this, whereas the employee is all alone", but that's also my point about big vs. small companies and legal protections

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#50

Post by IshKebab »

jlund-molfese wrote: post #40
zeruch wrote: post #4

"We have normalised firing of people." We spent decades in the US smashing unions, smashing pensions (replacing them with more volatile instruments like 401Ks) and made at-will employment dangerous for both sides of the equation. Firing has been trivialized for decades. This is not new, and the current wave is minuscule compared to 2008, 2000, and previous. The worst is yet to come.

Why would an employee in the tech sector prefer an employer-managed pension? A 401(k) usually allows me to choose what I invest my money in (including bonds), and can be rolled over to a new employer easily. And it’s my money once it’s in my account, not my employer’s money. They can’t require me to work for a certain period of time to get it out, and don’t pay me less to compensate for offering the retirement benefi…

That is a pension. In the UK they're called Self Invested Personal Pension and basically all companies do them now.

But I agree they pretty much only have upsides - no risk of the pension fund going bankrupt (would be good right about now in the UK!) and no way for previous generations to steal from the current one, which is basically what all defined benefit pensions are doing now.

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