At this company, we are family

- Your company is most certainly not allowed to break the NLRA. No company is.

- But your company can terminate your employment without cause whenever they like, as long as it's not over something that breaks the law, and as long as they pay the associated full severance.

- You talk about your salary. And given the vast majority of jobs aren't "my employer's so great, I get paid so well" but "there is so much inequality, let's talk about salaries so we can see how deep the rot goes", it's not going to be in a positive light.

- A short while later (definitely not immediately, your company's not a nice company, and it's going to take some time to make sure it has anything on you that they can legally fire you over that doesn't violate the NLBA) your company fires you, without reason, but with full severance.

- You challenge them to provide a reason

- Their lawyers point out they are under no obligation to provide you with a reason because they are complying with "termination without cause" legislation, and that if you think your dismissal was in violation of the law, you take it to court.

Now you have a problem, because now you're going to have to take them to court and prove that they only reason they could have fired you is because you talked about your salary. Can you afford that court case or is it cheaper to take the severance? We're not talking about a happy happy justice "laws work" world, we're talking about the real world, and specifically the real, nasty, world of shit paying US companies, where you aren't a valuable employee but are a disposable asset to be replaced by a cheaper alternative the moment you give them reason to do so, whether that reason is legal or not, because they know you can't afford the challenge, and they know they just need any reason for you to make the case that it was more likely because you talked about salaries than anything else.

Your comment reads like a form of victim-blaming, "they should have never gotten into a situation that left them severely depressed".

What!?!?

This may be unintentional, or I may be misreading you, but this seems to represent a serious misunderstanding of clinical depression.

I did not observe a prior post claiming that there aren't many people who force themselves work, whether for money or any other perceived gain.

Lack of perceived gain is a typical part of clinical depression. A more likely motivator is aversion to perceived worsening; even this can fail to motivate because of tendency to evaluate the likelihood of success of an action as minimal or non-existant. With clinical depression, a frequent observation is that having completed something successfully, or being rewarded for a thing (even as simple as being given or biting into a food yow enjoy) may produce no improvement of mood.

> It's seriously misguided, to think you can have any successful career without being able to force yourself to work. Quitting work everytime there is a hicup will not generally lead to a successful career. Not being able to work at all because the sun is out, your kid is long term sick, your wife had an affair, etc will generally not lead to having a successful career. There are many scenarios on a daily basis where people force themselves to work.

Yes, clinical depression does tend to cause serious misguidance. The likelihood of a successful career, regardless of efforts may seem maximal. The condition does not seem occur in response to a hiccup of circumstance. It tends to result from prolonged exposure to a series of negative events, producing a situation in which the expectation of those events ending, or of those events being replaced by positive ones, does not exist.

Based on what you've written so far, I tentatively hypothesize that you have had a fortunate life[1]. This is generally good, though tends to lead people to conclude that depressed people just need to try more, or are just in a temporary phase, or just need decide to cheer up, do something useful, knuckle through it…

Getting out of clinical depression usually requires external changes. Some people are lucky enough to experience periods of partial remission sufficient to perceive the benefit of seeking help or changing their circumstances, which can lead to full remission.

[1] While acknowledging that getting through some manner of adversity does not automatic'ly require that one has had depression during that period.