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this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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The penalty and compensation for laying off need to be increased until companies can no longer get away with mass firing like this. Record profit and then mass layoff, it makes no sense
You could just do what other parts of the world do and prohibit firing without cause, and introduce some rules for how businesses are allowed to lay off when the need to reduce headcount arises. Last-in/first-out could be one such rule - it's what we have in Sweden.
Exactly. This isn't an unsolved problem. It's just that labour power and unions are weak in the US. Businesses get the laws tailored to them, and workers get screwed.
It's fine and normal if a business miscalculates and has to lay people off. But, when that happens it should be obvious to everyone that it wasn't the worker who screwed up, and the worker should have the option to get their job back if things turn around.
What made this video so disgusting wasn't the fact she was losing her job. It's that they tried to pretend that she was being fired because her performance wasn't up to par when that was an obvious lie.
Last in first out, wasn't that what was claimed in the actual video. Didn't she bring up being there for only a month? And even then, that was time worked during the holidays. So the person just finished onboarding and was let go immediately after. Sounds like her specific case follows what they do in Sweden. In the video she asked again and again what she did and was met with a wall of we will talk about it later. I'm on her side wholeheartedly but let's not try to normalize this behavior with laws. A new job should be a time for celebration and excitement.
I wouldn't say that this was truly a last in/first out-situation, on account of them claiming the firing was performance-related. Any quality of last in/first out is also probably accidental in this case, if my understanding of tech company layoffs is more or less correct.
You're right, if they'd have admitted it was because she was li/fo then she could have claimed employment benefits which they have to pay towards I believe. They were criticising her performance to avoid that.
That is was what they claimed, you are right. However that felt more like a boilerplate response meant to avoid a payout. Again, she asked for clarity on what that meant but never got a real response. I'm sure even now she didn't get an answer. She was an account executive at the end of the year, not a greeter at Walmart. She was not on a PIP and was exceeding her KPIs, according to the video. Even her boss was shocked. If they had real data to prove their point, they would have brought it up then and there. Instead she got crickets. The whole thing reminds of the King of the Hill episode where Dale gets hired to fire people.
Is it a layoff or not? It sounds like the employer is avoiding lay off penalties completely by calling it performance based.
Disguising layoffs as performance based firings seems to be more and more popular these days. As an older employee who’s in the process of being managed out/quiet fired, it’s a horrible, sadistic way to gaslight your employees and toy with their mental health.
Yeah. That's why I was curious. I replied to a comment saying we need to raise penalties for layoffs to disincentivize it. But if employers are using performance as a guise to do layoff without a layoff, that might mean the layoff punishment is deterring it in a weird way.
Sorry about your position. That sucks. When I look around at colleagues and their age, it makes me wonder if I should move to a management track instead of staying IC.
Thanks. I considered management at various times during my career. But it’s just not for me. With that being said, I can tell you that it’s rough being an older IC if you want job security.
I’d agree, but outsized severance packages are one of the reasons Europe snaps out of recession slower than the US. It especially affects entry level jobs, contributing to Europe’s higher rate of youth unemployment.
Companies are afraid to go on a hiring spree when the economy picks up because they’d be assuming liability for severance if the new business venture doesn’t work out.
Best of both worlds is to make it easy to hire and fire, but ensure there’s a strong social safety net for workers caught out by a recession.
I'm going to digress from the economics a tad and focus on the ethics of this. I feel like companies should be on the hook for this. You should invest in capital (including human labor) based on your confidence in its expected return. Companies should not be able to hire a myriad of workers for funzies and not have to meaningfully consider if that person will be necessary in 6 months. If it is a legitimate business venture, then the cost of potential severance for new hires should be folded into the economics of the decision to pursue that venture. Larger severance pay/worker protections encourage employers to not utilize exploitative hiring practices.
For example, a company in such an environment could have a plan for a four month bit of work. They could employ people on an appropriate short term contract.
Can't tell if we're agreeing or disagreeing. Companies should totally be able to hire on short-term contracts. But it should be clear that it is a temporary contract from the start, not a bait-and-switch from long-term employment to hire-and-fire.
Some people want a short term contract. If too few people want such, the company will have to pay a premium to hire people short term.
There of course must also be penalties for companies that hire ongoing, but end it before retirement
I guess you’re OK with putting a damper on entry level positions if it protects workers who already have a job.
They gave a nuanced reply. You wrote that.
I mean if the only way they're gonna have jobs is through predatory hiring practices that could leave them fired and without severance, then yeah. Because if the company is planning on hiring these younger workers for the long-haul, then this shouldn't be a significant change. I think overall national policy should discourage unnecessary high-turnover and predatory hiring. I'm sure there will be situations this is still unavoidable, but that doesn't mean we have to endorse it by way of law/policy.
Yeah, what companies want is all jobs to be exploitable like entry level jobs. That's kind of what's happening now with stuff like Uber where companies get away with paying their employees as little as possible and few benefits.
Protecting and providing incentive to hire for the long term seems like better thing in the long run over many crappy low paying jobs.
I'd have a little more sympathy if companies were actually hiring people and not doing absolutely everything in their power to not hire real employees. Restaurants refuse to pay people minimum wage, corporate jobs only hire contractors, airbnb, lyft, and Uber all claim their workers aren't employees, and if someone sneezes and it sounds like the word union they're gone. We can live in magical fantasy ecomnics land, or we can discuss reality. Harsh regulations need to stop these companies from shafting regular people and if they decide to hold the economy hostage like 2008 then we forcibly make the company public property
Obviously this will never happen in America but let's stop giving them lip service and call them the greedy leeches they are, and not holy job creators who bestow the gift of a prosperous economy upon us