We need to abolish right to work laws. Or at least restructure them. I shouldn’t be able to be fired for literally any reason they can come up with. Even fast food jobs should have contracts with certain clauses to protect the workers. You sign it when you start and you can’t be let go until it expires or you break it.
Not that I disagree with your premise, but that’s an “at will” law area, not “right to work” (can’t be forced to join a union/pay union dues in a unionized workplace).
To add, some argue at will is fair because it goes both ways, but it definitely doesn’t. If your employer fires you suddenly for no reason, there’s no real consequences. If you quit suddenly for no reason, you can get blackballed.
If your employer fires you suddenly for no reason, there’s no real consequences.
Depends on the industry and location. If they do that a few times in relatively small industry, or in a captured but small market, word gets around and suddenly that company has difficulty hiring in the future.
That’s true. I work in a somewhat “small” work world for my area of expertise, and word does get around about bad employers. People seem to have a short memory once they start offering higher salaries, even though they never keep those up with inflation. A few years later, and they’re working for a shit boss with average pay.
I was fired earlier this year because they manufactured some drama after I needed a sudden comprehensive additional surgery when a planned one round something alarming that demanded specialist surgeons. I feel like we really should not be in a country where a company can decide to screw your life at time of firing and then screw you for future jobs by not providing anything truthful about your time there. I’m still struggling months later, including the general anxiety of knowing I could go bust my ass for someone and have them do this to me all over again. Fuck this predatory atmosphere we seem to just celebrate.
At least in the states that I’ve worked in (NY anf CA) if you’re terminated without documentation proving cause, you qualify for unemployment benefits.
It’s the same in my state but unemployment is only a fraction of what you made hourly
The question I have about people who are against at will is the flip side, which is being locked into a hellish job for some set period. I have had jobs that deteriorated my mental health. With at will I can just walk out the door whenever I want. Not so if both employer and employee are bound by some cool down counter clause.
Even without abuse there is opportunity cost to staying at your company. I’ve seen family members on the spot quit to care for people they cared about, but not people anyone would consider close enough to be covered by anything like FMLA, like your best friend’s child. I quit jobs that interfered with my college education.
It sucks to be let go, but I don’t think people consider if it might make more suffering yo be forced to stay. I can’t see a situation where companies have to give notice, but employees don’t. Sure I guess employees can sabotage their workplaces to be sent home with pay, but what a fantastic way to catch a charge and screw yourself over forever.
It’s food for thought.
Are you saying that in countries where employers can’t just make up reasons to divest themselves of employees without repercussion or paying unemployment that the employees themselves are somehow bound to their employer and can’t just walk out?
Unless you’re under some contract, I don’t see how that would be enforced other than having laws on the books in individual countries about a minimum required notice.
Even if a country DOES have laws on the books stating all employees in all full time jobs must provide x weeks of notice before quitting, if the same country has a bunch more clauses to protect employees from employers than the U.S. currently does I have to imagine there are protections in place for the employees in cases of hostile work environments or whatever.
I can’t see a situation where a country that protects employees from the sort of hostile, predatory, dehumanizing behavior we see carried out consistently by U.S. companies wouldn’t have continued to take said employees into account while also protecting their country’s employers from things like large scale business-wide walkouts or whatnot.
I obviously don’t know for sure, but I do see stories from people from those nations talking about how they have to say for whatever amount of time for a notice period. This is the thing where I have questions about abuse. I’m not saying at will is great, but I also don’t think it’s 100% awful and I think people should consider what it would be like to not be able to leave a job when you want to.
The “cool down” period in many cases is just a few days when it’s the employee resigning. If your job sucks so much that you can’t stomach being at it for another week, you’ve got other problems.
That’s kind of my point? That some workplaces are toxic or you otherwise need to abandon your job because of external reasons. Maybe it’s just because I’m older (mid-30s), but I don’t know a single person who hasn’t run into a fuck this job moment for whatever reason. Either because it was deteriorating their mental health, or they prioritized their personal life. My life fell into a coma and I literally got on a plane thr moment I knew. I told my boss I wouldn’t be in and he could fire me or not, I don’t care. My brother had no one in that moment. I was lucky my bosses allowed me to keep my job while I acted as his advocate to get him care until the rest of my family could get there, but what if I wasn’t allowed because of some BS notice contract? Which at will I can just quit fuck it. With no at-will there would definitely be some punishment. This scenario may not overcome the good of getting ride of at will, but I think people should consider it. Consider what it would be like to trapped in a place you hate with a hostile work environment.
In practice, employment contracts are always good for employees and usually bad for employers. You don’t want to be locked into a job? Then don’t sign a contract that locks you in. Just refuse, as just about any sane person would.
Employers WOULD refuse to be locked in, except sane governments force them to. Sane governments do not force regular citizens into indentured servitude.
That’s why I brought up a restructuring. The ability to quit whenever should always be an option but being fired without notice for anything that isn’t just gross incompetence/negligence should not. I should be able to quit because my manager pissed me off. I shouldn’t get fired because I pissed the manager off.
It’s not that I disagree, it’s just that I can never see a scenario where both sides don’t have the same power. If you can quit at any time, then rhe employer can fire at any time. If you the employer has you give notice, so do you. I’ve never hear any stories online in different countries of the notice period not being both ways. And despite what one dude said to me sometimes weeks long, not a week. That would be actual hell.
My company initiated a hiring freeze last November, just after my group lost 3 team members. Then in February they did layoffs, my group was not effected. The hiring freeze is now lifted, but what we were never told is that when they did the layoffs, they also “erased” any positions that were open prior to the layoffs, including the positions that were open in my group before the hiring freeze the previous November. So those jobs are just gone, and the slack that my group has picked up? That’s just the new normal now. It’s bullshit.
So you’re doing more work for the same pay? If it’s not in the job description/contract, then they can fuck off.
Every (US) job description I’ve had save one had a line to the effect of “… and other duties as required by management.” Not to follow would be considered insubordination and could lead to termination with cause. Job description in this case is just a broad-stroke outline of what the job is supposed to entail.
The “save one” was a job with a strong union presence. In that case, going outside my job description could lead to me and my manager being in trouble.
I once worked a call centre during late shift and my manager asked us to clean the bathrooms. I told him they can hire a janitor because I won’t be cleaning anything since I wasn’t hired to clean. Didn’t have to clean the bathrooms. Sometimes standing up for yourself works
Surely a publication like The Wall Street Journal wouldn’t have an agenda to support… go back to the office and be grateful for your ever-shrinking share, plebians
Quiet Cutting is also done in ways the article is not mentioning. We used to call them hiring freezes. In the mortgage industry where there are positions with higher attrition, they simply allow the employees to quit and they never rehire that position.
Isn’t this just standard operating procedure? And, the funniest part is if they can operate without those people what fool hired them in the first place? Typical corporate speak trying to spin it in their favor.
You think they operate without those people without others picking up some slack?
That’s my point. The company was poorly run if they hired 4 people each with enough “slack” that 2 could leave and the job still gets done.
I practice quiet shitting while at work. I don’t let anyone know I’m leaving the office, and I head down the elevator to the downstairs bathroom. It’s a nice break from work. I recommend it to anyone.
I take the opposite approach. When I shit at work, I make sure they can hear it.
