4 ms·

I'm surprised there hasn't been much mention (at least for US-based folks) of at-will employment. People are getting fired for old social media posts, but peopl

• AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  It's because at-will employment isn't the problem unless your boss is unreasonable, and if your boss is unreasonable then you should celebrate the opportunity to collect unemployment while you find a new job instead of having to quit or continue working there in the meantime. But canceling everybody is problematically increasing the number of unreasonable bosses.
  • lopmotr 6y ago
    I don't understand why mobs don't form against the employers who fire people because of internet mobs. They often have a lot of supporters if it's a partisan political issue. The employers are the ones doing the actual harm while everyone else is just saying words.
    • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      One guess would be that opponents of cancellation are calm intellectuals who write kindly-worded letters that corporate secretaries chuck in the bin without anyone else taking notice of them whereas angry internet mobs are full of crazy extremists sending death threats and bomb threats, doxxing people, SWAT-ing and that sort of thing which victims often yield to in order to make it stop.
  • throwanem 6y ago
    "Celebrate the opportunity to collect unemployment?" Spoken like somebody who's never done so. Even if your erstwhile employer doesn't contest the claim, the whole process is a clusterfuck at the best of times - to say nothing of these times - and typically yields somewhere around minimum wage, often approaching it from below. If you have a solid savings base, it's a trivial amount. If you don't, it's better than nothing, but usually not enough to make a meaningful difference. And that's if whoever fired you in the first place doesn't make a fight of getting it at all. I agree that Twitter cancel culture is well out of hand; in fact, I'll go further still and say that the behavior is often not meaningfully distinguishable from 4chan brigading of old. But there should still be a better option for dealing with unreasonable but not actively criminal bosses than getting fired anyway, with the chance of a bare minimum consolation prize.
• deleted 6y ago
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• drdaeman 6y ago
  It certainly depends on employee's financial and social circumstances and the industry specifics, but it still begs a question if it's worth working for an arrogant asshole that could fire someone for a over a bad mood. Even if there's a law that says that they can't, one must be in quite dire circumstances to cling to a job where they are mistreated. This said, I totally recognize I'm quite privileged in regard that the industry I'm working in, where business tend to generally value people and such senseless human resource management is typically misaligned with both employee and employers goals (putting it simple, being an asshole doesn't bring any profits). In such circumstances, my personal perception of at-will employment is positive - it makes sense to me that we (employee and employer) cooperate because we like each other, and there's nothing that binds us but our will for a mutually beneficial relationship. Yet, unfortunately, I know this is not the case for many people but I have no idea what could to be done to fix this. But I suspect that legal protections that prevent firing people at-will are not helping the core issue here.
  • josinalvo 6y ago
    What do you work in?
• willcipriano 6y ago
  >Meanwhile, the EU has much stricter regulations regarding employment and the conditions under which employees can be let go. Also much stricter regulations and norms around when you can leave. In the US, two weeks notice is customary but not legally required in the EU its often a three month contractual obligation. I can't help but think that may contribute to the generally lower salaries in the EU vs the US.
  • arp242 6y ago
    > in the EU its often a three month contractual obligation In which country is this? In most places I worked at it's been 4 weeks (and even this is often waived).
    • docdeek 6y ago
      France is strictly three months, though it can be negotiated.
      • arp242 6y ago
        France has exceptionally strong labour protections, I don't think it's fair to extrapolate France to the entire EU.
  • apexalpha 6y ago
    >in the EU its often a three month contractual obligation. I don't know where this is but in my country it's 1 month and most of the time the person leaving still has vacation days to use so they leave much earlier. Most people just give advanced notice to their employer though, it's just polite.
  • eitland 6y ago
    In Norway you cannot be fired early but you can sometimes negotiate to leave early (and as others have pointed out we often have some holiday left.)