8 ms·

Any idea what the justification is for at-will employment? My visceral reaction is that it seems unfair. I like Montana's idea of a probationary period. But I'd

Any idea what the justification is for at-will employment? My visceral reaction is that it seems unfair. I like Montana's idea of a probationary period. But I'd like to understand the intellectual justification.

MBlume 15y ago
The intellectual justification is probably something like: Hiring someone always represents a risk. You don't know if the person is going to succeed at the job you hired them for. You don't know if they're going to wind up a positive asset to the company. You need the option of firing them, and the possibility that you might wind up in a legal battle because you did so -- that even if you have an airtight case, you'll have to lawyer up and spend time in a court room -- is scary and could therefore have a chilling effect on hiring in the first place.
- CaptainZapp 15y ago
  Well, For that we have trial periods (usually three month). After that employees can still be fired, but there's a notification period involved.
Androsynth 15y ago
The justification is that you can fire people who are underperforming. France has had huge problems recently because they have strong 'workers rights'. The problem is that the unemployment rate for young people is huge because there is no movement of labor capital. In general the entire economy gets gummed up from a lack of labor movement. Also, businesses have to subsidize the costs of retaining their worst workers.
- arethuza 15y ago
  I think what the UK has is a reasonably compromise - workers can be sacked for pretty much any reason within the first year, after that the employer has to go through a staged process. However, if the role no longer exists, rather than the employee underperforming, you can be made redundant at any point.
  - epo 15y ago
    IANAL but I thought the normal probationary period was 3 months, never heard of a year.
    - arethuza 15y ago
      IANAL either :-) "Am I protected against unfair dismissal?" "In most circumstances you must have at least one year's continuous service before you can make a complaint to an employment tribunal." From: http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1797 http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1797
    - joe_fishfish 15y ago
      A normal probationary period is 3 months, yes. But in England at least an employee can be fired for gross misconduct within the first year of employment and will not be legally allowed to challenge it (certain exceptions involving discrimination and health & safety notwithstanding). So an employer can pretty much get rid of anyone in their first year of employment - they just take it through gross misconduct and the employee can't fight it. I think it's different in Scotland, though.
- danssig 15y ago
  >France has had huge problems recently because they have strong 'workers rights'. [citation needed] France is doing fine. They laid off thousands in the Auto industry when they were in trouble. "Strong workers rights" isn't a "problem", it's a trade off. It has good sides and bad sides. IMO, more good than bad and I think this Zygna scandal just reinforces that.
  - corford 15y ago
    I'm sorry, I live in France and that simply isn't true. French labour laws and the accompanying tax system are the key causes behind France's huge problem with youth unemployment and a cripplingly bloated and inefficient public sector (google Aurélie Boullet). Add the powerful transport and general workers unions in to the mix (who's members go on strike at least bi-monthly) and you can see that the French labour market has some serious problems. The above is why the auto-entrepreneur scheme (introduced by Sarkozy) is such a runaway success as it gives individuals a chance to bypass all this bullshit.
    - danssig 15y ago
      I live next door and see plenty of French news and they don't appear in any more trouble than anyone else. Do you realize that the first world country most opposite (the US) has around 20% unemployment?
      - corford 15y ago
        In France, over 50% of the working population are fonctionnaires (civil servants), if the unions and labour laws weren't as inflexible as they are, this figure would be a lot less and the unemployment numbers would rise accordingly. You might say that the current state of affairs is preferable to that but the problem is that France is slowly choking to death and faces huge structural problemls in the near future. The public sector has massive unfunded pension liabilities (because virtually all of France works partly or fully on the "black" due to the crippling tax regime) and the young working population are shut out from the majority of higher paying professional jobs as these are all occupied by unsackable (often unionised) career workers that still expect a job for life. Meritocracy plays second fiddle to who you know and what connections your family has.
ericd 15y ago
Is it fair to the people running the business that they should have to keep paying money to people that aren't helping out much?
- davidcuddeback 15y ago
  If the employee us no longer pulling their weight, I would consider that reasonable justification for firing them. (Edited to correct bad autocompletion.)
tptacek 15y ago
The justification for at-will is that without it, hiring anyone is so risky that companies will avoid doing it. I strongly support, for instance, laws making it straightforward for people to sue for discrimination and sexual harassment. But after 15+ years in this industry, it is impossible for me to deny that discrimination and harassment claims are routinely abused by deadweight chaff employees to extract settlements from employers when they're terminated, or, worse, to keep their jobs and continue inflicting themselves on their teams. Discrimination and harassment are two narrowly defined public policy exceptions to the rule of at-will employment, and by themselves they already create a huge amount of pointless† risk. Imagine if instead of narrowly defined exceptions, employees could evaluate every performance, compensation, and staffing decision a company made, and then litigate over them. Welcome to the United States Postal Service. You might as well have this argument with the wind, by the way, because America is not going to move away from the at-will employment doctrine. It is a fundamental difference between the way the US and Europe conduct business, and most people who run companies would rather the world worked more like the US than Europe in this one regard. † but: see above
- rmc 15y ago
  most people who run companies would rather the world worked more like the US than Europe in this one regard. Yep. And most people who are employees would probably rather the world worked like the EU. at-will versus employee rights is choosing different sides of a power balance (Should we give employees more power? Or give employers more power?). It is clear that most people mostly choose the side that gives them more power.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    What I like about this issue is that it's something where the most "liberal", "employee-friendly" intuitive answer (nb: I'm a "driving to Toledo to canvass" Democrat) is not as simple as it sounds. If you want to work at companies run like the US Postal Service, staffed with lifers, then you want to be in a heavily regulated workforce like France's. If you want to work in a more dynamic environment, where there isn't a structural disincentive to ever change jobs (because once you clear 1 year, you're can more or less lock yourself in) --- and, for that matter, and environment where you yourself could start a company and easily hire people, you want to start a business in the US. You can turn this discussion into a soap opera if you'd like, but Hacker News is ostensibly a discussion among people interested in, trying to found, or working at startups, and I think I can safely assert that at-will employment is a clean simple win for startup founders.

MBlume 15y ago

The intellectual justification is probably something like: Hiring someone always represents a risk. You don't know if the person is going to succeed at the job you hired them for. You don't know if they're going to wind up a positive asset to the company. You need the option of firing them, and the possibility that you might wind up in a legal battle because you did so -- that even if you have an airtight case, you'll have to lawyer up and spend time in a court room -- is scary and could therefore have a chilling effect on hiring in the first place.

CaptainZapp 15y ago
Well, For that we have trial periods (usually three month). After that employees can still be fired, but there's a notification period involved.

Androsynth 15y ago

The justification is that you can fire people who are underperforming. France has had huge problems recently because they have strong 'workers rights'. The problem is that the unemployment rate for young people is huge because there is no movement of labor capital. In general the entire economy gets gummed up from a lack of labor movement. Also, businesses have to subsidize the costs of retaining their worst workers.

arethuza 15y ago
I think what the UK has is a reasonably compromise - workers can be sacked for pretty much any reason within the first year, after that the employer has to go through a staged process. However, if the role no longer exists, rather than the employee underperforming, you can be made redundant at any point.
- epo 15y ago
  IANAL but I thought the normal probationary period was 3 months, never heard of a year.
  - arethuza 15y ago
    IANAL either :-) "Am I protected against unfair dismissal?" "In most circumstances you must have at least one year's continuous service before you can make a complaint to an employment tribunal." From: http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1797 http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1797
  - joe_fishfish 15y ago
    A normal probationary period is 3 months, yes. But in England at least an employee can be fired for gross misconduct within the first year of employment and will not be legally allowed to challenge it (certain exceptions involving discrimination and health & safety notwithstanding). So an employer can pretty much get rid of anyone in their first year of employment - they just take it through gross misconduct and the employee can't fight it. I think it's different in Scotland, though.
danssig 15y ago
>France has had huge problems recently because they have strong 'workers rights'. [citation needed] France is doing fine. They laid off thousands in the Auto industry when they were in trouble. "Strong workers rights" isn't a "problem", it's a trade off. It has good sides and bad sides. IMO, more good than bad and I think this Zygna scandal just reinforces that.
- corford 15y ago
  I'm sorry, I live in France and that simply isn't true. French labour laws and the accompanying tax system are the key causes behind France's huge problem with youth unemployment and a cripplingly bloated and inefficient public sector (google Aurélie Boullet). Add the powerful transport and general workers unions in to the mix (who's members go on strike at least bi-monthly) and you can see that the French labour market has some serious problems. The above is why the auto-entrepreneur scheme (introduced by Sarkozy) is such a runaway success as it gives individuals a chance to bypass all this bullshit.
  - danssig 15y ago
    I live next door and see plenty of French news and they don't appear in any more trouble than anyone else. Do you realize that the first world country most opposite (the US) has around 20% unemployment?
    - corford 15y ago
      In France, over 50% of the working population are fonctionnaires (civil servants), if the unions and labour laws weren't as inflexible as they are, this figure would be a lot less and the unemployment numbers would rise accordingly. You might say that the current state of affairs is preferable to that but the problem is that France is slowly choking to death and faces huge structural problemls in the near future. The public sector has massive unfunded pension liabilities (because virtually all of France works partly or fully on the "black" due to the crippling tax regime) and the young working population are shut out from the majority of higher paying professional jobs as these are all occupied by unsackable (often unionised) career workers that still expect a job for life. Meritocracy plays second fiddle to who you know and what connections your family has.

ericd 15y ago

Is it fair to the people running the business that they should have to keep paying money to people that aren't helping out much?

davidcuddeback 15y ago
If the employee us no longer pulling their weight, I would consider that reasonable justification for firing them. (Edited to correct bad autocompletion.)

tptacek 15y ago

The justification for at-will is that without it, hiring anyone is so risky that companies will avoid doing it. I strongly support, for instance, laws making it straightforward for people to sue for discrimination and sexual harassment. But after 15+ years in this industry, it is impossible for me to deny that discrimination and harassment claims are routinely abused by deadweight chaff employees to extract settlements from employers when they're terminated, or, worse, to keep their jobs and continue inflicting themselves on their teams. Discrimination and harassment are two narrowly defined public policy exceptions to the rule of at-will employment, and by themselves they already create a huge amount of pointless† risk. Imagine if instead of narrowly defined exceptions, employees could evaluate every performance, compensation, and staffing decision a company made, and then litigate over them. Welcome to the United States Postal Service. You might as well have this argument with the wind, by the way, because America is not going to move away from the at-will employment doctrine. It is a fundamental difference between the way the US and Europe conduct business, and most people who run companies would rather the world worked more like the US than Europe in this one regard. † but: see above

rmc 15y ago
most people who run companies would rather the world worked more like the US than Europe in this one regard. Yep. And most people who are employees would probably rather the world worked like the EU. at-will versus employee rights is choosing different sides of a power balance (Should we give employees more power? Or give employers more power?). It is clear that most people mostly choose the side that gives them more power.
- tptacek 15y ago
  What I like about this issue is that it's something where the most "liberal", "employee-friendly" intuitive answer (nb: I'm a "driving to Toledo to canvass" Democrat) is not as simple as it sounds. If you want to work at companies run like the US Postal Service, staffed with lifers, then you want to be in a heavily regulated workforce like France's. If you want to work in a more dynamic environment, where there isn't a structural disincentive to ever change jobs (because once you clear 1 year, you're can more or less lock yourself in) --- and, for that matter, and environment where you yourself could start a company and easily hire people, you want to start a business in the US. You can turn this discussion into a soap opera if you'd like, but Hacker News is ostensibly a discussion among people interested in, trying to found, or working at startups, and I think I can safely assert that at-will employment is a clean simple win for startup founders.