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Counterpoint to the idea in this article - I don't like the idea of at-will employment. I'll keep the political or ideological ranting off HN, but in short, I

• kiba 15y ago
  Why it isn't a good idea?
  • someone13 15y ago
    Well, in short: 1. Anti-discrimination laws still apply, even in at-will states in the USA, but all that means is that the employer has to state that they fired the employee for ANYTHING ELSE, even if it's actually for a discriminatory reason. 2. Being fired without cause means gives greater opportunity for employers to abuse their employees - and, considering the general principles of game theory, it WILL happen. 3. Notice vs. cause can be separate things, but many people nowadays don't have the ability to survive longer than a couple of weeks to a few months without a job, and being fired without any notice can literally ruin someone's life. Again, this is only a personal view - I'm no economist, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. So, please take this with several grains of salt :)
    • pohungc 15y ago
      Those are certainly valid concerns, though that does bring in a lot of grey area definitions for valid reasons to fire someone that are hard to define :(
      • teamonkey 15y ago
        Such as..? If you don't have a good reason for firing someone, why should you fire them?
    • capsule_toy 15y ago
      A wrongful termination suit is not based solely on the employer's reason for termination. That would be silly. Business owners are advised to document infractions so when they fire someone, they have written evidence in case a suit is brought against them. I do agree that it will shift more power to the employees and it might help them in certain situations. But if you make it more difficult to fire a person, a business takes on more risk and loses more money when they hire someone who isn't good. Businesses will become less willing to take on new employees.
    • kelnos 15y ago
      ... but many people nowadays don't have the ability to survive longer than a couple of weeks to a few months without a job, and being fired without any notice can literally ruin someone's life. I don't find that a valid concern. If you don't have a cushion of at least 3 months (better, 6 months, ideally a year), then you're taking a big risk. You're living above or too close to your means. Sure, there are exceptions. Not everyone is in complete control of their situation. But I've found that most people could be, if they really wanted to be. Instead they spend money on unnecessary stuff (often including families at or below the poverty line), or feel the need to "keep up with the Joneses". And sure, there's a whole psychology behind all this that makes it understandable, but the bottom line is that you're taking a huge risk with your financial health by behaving this way, and there will be strong consequences if you lose your job. I'm absolutely not in favor of stronger protections. I want to be able to -- by default -- quit on the spot. I've never done it, and hope I never have to, but I want the option, as the default. If a company wants to fire me for reasons relating to my competency, then bad on me. If I'm not creating enough value for the company, because they want or need to go in a different business direction, then I don't want to be part of that organization, fulfilling a useless role. (And also bad on me for not getting myself into a position where I'm creating enough value.) If a company wants to fire me for a political or discriminatory reason, then I really don't want to work for them anyway. Life's too short for that crap. (Not saying that we shouldn't have protected classes and try to police discrimination, though.) Admittedly, I'm at the "high end" as far as the workforce goes, as I'm sure many others here on HN are. My skills are in high demand, I'm good at what I do, and I'm able to live happily well below my means. So it's likely true that I don't "know how the other half lives". And frankly, I don't want first-hand experience. I want to keep my skills sharp and make myself valuable whenever and wherever I can. Maybe someday I'll find myself in a bad situation, but I have to believe that I'll have the skills and work ethic to keep myself on my feet.
      • GFischer 15y ago
        Yet most people do, so it IS a valid concern. I hope you don't find yourself in a bad spot. I made mistakes and now I can't quit my job - it'll be a learned lesson, I hope :)
  • balloot 15y ago
    Because the labor market isn't perfectly liquid. Let's say a manager randomly decides that he's firing all the blond haired people in his company. Those people will be harmed. Even if perfectly competent at their jobs, they very well may not find another job right away. It may even be the case that an equivalent job doesn't exist nearby and the employee is SOL if forced to quit without planning. Furthermore, once the company fires all the blonde haired people and this becomes known, there will be cases where competing jobs can now offer less pay because it knows a competitor is no longer willing to hire blond haired people. Now, you might say "the company that fires all the blond haired people will eventually die at the hands of a company that gains an advantage by accepting blond haired people." True, but it's a slow bleed, and that certainly doesn't help the blond haired people who were arbitrarily fired. In case you're skeptical, all this and more can be observed in the case of US black people up until the civil rights era.
• InclinedPlane 15y ago
  I like the idea of an employee being able to quit at a moment's notice, and that goes hand in hand with the ability of an employer to make the same choice. To be honest I find the idea of paternalist employers rather revolting.
  • someone13 15y ago
    I actually agree with your point there - if the employee wants the privilege of being able to quit at a moment's notice, they should also be willing to give up their employment protection. However, if the employee is willing to give notice, then there should be equal protection for the employee.
    • InclinedPlane 15y ago
      It's possible to arrange such things contractually.
      • someone13 15y ago
        Right, but my opinion is that the protection option should be the default, with employee (and employer!) free to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement. In my mind, it's a matter of inertia - if "protected" is default, then if an employer wishes to have the ability to fire anyone at will, they need to offer concessions - whether it be a higher salary, or the ability to quit at will, or whatever. However, if "not protected" is the default case, then it becomes far more difficult for an employee to obtain such protection, as it's not beneficial to the employer. And as such, barring anyone who can negotiate their own contract (the minority, generally), most people will remain unprotected. And I believe that to be a problem, for reasons I mentioned elsewhere in this comment thread.
        • edoloughlin 15y ago
          In many jurisdictions it's not possible (i.e., not enforceable in court) to sign away your statutory rights. This protects those with less power/resources (employees).
• pohungc 15y ago
  Why do you think being able to fire any employee for any reason is not a good idea?
  • someone13 15y ago
    Please see my response to kiba, below. I'll reiterate, though - it's a personal view, and I'm no economist, so please take it with several grains of salt :)
  • ifearthenight 15y ago
    Would be interested to hear your thoughts on competing individual rights inside a capitalist society. More specifically the company owners right to make a profit versus the employees right to make a salary. Interested to know your opinions on why the employers rights supersede those of the employee.
    • Radim 15y ago
      I think you're confusing "rights" and "freedom to persue". Capitalism is about free trade and voluntary exchange (of whatever); "right to profit" and "right to salary" sound both horrible and rather anti-capitalistic.
      • ifearthenight 15y ago
        Actually agree with you that maybe I shouldn't have gone for capitalism to get my point across. But then again aren't you confusing the concepts of "free market economy" and capitalism with the former just being one possible form of the latter. Another possible form being a "social market" which should allow for some kind of state intervention on a lot of the issues being raised here. PS A genuine thank you for engaging in discussion as opposed to hit and run downvoting
  • dredmorbius 15y ago
    Among other things: it puts your entire staff in a short-term thinking mode. If I'm walking into work every day wondering if my door badge is going to work that day (one of the psychologically damaging aspects, IMO, of door badges -- I've had co-workers comment "well, I've still got a job" as they walk into the office) based on the capriciousness of a boss (some of whom are very capricious), well, I'm not going to be focusing particularly on the long-term elements of my position. In fact, I'm going to be spending a fair bit of time looking at alternatives and networking. In ecology, the growth you get in an environment that's continuously disturbed and disrupted is best described as "weedy". There may be vegetation (and even some animal life), it's not going to be particularly productive. What you're getting is lifeforms that are selected for survival capacity, not, say, wood or food production, or even necessarily stability. Nial Fergusson, though frequently not the best guide, does point this out in his Ascent of Money, noting that one of the requirements for successful and productive economic activity is stability. This applies equally to firms and individuals. Many of the structures we've adopted (debt, savings, finance, subsidized mortgages, various "golden handcuffs") exist either to buffer change or incentivise stability. Kicking (or threatening to kick out) the legs from under someone isn't that. Unfortunately, there's also been a lot of cargo-culting built around this: people in the U.S. who bought houses to ensure personal financial stability .... because buying houses is what financially stable do. Unfortunately, that's confounding cause and effect. You buy a house when you've got an assurance of lifetime (or at least long-term) employment, in part to help cement you with that employer. Similarly, establishing large lines of credit (or revolving debt): useful when you've got a reliable, if perhaps fluctuating, income stream to meet those debts. Anti-discrimination measures, seniority rules, tenure, unions, labor review boards, and the like, all seek to change the power balance of the employer/employee relationship. Which, for any employer with n>1 employees, is greatly skewed in the employer's favor. While this may make for an economic climate which doesn't expand as quickly, it may also make for one that's more stable in a downside movement. Looking at economic growth between the US and established (e.g.: not modernizing, BRIC nations) economies, particularly in Europe and Japan, might be instructive (I haven't done the analysis). However northern Europe (particularly Scandinavian countries) have done quite well over the past 20 years or more. If your landscape is rapidly shifting and/or doesn't sustain the level of existence you're trying to establish, you're going to want to move elsewhere (physically or figuratively), reduce your needs, or strengthen your foundations. As to Mr. Andor's statements concerning his employment growth plans and policies: 1. He could move his business to a more hospitable environment. 2. He could find himself competing (successfully or otherwise) with those having different policies. This is "letting the market sort it out". 3. He could petition his government for changes in law and/or practice that better suit his business goals. I'm not sympathetic to the arguments he provides, and suspect that he'll find that he's greatly limiting his enterprise's growth prospects by foregoing any possible payroll expansion.
• algoshift 15y ago
  Start a company. Hire some people. Run it for, say, ten years. Come back and review what you just said. Mark Twain: Someone holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
  • someone13 15y ago
    Hah, I'll freely admit that I'm not experienced with the "other end of the cat", as it were. But I do stand by my personal principles, even thought they might be inconvenient. And as I mention in my reply to InclinedPlane, I'm not saying that I'm completely opposed to the concept - but rather that at-will should be a contractual option, rather than a default.
    • algoshift 15y ago
      I am simply saying, in a very simple way, that opinion on certain topics is only valid when it comes from the right perspective. This has nothing to do with personal principles or morality. It's business (and reality) 101. BTW, I say this from the perspective of having lived on both sides of that equation. I've even done things like not taking home a paycheck during bad times in order to make payroll and keep people employed. Business isn't black-and-white and it is usually far harder than it looks from the outside.
      • Joeri 15y ago
        Who has the "right" perspective, the employer or the employee? This is what contract negotiation is about. Both sides are right and both sides are wrong, and the contract is the compromise.
        • intour779 15y ago
          http://www.intour.com.vn/tour-du-lich-han-quoc.html http://www.intour.com.vn/tour-du-lich-han-quoc.html http://www.intour.com.vn/tour-du-lich-bali.html http://www.intour.com.vn/tour-du-lich-bali.html http://www.intour.com.vn/tour-du-lich-bac-kinh.html http://www.intour.com.vn/tour-du-lich-bac-kinh.html
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• Homunculiheaded 15y ago
  You can get this right now in many state university systems in the US if you want it. Especially in the case on non-exempt employees. Unless the employee does something criminal I would say it would takes a minimum of a year to fire someone but probably more, and with clever enough employees it can be nearly impossible. Because of seniority and the like it can be really hard to layoff a specific employee even when there are budget cuts that eliminate positions. Here's the problem. Bad employees tend not to leave of their own free will, in my experience the worse they are the more this is true. However, really good employees tend to move on every few years as they grow into new opportunities. What this means is that every time you replace a good employee you roll the dice that you'll get a bad one. There is now one position that is likely locked in place with bad employee. Over time this leads to a lot of bad employees, which in turn lowers your retention rate of good employees. Now there is a standard tactic to fight this (and this same tactic would work in your senario as well). Make the bad employee extremely uncomfortable. Within the rules of the system do everything you can to make work suck. This does work reasonably well. The problem? Terrible employees are immune to this. So if this tactic is abused you end up with only terrible employees. So in short, without the ability to fire people easily you tend to go on a downward spiral of increasingly bad-mediocre employees.
  • westicle 15y ago
    This can backfire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal
    • Homunculiheaded 15y ago
      It absolutely can, and as noted even if it works you still run into issues. The overall problem is that in the end it becomes a game between bad employees and the management see how can play the rules against the other the best, which is a phenomenal waste of time and energy.
  • grogs 15y ago
    Improve your recruitment, hire good people. Take advantage of any probation period. In the UK this is generally 3 months, and can be extended. During this period employees are just 'at-will'. In the UK it can be up to 11months and 3 weeks before the main employment laws kick in.
• jseliger 15y ago
  If you're downvoting, by the way, please leave a comment about why. I think the comment is too political and lacks content. The Guidelines say: "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." Although I don't wish to be a jerk, I also don't think the comment meets this criteria. So I downvoted it. In reading comments, I try to upvote those written by people with special knowledge or insight, usually gleaned from particular experiences in the field or unusual reading / insight. I often downvote those that seem to lack such insight, or be random, or that don't have "something genuinely new to say," or that are too overtly political. I'm not downvoting you because I disagree with you—I actually haven't given much thought to the issue of at-will employment versus government-mandated employment and so don't really have an opinion—but because of the lack of content in the comment.
• ifearthenight 15y ago
  Resounding upvote for this comment.
• nirvana 15y ago
  Consider this hypothetical: You don't like the idea of at-will employment. How do you feel about the idea of being able to quit your job at any time? You're relying on your employer for an income, this is true, and thus being fired in a way you don't feel is justified seems unfair. Naturally. Your employer is relying on you to do a job and has invested (lets say hypothetically) in your training, and thus you leaving arbitrarily (say you got a better job) seems unfair to them. One solution to this would be employment contracts that require you to stay at the job and the job to remain open to you, for some period of time under certain conditions. Would you accept giving up the right to leave arbitrarily in exchange for the employer giving up the right to fire you arbitrarily?
  • Nitramp 15y ago
    Actually, this is the common case at least in Germany, and also in a bunch of other European companies. Employment contracts have a termination time that's usually 3 months; if the contract doesn't state anything it goes up even higher over time. Of course, if both parties agree, it's a wash.
    • ajuc 15y ago
      In Poland it works the same. For the first few years it's one month termination time both ways, then 3 months. But many people work on "junk contracts" that does not offer any such protection, and allow employer to pay less taxes (skiping social insurance etc). We also have paternal vacations, but much shorter - 20 weeks to share between father and mother. And employers still complain that it's too much.
  • andorjakab 15y ago
    "How do you feel about the idea of being able to quit your job at any time?" - Very strange things are happening here. For example, if you become homeless, you can't exercise your freedom to be on the streets anymore. If you're on the streets, you are _fined_. If you can't pay up, you are prisoned. Now it's easier to see how unjust this is. You will feel less sympathy for a small business owner, who can't exercise his or her freedom to give a job to whoever he or she wants, until he or she wants on whatever terms they agree. But soon you may find yourself "protected" by the state in a very similar fashion, how our poor homeless people are now protected in Hungary.
• rondon2 15y ago
  What if we replaced "employee" with mechanic? Would you be in favour of making it illegal for people to switch mechanics 'at-will'. Then you would have to prove that your mechanic was terrible before you could use someone else.
  • ifearthenight 15y ago
    Wouldn't you consider a mechanic a contractor? And you should be able to end a contract with a contractor too (depending on the terms you signed together). An employer/employee relationship is (at least legally) a whole different kettle of fish.
    • rondon2 15y ago
      The laws differentiating between a contractor/employee vary based on country, state, etc. But at the core they are the same thing. One party is providing compensation in exchange for a service. People that oppose 'right to work' and 'at-will' employment tend to not understand this until you put them in the position of the party that is providing the compensation. Once they are forced to pay for a service they do not want/need/like they are less likely to support laws like the ones in the article.
      • ifearthenight 15y ago
        Good point about services that you don't want/need/like but is an employee really providing a service? Isn't some onus of responsibility on an employer as the One in the position of power? I think employing someone should be a long term commitment that involves education to bring them up to a level that you consider good enough. Otherwise shouldn't you just outsource the work?
      • kenjackson 15y ago
        Employers typically impose must more stringent requirements than a typical contract. For example, I can have multiple car mechanics, but typically can't work multiple jobs, and have multiple on back up if one falls through.
  • 15y ago
• vacri 15y ago
  In Australia, you have to have a reason to fire someone, unless your company is small (<25 people?). That reason can be a great variety of things, but if they haven't done anything that you can pin on them as 'dismissably wrong', you can retrench their position instead. This is a way of saying "it's not you, it's us", but the catch is that you can't hire someone else to do that role for 6 months, ie: you're being held to your claim of 'downsizing'.
• michaelochurch 15y ago
  IANAL, but "at will" doesn't actually mean that a person can be fired for any reason, even without cause. That's something employers say to discourage lawsuits. It's not actually true. "At will" means there's no contractual agreement and an employee can be terminated for documented performance issues or for business reasons (i.e. layoffs) without it being treated as a breach of contract. In a contractual arrangement, for either party to walk away (even for business or performance reasons, unless stipulated) is a breach. In at-will employment, it's not a breach of contract. That's not the same thing as saying that people who are unjustly fired (e.g. pregnant women) have no recourse. That said, it's usually not in a person's interest to pursue a wrongful termination lawsuit. It's much easier and less risky, in most cases, to get another job.
  • rprasad 15y ago
    IAAL. "At will" means there's no contractual agreement and an employee can be terminated for documented performance issues or for business reasons (i.e. layoffs) without it being treated as a breach of contract. That's not true at all. You are misunderstanding contract law. An employer-employee relationship is a contractual relationship, even if not formally memoized in writing. "At will" simply means that the length of the employment arrangement is not defined, and continues so long both parties agree it shall continue. If either party decides it should not continue, that party may end the arrangement (the employee by quitting, the employer by firing). An at-will employee can be fired for any reason, so long as it is not one of the prohibited discriminatory reasons (i.e., age, gender, etc.). There is no need for the employer to document the reasons for termination, though many due as a matter of course (usually, to defend against discrimination lawsuits). That said, it's usually not in a person's interest to pursue a wrongful termination lawsuit. It's much easier and less risky, in most cases, to get another job. LOL. If a person is fired for discriminatory reasons, it is definitely worth the effort to sue. In addition to salary for the period of reasonable unemployment, they are also entitled to punitive damages (usually 3x actual damages).
    • michaelochurch 15y ago
      I know someone who got a six-figure settlement because he could establish that the process leading to his termination was atypical-- that he didn't have the same amount of time to improve performance and the same opportunities (i.e. transfer) as other people in the same circumstances. This wasn't a discrimination claim. He was white, male, and in his late 30s. IIRC there is language (at least in NY) covering people who are terminated and not given the same process as someone else. Companies aren't required to have a termination process, but if they have one and don't follow it, they can get in trouble, unless there was obvious cause to fire the person on the spot (i.e. he did something illegal or dangerous). It could be that the firm was more worried about image than losing the lawsuit, but my point is that it's not that simple. You may not be able to get wrongful termination, but there are other claims. Example: you don't get along with your boss and (instead of getting fired) you try to transfer to another group. If this works, great. If it doesn't, because said boss said something negative about you to the manager of the group you're trying to transfer into, then he interfered with your relationships elsewhere in the company. Get him for harassment, IIED, et cetera. LOL. If a person is fired for discriminatory reasons, it is definitely worth the effort to sue. I said "usually", and I should have qualified that with "for most HN readers". If you're 55 and on the cusp of retirement, or if you're a member of a minority in an obvious discrimination case, it makes sense to sue. If you're a 25-year-old white guy in finance or technology, it's usually not worth it to risk your reputation, because lawsuits go into the public record.