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I think more employers would do this if firing was easier. It's perhaps counterintuitive that making firing cheap, easy, and without large liabilities could re

I think more employers would do this if firing was easier. It's perhaps counterintuitive that making firing cheap, easy, and without large liabilities could reduce our unemployment rate substantially. We should reduce the risk of employers taking a chance on people.

Red_Tarsius 12y ago
On a side note, firing an employee in Italy is excruciatingly hard and, as a consequence, it makes for a lower job growth. As the say goes, "It’s easier for me to get rid of my wife than to fire an employee”. > "Article 18 of the Labor Code, passed in 1970, mandates that after a short probationary period, an employee fired from a company with 15 or more employees can bring a lawsuit challenging the dismissal. If the suit is successful, as is often the case, the employer is forced to rehire the worker and pay back wages and social insurance contributions, as well as a large fine." http://goo.gl/EE9P5e http://goo.gl/EE9P5e
- toyg 12y ago
  In practice this has been long sidestepped by abusing short-term contracts, which are renewed every year and are not protected by such clause. So in practice, for the last 20 years or so, it's actually been much easier to fire people in Italy than in most other European countries (as long as they were recent hires). That didn't really help job growth though.
jfoutz 12y ago
In the US at least, firing is really easy. "any hiring is presumed to be 'at will'; that is, the employer is free to discharge individuals 'for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all,' and the employee is equally free to quit, strike, or otherwise cease work." Managers are people. I'd imagine there's a fair amount of guilt and shame around firing someone. I also think managers underestimate the damage done by crappy employees, and overestimate the difficulty in replacing people. Less charitably, people given the power to hire and fire are likely selected for doing what they're told rather than doing what's best for business, so they're probably kinda spineless.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nostromo 12y ago
  That's true right up until you get sued, then suddenly firing becomes extremely expensive. Of course, sometimes employers should be sued! So it's a hard nut to crack.
arrrg 12y ago
Eh … German labor law, for example, while quite strict when it comes to firing long-term employees, has several mechanisms in place that would make this easily possible with new hires. Lawmakers of course have long recognized that to spur companies to hire new people they have to give them a way out when they notice it doesn't work out during the first couple months. First, it's possible to time limit an employment contract, e.g. to one year. After that one year the employment is automatically terminated. It is not possible to string time limited contract after time limited contract (if there isn't a reason for the time limit, e.g. another employee has to take care of his kids so there is an urgent need for someone to fill in, it's limited to two years, after which your contract is unlimited), but for new employees it's a tool that can be – and in practice is – used. Furthermore the (up to) first six months can be a testing period (the law allows it) with severely shortened requirements to giving notice (minimum two weeks from both sides). During this time people can be fired pretty much at will.
- ars 12y ago
  This might help, but it's still completely bizarre that you can't fire someone for any reason. An employee does not have a "right" to a job. You do work you get paid, it's transactional. It's not "your" job - it belongs to your employer.
  - toyg 12y ago
    > An employee does not have a "right" to a job. ... says you. Someone else might say that a human being has the right to realize his potential in an activity and be allowed to sustain himself and his family out of such activity -- which in practice means there is such a thing as "the right to have a job". There is a lot of philosophic and economic literature on the subject; several nation states even wrote it in their Constitution. I know we tend to forget, but the XXI century came after the XX and the XIX; those were times when the best minds would think and write about the world around them, rather than looking for ways to trick people into clicking ads.
    - ars 12y ago

Red_Tarsius 12y ago

On a side note, firing an employee in Italy is excruciatingly hard and, as a consequence, it makes for a lower job growth. As the say goes, "It’s easier for me to get rid of my wife than to fire an employee”. > "Article 18 of the Labor Code, passed in 1970, mandates that after a short probationary period, an employee fired from a company with 15 or more employees can bring a lawsuit challenging the dismissal. If the suit is successful, as is often the case, the employer is forced to rehire the worker and pay back wages and social insurance contributions, as well as a large fine." http://goo.gl/EE9P5e http://goo.gl/EE9P5e

toyg 12y ago
In practice this has been long sidestepped by abusing short-term contracts, which are renewed every year and are not protected by such clause. So in practice, for the last 20 years or so, it's actually been much easier to fire people in Italy than in most other European countries (as long as they were recent hires). That didn't really help job growth though.

jfoutz 12y ago

In the US at least, firing is really easy. "any hiring is presumed to be 'at will'; that is, the employer is free to discharge individuals 'for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all,' and the employee is equally free to quit, strike, or otherwise cease work." Managers are people. I'd imagine there's a fair amount of guilt and shame around firing someone. I also think managers underestimate the damage done by crappy employees, and overestimate the difficulty in replacing people. Less charitably, people given the power to hire and fire are likely selected for doing what they're told rather than doing what's best for business, so they're probably kinda spineless.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nostromo 12y ago
That's true right up until you get sued, then suddenly firing becomes extremely expensive. Of course, sometimes employers should be sued! So it's a hard nut to crack.

arrrg 12y ago

Eh … German labor law, for example, while quite strict when it comes to firing long-term employees, has several mechanisms in place that would make this easily possible with new hires. Lawmakers of course have long recognized that to spur companies to hire new people they have to give them a way out when they notice it doesn't work out during the first couple months. First, it's possible to time limit an employment contract, e.g. to one year. After that one year the employment is automatically terminated. It is not possible to string time limited contract after time limited contract (if there isn't a reason for the time limit, e.g. another employee has to take care of his kids so there is an urgent need for someone to fill in, it's limited to two years, after which your contract is unlimited), but for new employees it's a tool that can be – and in practice is – used. Furthermore the (up to) first six months can be a testing period (the law allows it) with severely shortened requirements to giving notice (minimum two weeks from both sides). During this time people can be fired pretty much at will.

ars 12y ago
This might help, but it's still completely bizarre that you can't fire someone for any reason. An employee does not have a "right" to a job. You do work you get paid, it's transactional. It's not "your" job - it belongs to your employer.
- toyg 12y ago
  > An employee does not have a "right" to a job. ... says you. Someone else might say that a human being has the right to realize his potential in an activity and be allowed to sustain himself and his family out of such activity -- which in practice means there is such a thing as "the right to have a job". There is a lot of philosophic and economic literature on the subject; several nation states even wrote it in their Constitution. I know we tend to forget, but the XXI century came after the XX and the XIX; those were times when the best minds would think and write about the world around them, rather than looking for ways to trick people into clicking ads.
  - ars 12y ago