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Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

That's because they are taking a risk. If you make it harder to fire people, companies simply won't hire them in the first place. The harder it is to fire someone, the more dangerous it is to hire them. The more cautious employers will be about hiring in the first place. This is a real problem in countries that have strict firing laws.

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>simply won't hire them in the first place

Except that is simply not true, and very easily proven false simply by showing countries with actual employee protection and unions like e.g. Denmark.

It is not black and white though, I'm in sweden. Companies will of course hire out of necessity, but strive as much as possible to not do it - outsource, consultants, temp workers, move abroad etc etc

But they do that too everywhere. I'm Norwegian. I've been a co-founder of companies both in Norway and the UK. I see little evidence that it makes all that much difference. On one hand you do take a somewhat greater risk in terms of hiring in Norway, but conversely the ability to fire much more easily does not get exercised much. Of course that's no help for those who end up being affected.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, in Norway not only is it harder to fire someone, but terminating an employment contract is normally with 3 months mutual notice. So you risk bad hires, but you also don't risk essential staff members disappearing overnight very often, as serving out the 3 months notice is normal and expected. That makes companies with small teams less vulnerable in that respect.

Overall I don't really know if it makes much difference to employers. I hasn't seemed like that for me. But it makes a big difference for employees.

The effect of workforce excesive protection is not the same on individual companies as on a country as a whole.

Individual companies won't hire if some law hits them specifically, the same as if they're cash strapped, lost a big customer or some raw materials they need raise their price.

For a country it's loss of competitiveness and more long term. The questions are more like: can we as a country afford this law? is individual suffering worth the wealth create?

"Wealth created" though hides some of the reality. That 'wealth created' consists also in jobs for individuals. So, a better question might be: Is the suffering alleviated by allowing easy firing greater than the suffering alleviated by preventing easy firing? And that is an empirical economic question, which is difficult to answer.

The economist must consider both the seen and the unseen. Yes, people have jobs in Denmark 🇩🇰, but there are employment positions and opportunities that do not exist because firing regulations price them out of the market.

Yeah slavery jobs tend to disappear where proper worker rights are enforced. This is not the middle ages anymore.

Aw shucks, you’ve uncovered my conspiracy to return to the Middle Ages. Next time I’ll have to use a double-secret decoder ring!

Possibly true, though nonexistent jobs must surely be a difficult thing to count.

But at will employment also imposes economuc costs, which economists don't really care to count, like economic security, health and psychological well being, mutual respect between companies and their public, and the opportunities to do stupid image damaging life-harmful shite like Marriot did to this man.

I’m sympathetic to the person in the story. Firing over such a slight, possibly inadvertent, infraction seems excessive, and that makes me suspect we don’t know the whole story.

As much racket as people have made in this thread about at-will status in the U.S., the truth is more moderate. Not all states have at-will employment. Even in those that do, there are protected classes. The former Marriott employee might easily file an age-discrimination lawsuit, for example.

But again, consider the unseen. Marriott’s management has created a possible advantage for their competitors. The man has been given his moment in the limelight, a fantastic opportunity to better himself and his situation.

Indeed that is true. But stories like this have emotional salience, because they happened to real people. The jobs that didn't get created in the first place don't have that same resonance, because they're for theoretical people. But the harm is no less real. And the important question is that we at least try to empirically evaluate the question of which is worse, rather than simply indexing on the emotional resonance of anecdotes like this one.

It's easy to fire employees in Denmark. That's one reason why it's economy and employment rates are quite good for Europe, and while you think it proved your point, it's evidence of the opposite. See [1][2][3].

If you're interested in the academic research, someone above in the thread posted research links on the relationship between ease-of-firing and employers' willingness to hire. If you find those unsatisfying, this is a well-researched (empirically, not just theoretically) and uncontroversial topic among economists, so you should be able to find much more research.

[1] Country summary for Denmark economic freedom: https://www.heritage.org/index/country/denmark

[2] Country comparison: https://www.heritage.org/index/visualize?cnts=denmark&type=1...

[3] NYT article covering Denmark's ease of firing: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/15/business/worldbusiness/th...

> "The Danish system creates a flexible labor market," the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions said in an official document. "Danish companies are more willing to hire new employees in times of economic revival than their European competitors, who have trouble letting off workers when the economy goes downhill again."

> Note that the source of this last comment is the country's largest labor union confederation, a sign of the consensus surrounding the easy-to-fire policy.

Except the reality is that most people are in unions, covering them quite well (around 1.8 million[0] out of 2.7 million[1] in the job market).

Many jobs have a firing period of 1, 3 and 6 months, rising with the time you've been there. Sickness is a legal absence. Maternity and paternity leave is a legal requirement along with at least 5 weeks of vacation a year.

[0] https://www.business.dk/arbejdsmarked/flere-bliver-medlem-af...

[1] https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/nyt/NytHtml?cid=24821

Yes, but their labor market is still more flexible than other european countries, which is why their companies are more willing to hire.

If they “simply wouldn’t hire them in the first place” then they aren’t hiring the correct number of employees to maximize profit.

No, they instead choose to contact work out. Companies acquire labor to maximize profit, and regulations simply cause them to alter how they choose to obtain labor.

Can you provide a source (or data) that countries with stricter firing laws have more contract workers?

In countries with strict firing laws, this is only a problem for people like you who think business are entitled to do their will, and who see worker rights as obstacles to avoid.

Sigh

The entire issue is solved by probation periods - in UK my probation period was 6 months(during which I could be let go almost instantly for any reason) and after that it's a 3-month notice period - if the company wanted to let me go they would need to tell me at least 3 months in advance.

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