Jobs Aren’t Being Destroyed This Fast Elsewhere (US). Why Is That? | Hacker News Reader

Jobs Aren’t Being Destroyed This Fast Elsewhere (US). Why Is That?

nytimes.com

31 pointsbsg7510 comments

Crazy that in the US you can just be fired like that, places I know unless justified you get paid compensation depending on how long you were in the job.

Where is that? Even in most of Europe, unless you're part of a strong union, you can be fired for no reason as long as the employer respects the notice period that's in your contact, no other compensation is made. You have to rely on unemployment from the state after that.

As far as i know Spain, Argentina and Mexico has that "indemnización por despido improcedente o injustificado" and you get paid a months salary for every year you worked there. In Germany AFAIK if the company can prove they have financial trouble there is a procedure for firing first the newest, single, without kids... otherwise i understand you can sue if you have an unlimited contract. Of course in many cases they can work around it by doing temporary contracts and simply not renewing it but there's also limits on how many times they can renew.

Canada for instance

https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/...

This is hugely destructive to businesses where rent is a huge chunk of their monthly costs. Any place that has low financing overhead and low rent will be able to survive longer because costs don’t accumulate as fast while shut down.

> To be sure, the congressional relief package includes $350 billion in help for small businesses, but the program is complex, limited in scope and only a fraction of eligible businesses are likely to use it.

That is absolutely untrue. The payroll protection loans cover 2.5 times average monthly salaries. It is easy to apply and virtually every company under 500 employees WILL eventually apply. I applied on Friday and I know many many others who did the same.

And that isn’t even the only relief that was provided. There are also disaster loans available that go up to $200k before requiring owners to liquidate.

The normal loan requirements have been completely thrown out the window.

But there is also a perverse incentive going on right now because of the expansion of unemployment. We have already had one employee quit to take an unemployment raise. The Senators who raised concerns about this were right. Unemployment payouts should have been capped at whatever the previous income was.

And there is a perverse incentive from the business side, too. The law doesn’t require no layoffs so some businesses are laying off employees and hiring more talented people at depressed rates. They only have to have the same number of employees not the same employees.

>We have already had one employee quit to take an unemployment raise.

If your employer pays less than unemployment, or schedules employees for fewer hours than unemployment-- it is the problem, not the unemployment benefit.

Some governments are covering employee salaries. From a UK article...

"The government will cover 80% of the salary of workers who would otherwise be laid off." [1]

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/sunak-unveils-support...

That doesn't help the businesses who are saddled with the debt of their building on top of reduced customers or straight up loss of operations but still maintaining the space as storage essentially waiting out the storm. Many still have to pay their salaried employees.

Perhaps because in other countries loosing the job does not happen from one day to another. In my country there is 2 months period for lay off. So the employer still has to pay you a salary for 2 months. In case there is hope things can get back to normal in 2 months loosing the employee that you would need later makes no sense.

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