14 week severance bare minimum at a private company? That sounds very rich.
[edited for better manners]
Other "European" countries have much worse severance packages. So what Coinbase offered seems to be better than even the best country in Europe.
0. https://www.claimsattorney.com/2020/05/understanding-severan...
EDIT>> Correcting years
From 2-5 years it’s one month (to the last day of the month), from 5-8 years it’s two months, eventually maxing out at seven months after twenty years. That’s the notice period for the employer. It can and often is asymmetric but can never be shorter for the employer than for the employee.
However, these are the legal minimums. Many employers will have longer notice periods in their contracts which apply to both sides. Something like three months or so isn’t uncommon.
Severance pay can even lead to problems with the mandatory unemployment insurance (which in most cases will pay you 60 – without kids – or 67 percent – with kids – of your last net earnings for a year) that can reduce the payout from that insurance (and then it becomes a game of calculating severance vs unemployment insurance, which can be annoying).
Coinbase was generous, it could have chosen to give them exactly 0 and that would have been legal.
You're taking the best case scenario in one case and comparing it to the norm in another country.
It's obviously good that this is handled outside the employers control.
After that you get the normal unemployment benefits from the state which is capped at a low but livable level.
It is (in sweden) abnormal (and illegal) for companies to just fire people without cause, and the valid causes are pretty restricted. One of the few valid causes are lack-of-work (arbetsbrist), but even that triggers negotiations between the employer, the employee and the union, and is usually a last-in, first-out thing. The employment contracts are always including a fixed notice (I think it's 3 months regulated by LAS, can be lower if your on a trial employment up to 6 months).
As an example, the klarna downsizing was major news in sweden a second time because of their obviously illegal way of handling firings.
> Other "European" countries have much worse severance packages.
Please give me a source.
The source is in my post. They cover France, Luxembourg, UK, and the Netherlands, and the first three are worse than the Netherlands.
1/3rd of a month is 1.44 weeks. To get 14 weeks, that would be 10 years.
You're right in that Europe generally provides less severance, but they do tend to sign fixed term, renewing employment contracts with rather lengthy notice periods for either side to terminate it. E.g. in Switzerland, statutory minimum after 1 year of employment is end-of-calendar-month + 2 months of notice, but typical agreements extend this.
Also, there's the whole concept where regulators are involved with layoffs and negotiate for payments and assistance in many jurisdictions.
The last time my company laid people off it have very generous severance packages, way above the legally required 1/3 months depending on duration of employment.
More risk in US but also more opportunities.