Employee protection exists because there's a huge power imbalance. A company who can constantly just say, "we'll fire you if this doesn't get done" and colludes with other companies on such matters makes it very difficult for workers. This is why employee protection, unions, etc... exist.
This kind of directly speaks to the commenters point. There may have “little good”, but enough reason until the legal change to increase employee protections created “no good reason”.
Nothing comes for free.
I wouldn't, but being in a country with employee protections means the people around me are almost never placed in a desparate situation, and I am meaningfully safer because of that.
People should save for a rainy day, anyway. Why must the employer be their parents?
I don't buy the idea that people in a free country like the US somehow found the one and only job they could ever have.
It's inevitable.
And when people get desperate some turn to crime. Which then increases your costs through increased taxation for policing and incarceration and secondary effects such as reduced safety and increased personal costs due to crime, such as increased insurance costs and the greater threat of being targeted.
So when all costs are internalized, worker protections pay dividends at making a society better for all involved, for example the many northers European countries with very low crime and very strong worker protections.
"Extreme"? What nonsense. I know many middle class people who don't have a spare $400 for an emergency. They also have a boat in the driveway. They don't have an income problem, they have a spending problem.
> And when people get desperate some turn to crime.
Or sell the boat. I remember one couple I counselled that couldn't pay the rent, but had a new car. I suggested they sell that, and buy one they could afford. I was surprised to find out that's just what they did.
It's not a poverty problem, it's a financial management problem. Don't conflate that with being actually poor.
> when people get desperate some turn to crime.
Crime causes poverty, not the other way around.
The downside to treating employees like children is a lower standard of living.
As to finding another job: of course they will, but switching costs are pretty high for job changes.