Unless employees unionize.
1. Mandatory notice periods (3 months is customary, mimumum 1 month)
2. "Social selection", i.e. you're not allowed to lay off a pregnant person etc. unless you have demonstrated that there were no other people you could have let go instead
3. There needs to be cause. Downsizing can still mean you get laid off, but you can't just fire a team or an individual because you don't like them etc.
Of course, if you left a company because you didn't agree to their rules instead of being laid off, none of these protections apply to you - why would they?
Being in a union involves give and take.
1. "Firms and Layoffs: The Impact of Unionization on Involuntary Job Loss" - (2003 with data from 1997) https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/03-09.html
> Results show that the impact of unionization is not significant except for (1) establishments that operate in the non-manufacturing sector; and (2) establishments operating in industries that have major collective bargaining agreements which contain moderate employment security provisions. Under those conditions, unionization decreases layoff rates; otherwise, unionization has no effect on layoff rates.
Does anyone have anything more recent about this?
I am in a non-union workspace. There's no transparency on how bonuses or stock refreshers are handed out. A union contract could codify it.
The owner class wants workers to think unions will hurt our earnings because when workers are structurally unable to shape company policy the bosses can do whatever they want...and what they want is to maximize profits. (Like Elon Musk said: You don't need a union, I'll put in an soft serve machine for you.)