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Comment by peter_l_downs | Hacker News Reader

How would this work? Would companies be unable to fire people except for rule violations?

It’s not exactly related to the parent, but in many parts of Europe, yeah, you can’t just fire someone after the probation period, and the firing needs to be for cause (which is genuinely a high bar to cross).

To the point of the parent, in a lot of Europe it’s not so simple to just lay off some small portion of the company. It needs to be justified and a decent percentage, and employees are often entitled to some compensation (some severance) to offset the layoff.

Yeah, obviously depends from country to country, but for a layoff the company often has to be in some problems. It's difficult to do a layoff when you have record profits.

Of course there are other ways to fire employees but those have their own rules.

Right. My point is that the company can’t just say “we’re not doing well, we need to get rid of a few people” and do a layoff with impunity. They have to lay off a pretty decent amount of people (in some cases like 30%) and they need to pay severance to the laid off employees. In most of Europe it’s basically a tool of last resort besides going bankrupt, unlike in the states where it’s easier and done somewhat regularly.

maybe don't allow them to hire any visa employee for the next x years? That would make them much more careful with layoffs.

There are already restrictions on visa and employer sponsored green card applications for 6 months after a layoff, iirc.

should extend to H1b, J class visas and others, and for longer than 6 months, maybe 2 years. Give other companies a chance of getting those people, htey just proved they cannot manage them properly.

Blocking the EB GC applications of an employer that had layoffs screws over the employee, not the employer. If anything, the employer gets to have that employee tied to them for that additional time, regardless of the desires of the employee to move on.

No fault layoff == 50% salary severance would help align incentives.

Simple, only allow them after top management takes a heavy decrease in compensation.

if you have millions in cash why would you ever fire someone except that?

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