When you leave a company you need to give one month notice (so you can't just get up and leave). I never seen a "layoff" (you get notice that you are leaving, but still have your job for a few months and usually no severance) like they do in the EU. When you are fired, you are out of there the same day with your severance and unemployment benefits.
This specific practice does have a few problems:
1) companies not firing about-to-retire employees who have been at the company for 10+ years because of the huge severance required. Instead they just wait for them to retire. However employees also really don't want to get fired in their last few years either before retirement because of how the pension system works, so it balances-out. 60+ year old people usually take it easy, but they are usually not just showing up for a paycheck.
2) Younger employees trying to get fired instead of quitting. If you been at a company for 3-4 years and you want to leave it is really a lot more beneficial to get fired instead. I have seen this happen, but not nearly as much as you would think (at least in IT).
Although you would think companies would want to "recycle" employees by firing them every year to prevent the severance from piling up. The math doesn't really work out like that on top of all possible disruptions of such high attrition rate.
EU is certainly not a single country and states have sometimes wildly different rules and labor laws. That specific situation is impossible at least in some countries.
Since this is mediated by an union it only happens if there is a good reason (usually financial problems). I never seen it on an individual case basis it is always multiple people at the same time.
Also on HN:
"Looking for a Job Is Tough" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42132125
It appears the facts don't fit you opinion.
For me in particular, if I were fired a year into every job and had to be unemployed for ten, counting all the health insurance bullshit and whatnot you have in this country when you're unemployed, I'd still be better off financially than in any EU tech job I've found. HN isn't exactly a representative sample of the sort of people who benefit from EU labour protections.
It is like that old adage that goes along the lines "Tell me the incentives and I will tell you the outcomes"
Raised, because the property owner has other investments that are affected by the presence of people, such as nearby restaurants and stores?
Or is a valuation of the office property itself affected by how many people are physically in the building or area?
1. They're paying a lot in rent.
2. if they don't have workers in the office, then, adjacent spaces for ex. food service is less valuable.
3. If adjacent space is less valuable, the landlord is motivated to raise Amazon's rent to compensate
4. Therefore, they're making people go back to work to avoid rent increases
4 years on, and it seems a little bit odd it took that long for it to play it. But it seems (much) cheaper and sensible to find somewhere else to rent than give in to a threatening landlord who sees you as responsible for any shortfalls in adjacent revenue, instead of the anchor tenent you are.
Real estate is very much driven by supply and demand. Moreso than many other industries. If the adjacent space is less valuable, it gives Amazon leverage to lower its rent.
In Santa Clara county we have our local behemoths trying to get their property valuations dropped. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2024/11/08/tech-goo...
The way commercial real estate lending is tied to lease rates usually means its almost impossible for them to go down unless you operate at these scales.
Most commercial landlords around me would rather have prime main street spots stay empty than refinance because of lower lease rates.
Low occupancy means balance sheet write downs, and higher cost of capital.
You are implying most companies really think that much about long-term unquantifiable effects.
I can see a better argument being made about executive with big ego likes sitting at the top of his ivory tower (his top-level corner-office) looking over the masses below him.
That is not what I am implying. The owner/investor class have portfolios that depend on commercial and prime real estate holding, and continuing to increase in, value. They might not personally own buildings themselves, but they own companies and financial instruments that do.
Maybe execs themselves are lucky enough to be that asset rich, maybe they aren't, but it's their jobs to call the shots based on the desires of their respective boards.