> I don't want to work for another US company again if I can help it
You can work for a US company in the UE. They have to follow the local rules like anybody else.
You can work for a US company in the UE. They have to follow the local rules like anybody else.
Most of my colleagues were shocked by the treatment. Moral took a dive after that.
That being said, if they want to get rid of employees, they always find a way. And the European market isn't as dynamic as the US one, so there are pros and cons. Personally, all things considered (risks of layoffs, PTO, cost of living) I'm happier in Europe but it really depends on individual situation.
One thing that I saw (but never experienced myself) happen with North American companies wanted to leave EU is just doing their usual things (thus not following local rules), and then people have to sue and wait many years to be compensated.
In principle, an organization that is built on reciprocal loyalty is more productive than one that treats people as interchangeable cogs, because people are individually happier and go to greater lengths to achieve the shared goals, making them more productive. However, this arrangement can only be built on trust, and trust doesn't scale well past the Dunbar number. Thus, spirit of the rules is replaced by letter of the rules (which can be meaningfully enforced).
Thus, the larger the bureaucracy, the more soulless it is even in individual interactions between people within it, and the more it treats those people as interchangeable cogs that are there solely to serve the overall function of the organization. If the organization is a for-profit corporation, its overall function is profit, and thus megacorps always tend to optimize squeezing their employees.
Short-term this can be reversed somewhat if leadership is concentrated and opinionated. E.g. when the company grows out of a startup dominated by a single founder, and that founder has certain ethical standards or beliefs that they enforce on the org, overriding the natural tendency. This arrangement never lasts long-term, though - either the founder goes away and is replaced by generic management which has neither the desire nor the capacity to go against the current, or the founder becomes corrupt.
Lots of US tech companies like to pretend otherwise, but a complaint or two from the misclassified employee can create plenty of pain for the employer for lying to both the US and foreign governments about the genuine nature of the relationship. And these penalties generally go not to the employee but to the employer, since the noncompliance is generally around employer tax, payroll, and reporting obligations as well as laws which are meant to protect employee rights.
But for example, someone who is fired or laid off in a way that wouldn’t comply with local employment protections if the employment relationship were correctly classified might assert their misclassification claim so that they can also get compensation for their wrongful termination.
If that happens, then the company not only has to scramble to catch up on the overdue social contributions for the complaining employee and pay any applicable penalties, but also likely have to undergo an audit of their other workers in that country plus the same consequences for them.
There’s a reason why any US tech company that’s big enough to be a juicy financial target tends to do this correctly, and why companies like Deel, Remote.com, and their less tech-branded competitors (such as Velocity Global) are gaining popularity among people who want to do this correctly at smaller scales than those for which it makes sense to set up foreign subsidiaries.
When smaller companies take this particular shortcut, are risking severe financial consequences for the company if the authorities discover it, and in many cases this also comes with personal liability for some of the executives who are neglecting their legal duties.
If it was legal to work in the office of your only "client" 40 hours a week on a permanent basis, then any EU company could ignore the entire employment legislation of their real country by setting up a shell subsidiary in the US.
> If it was legal to work in the office of your only "client" 40 hours a week on a permanent basis, then any EU company could ignore the entire employment legislation of their real country by setting up a shell subsidiary in the US.
That wouldn't work because it would be an obvious sham designed mainly to avoid the EU company's responsibilities under employment law. Courts see through those shams very quickly.
Technical people -- including me -- like to try and reduce the law to a series of digital if/then/else tests, but reality is much more analogue. If you're one of a small number of highly-experienced remote contractors engaged by a US-based client with no local subsidiary, the authorities are likely to accept the arrangement, or at least not to spend significant amounts of time investigating it. If you're one of very many Uber-driver-like "contractors" working for a company that is obviously dodging its local employment law obligations, then they're much more likely to be interested.
> where I only found out a colleague had been fired because I tried to write them on Slack only to find that their account had been deactivated
The colleague will just be one that's based in the US, but that doesn't make it much easier.
An employee decided to be laid off is equally written off immediately, it's just delegated to the regional/local HR to "manage the rest".
If you're not escorted off-premise, you get to enjoy some additional days/weeks of colleagues and managers telling you how surprised they were...