Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour
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R2F also does other weird things. Like if you have R2F, you have single companies more often. Without R2F you end up with parent companies or investors setting up more isolated companies and if that isolated entity ends up with tons of "stuck" employees then they just bankrupt that isolated company and walk away, taking every employee with it, even the good ones. Everyone loses. But this is how those kinds of companies protect themselves from predatory employees. This makes even good employees get screwed along with the bad employees that weren't adding value. You end up with tons of "casualty" employees. It's a terrible situation, but it's required to make investments less risky.
Example: A tee shirt manufacturer wants to start a printing business.
With R2F: The new business is just a quick department set up in the existing company, new people are hired. As opportunities come up people are hired, or shifted around internally. If one division falters the other might carry it or jobs might shift to whichever side is more profitable.
Without R2F: A new business is set up to protect the original business. Opportunities to move between the companies don't exist so mobility is lower. Only new people go to the new business, old people are essentially trapped even if they want a job at the new place. If either company fails, its' on its own and all those jobs are lost.
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@IRJ said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
In a weak economy, its a little more difficult for the employee.
There is another factor that people often overlook...
When the economy is weak and employees are at risk of being unemployed those former employees also need more ability to self-employ and start their own businesses. But if we lack R2F, it puts those unemployed at risk, too, as it is more costly and dangerous to try to start your own business!
One of the common misconceptions that people often have is the idea of employees vs employes, us vs them, workers vs the man. This doesn't exist. In feudal times when "the man" inherited the ownership and there was no mobility, yeah, it was real. There were two classes and people fell into one group or the other.
But today, the owners and the workers are all the same people. Making unequal playing fields hurts everyone because everyone benefits when all sides work well. We are all in the employment game together.
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The problem with seeing it in individual employee's favour is that the view is based on the employee's mobility, while in real life, many people have not structured their lives that way, and career advancement is not their primary goal.
It is possible to be more mobile, put there are many things that tie people down. In some careers it would be guaranteed you would have to move for a job. So you move for a job, and your spouse starts a business. If you get fired, there are no other jobs in your profession there. Now you have to make the decision if your career or your spouse's business is more important.
Even if you do not have things tying you down. I've attended presentations on the affect frequent moves have on your kids (based on studies of families in the military that were moved around the US), so there are considerations other than career here.
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@flaxking said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
It is possible to be more mobile, put there are many things that tie people down.
Mobility goes way beyond ability to move physically. Mobility also means working from home or taking a different job in the same town. Very few people are limited to a single, local employer and those that are nearly always decide to the locked down in that way voluntarily and move there in the first place for that employer. The idea that you are born to a location and can't move is simply gone. That there is only one potential employer in a town, is nearly gone. That you can't start your own business in town is certainly gone.
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The idea that employers and employees can be equals seem laughable to me. Quiting is the only power an employee has, and it can be very risky for the employee.
For example, if I quit my job I lose my health benefits for 3 months until I qualify at the new job. And if I quit in order to take another job, there is no guarantee that the other employer will honor the employment offer.
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@flaxking said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
The idea that employers and employees can be equals seem laughable to me.
It shouldn't, if anything the employee has more power. The business needs the work, employees don't need the money. Employees can find any work, anywhere. Or just quit and retire. Or take unemployement if fired. Or live off of family.
Companies can't do that. Companies need employees with specific skills to function. Employees of any value have most of the power.
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@flaxking said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
there is no guarantee that the other employer will honor the employment offer.
Employers will tell you, that the same goes both ways. We invest heavily in hiring a new employee, and then they don't show up at all, quit after a few days, etc. Employees can do that and do all the time. It's super common for the company to go through expensive hiring rounds and go person after person before someone actually shows up and does the agreed upon job.
Even here, employees have the upper hand because of the simplicity of their needs (cash) and the complexity of the businesses needs (whatever skills they were hired for.)
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@flaxking said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
I lose my health benefits for 3 months until I qualify at the new job.
You lose those specific benefits, but pick up others. You can actually end up better from that happening in the US at least.
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@flaxking said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
And if I quit in order to take another job, there is no guarantee that the other employer will honor the employment offer.
Work 1099 contracts and there certainly is. You are protected by contract law.
If they hire you on W2 and don't honor the contract, you have employment fraud protection.
R2F doesn't protect from those things, other basic contract and employment law already does.
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@flaxking said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
I've attended presentations on the affect frequent moves have on your kids (based on studies of families in the military that were moved around the US), so there are considerations other than career here.
US military is not a good way to look at how moves affects kids. My kids move all the time and while it does have an effect, it is completely different. Military is moving along with a lot of other things that are part of that situation. Being a military kid has effects on its own, moving is kind of background noise as to how much it will affect you. One can argue that not moving has loads of effects on kids too. One of the reasons that we choose to move so much is literally to avoid the stagnation effects on the kids. So I agree, it's a huge consideration and doing things for my kids drives my career decisions more than anything else and giving up mobility and crippling a career are some of the worst things you can do because you are best able to care for and spend time with your kids when you maximize your career value.
Remember that while R2F might require you to be more mobile, taking away R2F makes your value as an employee decline. Literally you are worth less to every employer, a lot less. So one of the things R2F does is make you more likely to have the leverage to work from home or limit your hours. Taking away R2F encourages employers to be sticklers for enforcing crappy working conditions like requiring your butt to be in the office all day and working you overtime rather than employing someone to handle the overflow.
R2F supports families big time.
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Remember that R2F makes mobility be in your favour to empower employees. Lacking R2F you have all of the punishments of lacking mobility, even when you have it. No one wins, everyone loses. It's just the worst of all situations combined. It doesn't stop you losing your job, it just makes it harder to get another. It doesn't keep you from needing to be mobile, it just makes you less mobile.
Don't look at the benefits of R2F or the options that it brings as saying that without R2F we'd have the opposite benefits. That's not how it works. Lacking R2F simply makes there be fewer jobs and job options. But it's a myth that it protects employees. You can still fire people, you just have to do it in different, and far worse, ways.
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Something else that is often forgotten... R2F will always exist somewhere. So anywhere that implements a No R2F is simply deciding that their local jobs should be shipped off somewhere else. Only jobs that can't be done somewhere else will stay. Any job that can leave, will. So all the good jobs, the ones involving real skills leave. The ones that remain are local service jobs or the self employed.
Lacking R2F also shift people from W2 employees to contractors. Companies find ways to simply not make you an employee and end up stripping your employment rights away. So you don't just lose the protection that you sought, you lose the employment protections that are just assumed for normal people. It makes working something that requires a lot of expertise and your own CPA and lawyer just to go to work.. and no healthcare.
These days, shipping jobs to another town, state, or even country is a no-brainer. In fact, the idea that a job would automatically be local anywhere is kind of weird. Obviously manufacturing jobs have to be where the factory is. Waiters have to work where the restaurant is. But office jobs, the first question employers ask is "where do we hire that position"? They aren't "shipping jobs overseas" anymore. Now the jobs originate there - and you have to justify bringing it to a high cost, high risk locality.
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Another thing that people don't think about... when you lack R2F it causes local house prices to increase, which erodes income parity.
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This is a topic near and dear to my heart, lol. As someone who works hard to create jobs...
R2F creates a form of nobles oblige. The employer has a job to do, to look out for employees. Not all will, but many will. And those that do get better employees, those that don't struggle to hire. R2F makes a "partner" relationship between employees and employer.
If you don't have R2F, all feelings of or pretense of employee protection are gone. When you don't have R2F, all employee protections go to the state. Employees aren't the "children" of the employer, they are the enemies of it. Removing R2F makes an adversarial relationship between employee and employer.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
Even rare unskilled labour today is generally highly mobile
When I was a waiter with at least 3 months exerpiance, you could always tell the manager to go fuck thesmelfs and walk into another resturant in the same town without an issue. The bottom and the top of the job funnel always seem to have comical amounts of "another option willing to pay me what I"m being paid". Either because your value is too high, or your pay is too low.
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@StorageNinja said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
Even rare unskilled labour today is generally highly mobile
When I was a waiter with at least 3 months exerpiance, you could always tell the manager to go fuck thesmelfs and walk into another resturant in the same town without an issue. The bottom and the top of the job funnel always seem to have comical amounts of "another option willing to pay me what I"m being paid". Either because your value is too high, or your pay is too low.
These days, with employees being in demand, it's amazing how little lock in employers have outside of paying well or acting well. Be a jerk or pay poorly, people are going to walk and the cost of acquiring, hiring, and training is high. Even in restaurants!
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@StorageNinja said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
walk into another resturant in the same town without an issue.
It was like this for me in restaurants, too. Even in fast food and pizza places. And in hotels. And in grocery. I worked plenty of entry level manual jobs and I always had "mobility" just within the small rural location that I lived in.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
If you don't have R2F, all feelings of or pretense of employee protection are gone. When you don't have R2F, all employee protections go to the state. Employees aren't the "children" of the employer, they are the enemies of it. Removing R2F makes an adversarial relationship between employee and employer.
What I find interesting is states where it's difficult to fire have problems with unemployeement for younger employees so they create systems where you can fire below xxx age, or offer incentives like lower minimum wage for below yyy age.
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@StorageNinja said in Why Right to Fire (and Hire) May Be in the Employee's Favour:
What I find interesting is states where it's difficult to fire have problems with unemployeement for younger employees
Right, so they recognize that they are crippling the economy, but don't care when it is only crippled "so much".
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Lacking R2F also encourages discrimination. The old system was based on "once in, stay in", so people with the leverage to get hired in the first place get quite a leg up. Discrimination practices become much more long lasting. It favours men as child care and bearing become things that potentially break employment continuity, and getting favours to get jobs become a much, much bigger deal. It pushes employment more towards an "old boys club" environment.
The push towards more contact rather than employment, which is far easier to do than people realize, also openly allows discrimination in almost all jurisdictions and certainly in the US. When hiring a contracting company you can specify age, gender, possibly even race which is completely illegal and unethical with employees. But when it isn't an employee, those protections go away. Putting women, minorities, the young and the old all at risk.
Famous examples of this are firms hiring things like marketing firms and refusing teams run by younger women of child bearing age because they fear a lack of continuity from their project lead. Turning down an employee for that role for that purpose is illegal, but doing so to a consulting firm is standard procedure. R2F doesn't automatically protect people, but it makes it way, way easier to do so.
