We need to abolish right to work laws. Or at least restructure them. I shouldn’t be able to be fired for literally any reason they can come up with. Even fast food jobs should have contracts with certain clauses to protect the workers. You sign it when you start and you can’t be let go until it expires or you break it.
Not that I disagree with your premise, but that’s an “at will” law area, not “right to work” (can’t be forced to join a union/pay union dues in a unionized workplace).
To add, some argue at will is fair because it goes both ways, but it definitely doesn’t. If your employer fires you suddenly for no reason, there’s no real consequences. If you quit suddenly for no reason, you can get blackballed.
Yeah I knew it wasn’t the right wording I just couldn’t remember exactly what it was called.
But that’s exactly what I was bringing up. I’m supposed to work a 2 week notice but they can fire me instantly because I didn’t smile at the manager when walking into work.
If your employer fires you suddenly for no reason, there’s no real consequences.
Depends on the industry and location. If they do that a few times in relatively small industry, or in a captured but small market, word gets around and suddenly that company has difficulty hiring in the future.
That’s true. I work in a somewhat “small” work world for my area of expertise, and word does get around about bad employers. People seem to have a short memory once they start offering higher salaries, even though they never keep those up with inflation. A few years later, and they’re working for a shit boss with average pay.
I was fired earlier this year because they manufactured some drama after I needed a sudden comprehensive additional surgery when a planned one round something alarming that demanded specialist surgeons. I feel like we really should not be in a country where a company can decide to screw your life at time of firing and then screw you for future jobs by not providing anything truthful about your time there. I’m still struggling months later, including the general anxiety of knowing I could go bust my ass for someone and have them do this to me all over again. Fuck this predatory atmosphere we seem to just celebrate.
And you’re not entitled to FMLA until you’ve been somewhere for a year! Our society is so hostile to the average person.
At least in the states that I’ve worked in (NY anf CA) if you’re terminated without documentation proving cause, you qualify for unemployment benefits.
It’s the same in my state but unemployment is only a fraction of what you made hourly
Yes, but the point is this costs the company money. It’s not a great system but I’ve been in management for 20 years and I’ve never worked for a company that would allow me to fire without cause due to that.
Why do you hate capitalism?! /s But seriously, I agree. Government regulation is the only thing that can force a corporation to do something that hurts profits like respecting workers’ rights.
The question I have about people who are against at will is the flip side, which is being locked into a hellish job for some set period. I have had jobs that deteriorated my mental health. With at will I can just walk out the door whenever I want. Not so if both employer and employee are bound by some cool down counter clause.
Even without abuse there is opportunity cost to staying at your company. I’ve seen family members on the spot quit to care for people they cared about, but not people anyone would consider close enough to be covered by anything like FMLA, like your best friend’s child. I quit jobs that interfered with my college education.
It sucks to be let go, but I don’t think people consider if it might make more suffering yo be forced to stay. I can’t see a situation where companies have to give notice, but employees don’t. Sure I guess employees can sabotage their workplaces to be sent home with pay, but what a fantastic way to catch a charge and screw yourself over forever.
It’s food for thought.
Are you saying that in countries where employers can’t just make up reasons to divest themselves of employees without repercussion or paying unemployment that the employees themselves are somehow bound to their employer and can’t just walk out?
Unless you’re under some contract, I don’t see how that would be enforced other than having laws on the books in individual countries about a minimum required notice.
Even if a country DOES have laws on the books stating all employees in all full time jobs must provide x weeks of notice before quitting, if the same country has a bunch more clauses to protect employees from employers than the U.S. currently does I have to imagine there are protections in place for the employees in cases of hostile work environments or whatever.
I can’t see a situation where a country that protects employees from the sort of hostile, predatory, dehumanizing behavior we see carried out consistently by U.S. companies wouldn’t have continued to take said employees into account while also protecting their country’s employers from things like large scale business-wide walkouts or whatnot.
I obviously don’t know for sure, but I do see stories from people from those nations talking about how they have to say for whatever amount of time for a notice period. This is the thing where I have questions about abuse. I’m not saying at will is great, but I also don’t think it’s 100% awful and I think people should consider what it would be like to not be able to leave a job when you want to.
The “cool down” period in many cases is just a few days when it’s the employee resigning. If your job sucks so much that you can’t stomach being at it for another week, you’ve got other problems.
That’s kind of my point? That some workplaces are toxic or you otherwise need to abandon your job because of external reasons. Maybe it’s just because I’m older (mid-30s), but I don’t know a single person who hasn’t run into a fuck this job moment for whatever reason. Either because it was deteriorating their mental health, or they prioritized their personal life. My life fell into a coma and I literally got on a plane thr moment I knew. I told my boss I wouldn’t be in and he could fire me or not, I don’t care. My brother had no one in that moment. I was lucky my bosses allowed me to keep my job while I acted as his advocate to get him care until the rest of my family could get there, but what if I wasn’t allowed because of some BS notice contract? Which at will I can just quit fuck it. With no at-will there would definitely be some punishment. This scenario may not overcome the good of getting ride of at will, but I think people should consider it. Consider what it would be like to trapped in a place you hate with a hostile work environment.
Lol we’ve got protections for all those cases which mean that you don’t have to lose your job because of temporary issues. Also if the circumstances at your workplace are serious enough you can resign with just cause without any notice period.
What’s more, if you have left over PTO, when terminating your contract there are two options: either the your employer pays you for the PTO you haven’t used, or you use it. In my case for example I have enough PTO saved to cover the notice period.
I don’t know about the rest of the EU, but in my country the employee can ALWAYS walk out, they just lose the pay for the non-worked days.
That’s why I brought up a restructuring. The ability to quit whenever should always be an option but being fired without notice for anything that isn’t just gross incompetence/negligence should not. I should be able to quit because my manager pissed me off. I shouldn’t get fired because I pissed the manager off.
It’s not that I disagree, it’s just that I can never see a scenario where both sides don’t have the same power. If you can quit at any time, then rhe employer can fire at any time. If you the employer has you give notice, so do you. I’ve never hear any stories online in different countries of the notice period not being both ways. And despite what one dude said to me sometimes weeks long, not a week. That would be actual hell.
The difference is the employer has inherent power by being a money providing service as well as providing whatever other service/product they provide.
When you employ that many people the power naturally rises to the top. That’s why we need legislature to prevent that massive gap in power. Of course no one at the top will support this but the needs of the many outweigh the few regardless of how much money they have.
Remember corporate bailouts? “wE bAiLeD tHeM oUt BeCaUsE tHeY pRoViDe JoBs!!!”
Then there were mass layoffs.
In practice, employment contracts are always good for employees and usually bad for employers. You don’t want to be locked into a job? Then don’t sign a contract that locks you in. Just refuse, as just about any sane person would.
Employers WOULD refuse to be locked in, except sane governments force them to. Sane governments do not force regular citizens into indentured servitude.
My company initiated a hiring freeze last November, just after my group lost 3 team members. Then in February they did layoffs, my group was not effected. The hiring freeze is now lifted, but what we were never told is that when they did the layoffs, they also “erased” any positions that were open prior to the layoffs, including the positions that were open in my group before the hiring freeze the previous November. So those jobs are just gone, and the slack that my group has picked up? That’s just the new normal now. It’s bullshit.
And you’re currently interviewing yes?
So you’re doing more work for the same pay? If it’s not in the job description/contract, then they can fuck off.
Every (US) job description I’ve had save one had a line to the effect of “… and other duties as required by management.” Not to follow would be considered insubordination and could lead to termination with cause. Job description in this case is just a broad-stroke outline of what the job is supposed to entail.
The “save one” was a job with a strong union presence. In that case, going outside my job description could lead to me and my manager being in trouble.
And this is why unions are so important. A union for a former job of mine also made a big deal about not only duties beyond the job description but workload beyond normal.
I once worked a call centre during late shift and my manager asked us to clean the bathrooms. I told him they can hire a janitor because I won’t be cleaning anything since I wasn’t hired to clean. Didn’t have to clean the bathrooms. Sometimes standing up for yourself works
Depends on the job, and how good your read is of the situation. My experience has been that managers guilt trip or do other emotional games when they’re out of other options. In that case, it may be a safe bet to stand up to them.
Other places you’re more replaceable, or the manager doesn’t care and has an axe to grind. Then it’s trickier.
“You didn’t quiet quit!…we, uh, quiet cut you! It was totally our idea first.”
Shit like this is why people are quitting.
Tell them it’s against your religion to take on extra work without extra compensation.
Surely a publication like The Wall Street Journal wouldn’t have an agenda to support… go back to the office and be grateful for your ever-shrinking share, plebians
Quiet Cutting is also done in ways the article is not mentioning. We used to call them hiring freezes. In the mortgage industry where there are positions with higher attrition, they simply allow the employees to quit and they never rehire that position.
Isn’t this just standard operating procedure? And, the funniest part is if they can operate without those people what fool hired them in the first place? Typical corporate speak trying to spin it in their favor.
You think they operate without those people without others picking up some slack?
That’s my point. The company was poorly run if they hired 4 people each with enough “slack” that 2 could leave and the job still gets done.
Typically “picking up the slack” results in an overall decrease in the quality of work, those that are “picking up the slack” are now doing the bare minimum to keep the team functional and probably working extra hours for the same pay. Most likely overall output decreases as well.
To your point: those two people are possibly doing 10-12 hour days and 6-day weeks now, just to get it done (and keep their jobs). There was no “slack” to begin with. “Slack” may be a misnomer here.
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I practice quiet shitting while at work. I don’t let anyone know I’m leaving the office, and I head down the elevator to the downstairs bathroom. It’s a nice break from work. I recommend it to anyone.
I take the opposite approach. When I shit at work, I make sure they can hear it.
You got one of those five gallon bucket shitters at your desk? The reverb is amazing.
Are you my coworker that grunts and strains when others are in the bathroom?
Companies are firing people? Weird. Sociopaths gonna sociopath.
Reassigning people into jobs that they hate in hopes that they quit, to avoid paying severance packages.
We have a guy at the company I work for that just went through this. They did away with his division, reassigned him to a new department where you’re on call 24/7 working holidays and weekends. He jumped ship to us, but because they didn’t fire him, he got no payout because he wasn’t let go.
They did away with his division, reassigned him to a new department where you’re on call 24/7 working holidays and weekends
He might have a case for constructive dismissal; he might want to talk with an employment lawyer. Constructive dismissal can include “Making unreasonable changes to an employees’ working hours or place of work”.
Maybe, I’ll bring that up to him. But they’ve done this to every department. Project managers are now trying to handle way more than they should and techs are either green as grass or completely overwhelmed with work.
They actually pay us now for the services that they did away with within their own company (whatever sense that makes), so he basically has the same job, just with us. We work with this company closely so we knew him pretty well already and honestly we were happy to bring him on. No training required lol I think he just wanted to get out before his life got turned upside down.
Watch out - was there a non-compete clause? They could go after you for hiring him.
I don’t think there is. But even if there was, it would be my bosses problem not mine lol
tale as old as time. we’ll make your life a living hell until you quit just so we don’t have to pay to fire you.
I would take so much advantage of that.
Come in late, don’t do much, let people steal stuff, take a nap at work, and do all kinds of stuff until they rather fire me than keep me around doing to “worst kind of jobs”.
And if they sue, sue them right back since that stuff is illegal.
This is quite literally the definition for “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
When I did sales management in the late 80s to mid 90s, we called them “penalty boxes.” To get a manager to quit, you reassign then to a store or location that is either guaranteed to be soul sucking, high crime, or otherwise not profitable enough to make commission or bonuses. They do that in education as well, like send teachers to difficult schools to get them to quit and skirt union rules.
Reassigning people into jobs that they hate in hopes that they quit, to avoid paying severance packages.
IBM technique.
Nice.
I didn’t get any severance because I was “laid off” after I became disabled. Probably should have fought that, but…I had just become disabled.
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Fuck Newscorp lol
Quite quitting sounds like business as usual.
it is. quiet quitting is a bullshit word that corporate created to make people feel guilty for just doing their jobs, because you are supposed to live for work or something. it is all bullshit
next sick, sad world: quiet wars
