I'm so glad I'm in a country where you can't be laid off at a moment's notice like that, and I very much hope this is not going to change, despite our disruptive leader™'s wishes.
On the flip side, imagine being a business owner, and having absolutely no options left but to make this decision and salvage what you can left of your business. Should the business risk bankruptcy and cause 100% of the workforce to be jobless, or is it better if just 25% lose it? The company could rebound, and hire an additional 50% on top of the original 100%. It's the circle of business life.
If your business cannot figure out its finances well enough to provide a month notice to employees being laid off, you've got some serious incompetency issues.
The US is possibly the only developed nation in the world that believes in "at will" employment, and yet all of those other developed countries (including pretty much the entire G8+) have thriving business market, lots of businesses able to start up, take a shot, go bust, and/or thrive.
When I ran a business I liked to have 2 payrolls worth of cash set aside. So, if a customer was late paying by 3 weeks we'd still be OK. This turned out to be a pretty cautious approach and we were never in danger of missing a payroll (or the following one).
Keep in mind payrolls are for work that's already been performed.
Having enough cash set aside for the work that's been performed plus a month of future work is having 3 payrolls worth of cash set aside at all times.
I could see it working if all companies had to do it, but in a scenario of two identical companies where one can spend more freely they're probably more likely to grow.
A lot of businesses don't have the luxury of positive cashflows that software businesses do.
There are a lot of factors that would contribute to running a business without a month's cash on hand. But I wouldn't say that the business owner is _seriously_ incompetent.
There's money coming for salaries from somewhere. It's not just mysteriously appearing just in time for payroll time.
It takes almost no financial discipline to set aside enough for a couple of months worth of salaries.
If things are getting that tight where that money becomes in jeopardy, the odds of a miraculous turn-around are negligible, and you should have been rethinking everything a lot sooner.
Often times, what one thinks another should do may not be immediately obvious or even remotely close to on another's radar. The beautiful (and sometimes ugly) reality in America is anyone can start a business, and pay some employees. Within that range, you have infinite samples on the "this is how a well oiled machine should run" to "I am doing this for the first time, trying to do the best I can and I hired a few people I know"
Should you be required to know all of these things beforehand before starting a business? Who am I to judge. Ultimately these types of comments display the pure position and perspective of privilege that is so typical on this forum. I am not saying that is a bad thing, we typically talk about the elite companies, and what types of business practices should be followed, just know that this isn't anywhere near close to the majority of American businesses.
I am not one to participate in the current "woke" culture, but
> It takes almost no financial discipline to set aside enough for a couple of months worth of salaries.
This statement drips of pure privilege to me. A couple of months worth of salaries? Are you kidding? Sometimes you have to worry about paying rent on time! We all aren't bootstrapped, VC-backed unicorns. Most of the businesses out there earn every single dollar and have to make tough decisions such as whether or not to pay your employees on time or call the Hobart technician to repair the dishwasher so you can stay open. Oh by the way, the Hobart guy said you need to replace it and it will cost you 10,000 dollars. I think most small business owners are fortunate to have even a couple of weeks set aside.
The problem is what justification and whose justification? Under what standard? Additionally, what employee is ever going to feel like their firing is justified?
"Oh shit, well yeah, I guess I would have fired me too."
A mature response for sure, but a highly unlikely one.
As a person running a business it is your job to ensure that such a thing doesn’t happen. If you have to do sudden immediate layoffs or face bankruptcy that means somebody (probably you) massively messed up.
Your intention seems honorable, and I am glad you are passionate about keeping your employees jobs. But if I was an investor in your company, I would be concerned that your first focus is not to keep the business afloat. What good are giving employees jobs if you have no business?
Also I think it's a tad naive to think one can possibly know the enumerable circumstances that would force your hand. Suppose you are a company dependent on logistics. Bam, Iraq war. The price of a barrel of oil skyrockets. Your shipping costs have quadrupled. You can keep to your principles and vow to not lay off a single employee, because as you said, this would "demonstrate failure", or you can keep your business and regrettably let go of a few workers in order to keep up with costs. You can try rising your prices, but pretty much a forgone conclusion that a 4x price increase will net you a significant decrease in customers, unless you are a rare unicorn, some good or service one cannot simply be without.
(the above scenario is basically what happened to my father's small business in 2005. Could not keep up with the rise in transportation costs, and cheaper, less quality competitors moved in. Consumers went with the cheaper option. It happens.)
As a citizen, it is your responsibility to make sure you have enough money to support yourself, without relying on society if things go wrong.
Unfortunately, things go wrong. Sometimes you lose your job without warning and your house burns down at the same time. Sometimes, things go wrong no matter how hard you try.
The same is true of companies. Sometimes, you just can't plan your way around things going wrong.
The way this works in Germany is that if the company is in trouble and goes into insolvency the employment agency pays insolvency money to cover parts of the salary for some time (financed by a fund into which all (with exceptions) employers pay) Thus in the extremely critical situation employees aren't the one immediately suffering from management failure.
I believe in most EU countries that implement such protection companies can still fire people, they just need to continue paying them for some minimum amount of time.
E.g. in Germany a company has to give at least 4 weeks notice & that time (slowly) increases the longer the employee has been at the company[0]. In practice it often means they are asked not to show up and still get paid for the remainder of their notice period.
Assuming you probably have some unused vacation days if you were fired without warning it's likely you're basically guaranteed an equivalent to a couple months' severance. Generous - but far from "un-fireable".
I know here in the United States we have the WARN Act to require notification about layoffs, but I have no knowledge of how that ends up working out in the real world and whether it would apply in these circumstances. Anybody at Hacker News know?
There are a bunch of gotchas on the WARN act, and companies in America are really good at fudging around to avoid having to make notifications.
> The WARN Act is not activated when a covered employer:
> * closes a temporary facility or completes a temporary project, and the employees working in the facility or temporary project were hired with the clear understanding that their employment would end with the closing of the work facility or the completion of the project; or
> * closes a facility or operating unit because of a strike or a worker lock-out, and the closing is not intended to evade the purposes of the WARN Act.
> * If a plant closing or a mass layoff results in fewer than 50 workers losing their jobs at a single employment site;
> * If 50 to 499 workers lose their jobs and that number is less than 33 percent of the employer's total, active workforce at a single employment site;
> * If a layoff is for 6 months or less; or
> * If work hours are not reduced 50 percent in each month of any 6-month period
please don't quote things this way. even if I maximize the browser window on my desktop, I still have to horizontally scroll each line to read. it's even worse on mobile.
just use a single '>' or italics like everyone else does.
Which country? If your company goes bust the hard way you can.
There are cases of Supposedly worker friendly European companies deliberately making UK subsidiaries bankrupt to avoid statutory redundancy payments and consultation.
Of course the Uk taxpayers picked up the tab for that one its not just FANG's that avoid tax :-)
I've seen this with companies and non-profits in countries like France as well. Instead of attempting to navigate the complex dismissal laws and regulations, they simply close the shop completely and reopen it elsewhere under a different name.
I'm not aware of any country that disallows cutting off your access and ejecting you from the building immediately, and I didn't see anything in the article saying the author's pay ended at a moment's notice?
I don't think you can be kicked out like that (bar committing an egregious breach of company rules / the law) in the UK with zero notice (although I'm not a lawyer, obvs.) (unless the company goes into immediate liquidation? But can that even happen?) You need a consultation period for redundancies and I'm reasonably sure you have to have HR escalation for most other things, IIRC.
Your notice period is about pay, not about having a desk or any work to do.
Because the access to information goes both ways - however useful it may be for you to spend a few weeks telling employees remaining what you know, the company doesn't necessarily want you learning new things.
Yes, I know you can be required to stay out of the building whilst you're on your notice period but the post was about "cutting off your access and ejecting you from the building immediately" and I'm still pretty sure that can't happen in the UK without gross misconduct.