This makes termination more expensive. That adds a risk to every new hire. Which slightly depresses the totally amount of hiring. Or so the argument would go.
Which is why many countries which have this allow for few months of probation (three months in Czechia) at the start of employment, where either employee or employer can call it off at any time. There are processes by which an employer can fire an employee after this period (failed performance improvement period, and often severance) or where an employee can leave (resignation effective after a contractually required notice period, or earlier on mutual agreement).
It would take a particular sort of person and probably a special contract for a situation where someone is able to resist being fired for an extended period of time. Most people aren't quite motivated or shameless enough to keep that up for long - it's probably the same sort of effort as actually doing the job.
And yet, it works just fine in reality. That hypothetical argument is pure speculation, used to justify a law that's used to mask firing for illegal reasons and threatening employees.
Termination for most companies is expensive. It's why so many US companies still have and use PIPs. They're up against a threat of losing a lot of money, and if they can remediate the employee (it happens a fair bit, I've found), they've saved that money.
To paraphrase a rather decent well and septic guy on TikTok, "I've just put tens of thousands of dollars into this guy's education. Why would I get rid of him?"
There are multiple equilibria. At-will favors agility.
On the other end of the spectrum we find economies where most of the workforce is informally or short-term employed and where new-firm formation is limited by employers' aversion to hiring and senior employees' reluctance to leave cushy jobs from which it is nigh-impossible to be fired.
> paraphrase a rather decent well and septic guy on TikTok
Public sector employees tend towards mediocre because the compensation is awful. The only way to attract anybody at all who doesn't entirely suck is to offer some other less tangible perk, like job security.
However, there is a dynamic where good performance by employee A is frowned upon by the majority of other employees because that will expose their mediocrity. It’s a complaint I’ve heard from a couple of people who’ve worked in the public sector.
Which is why many countries which have this allow for few months of probation (three months in Czechia) at the start of employment, where either employee or employer can call it off at any time. There are processes by which an employer can fire an employee after this period (failed performance improvement period, and often severance) or where an employee can leave (resignation effective after a contractually required notice period, or earlier on mutual agreement).
It would take a particular sort of person and probably a special contract for a situation where someone is able to resist being fired for an extended period of time. Most people aren't quite motivated or shameless enough to keep that up for long - it's probably the same sort of effort as actually doing the job.