[the_lonely_road]

There are a number of solutions but it seems the best one would be labor protection. One of the downsides of “at will” employment is you can be easily fired for things as innocent as being a temporary embarrassment to your employer. How many public teachers or police officers are being canceled? I use them as examples because I believe they are examples of strong union protections in America, but with 50 states that generalization will of course not apply to all teachers or police officers in the country.

[rndgermandude]

Labor protection may help with keeping your current job. But they probably will not help with you advancing your career, and they will not help with your co-workers looking funny at you because somebody on the internet alleged you are a so-and-so-ist. Or customers and/or other partners refusing to work with you. And so on.

Back in school (in Germany[0]) we had a case of a teacher, who among other things taught PE, and who was falsely accused of "inappropriately touching some girls". The girls in question told everybody (except the teachers of course) that they will be fabricating such a story as "revenge" for the PE teacher actually trying to make them take part in PE instead of just sitting around. As soon as the police got involved, they backed down and recanted, apologizing and basically claiming they considered it not "a big deal" and just a "prank", but by that time the damage was done.

The teacher in question had been suspended during the investigation and of course that was the talk of the school and everybody including their parents knew about it. After being cleared, parents would constantly ask to take their kids out of his PE class "just to be sure", so he ended up not teaching PE at all anymore shortly after. Afterwards we usually saw him eat alone, as the other teachers seemed to avoid him, and roam around alone in the halls during breaks instead of going to the teachers lounge like everybody else. He retired as early as he could.

Not directly related to "cancel culture", but to the mindset that goes with it, my mom told me later in life that back in elementary school, one couple took out their kid of my sisters' class before school even started, because their kid had been assigned a teacher who... was male. That was enough. There was no allegation, no rumors of inappropriate behavior, no nothing. The parents in question had never met him before either. He just was male.

[0] Germany has (had) very strong labor protections for teachers. All teachers, including the one I am writing about, used to be "officers of the state" (Beamte), and therefore in order to be fired they'd either have to commit treason, an act against the democratic order, or a crime resulting in a felony conviction of no less than 1 year in prison. These days, a lot of teachers do not automatically become "officers of the state" but are merely employed.

[luckylion]

That mostly empowers the unions, as they'll then be the judge of who gets to stay and who gets fired. I'm not sure that's a big improvement.

[atq2119]

That's not how it works in countries with stronger protections. Unions don't have the power to fire anyone, nor do they have veto power. There are rules (e.g. no firing without a cause from a whitelist of acceptable causes that typically come with additional requirements), and courts to decide cases where there are disagreements over the rules.

[luckylion]

Sure, but for this part of the equation, the employer wants someone to go. The union (or the labor representative in the company, it's not necessarily a union) decides whether that's okay, or whether they want to fight it. You still want to work with your labor representation as an employer and if you're not hellbent on getting rid of someone, you'll accept what they decide.

That gives them power, for example over non-union employees of the company.