Basically if you work at a grocery store in Europe, can you be fired for any reason?
I’ve seen Europeans claim at “At will” employment doesn’t exist in Europe for “all jobs” (but the context of the conversation was about working a minimum wage style job) but then again I’ve also read stories of people in Britain being fired for “No damn reason” so I don’t know what to believe.
I would expect that stealing from one’s employer will get you fired in Europe, contract or no contract.
Is it impossible to get fired from an entry level job in Europe because they have “contracts and proper rights”?
Let’s look at it systematically. I suppose that IF the above proposition is true, the employer has the recourse of promoting the employee he* wants to fire OUT of the entry level position at the first opportunity, and then sacking them.
Anyway, I’ve been given to understand that England isn’t a part of Europe** any more, so I don’t really get why you seem to feel that what you’ve heard about England relates to the question in the thread title.
*Or she. The employer could be a “she.”
**Not really sure how that bit works. Maybe the USA could decide that they identify as part of Antarctica. If you don’t have to be part of the continent that you’re on the continental plate of, I guess there really AREN’T any hard-and-fast rules.
I’m always seeing Britons identify themselves as “European” all the time even in the SMDB so I’m assuming it’s acceptable.
Well, „England“ (or rather, the UK) decided they didn’t want to be a part of the European Union anymore, which apparently they were free to do, since they’re not anymore, but how of course they’re just as much (or as little) part of „Europe“ as they were 5 years ago.
FWIW, even when they were part of the EU, UKers routinely referred to „Europe“ when they meant „those people on the other side of the Channel“.
I really WANT to read your response, but I feel that I’ll be too distracted to take it in until you explain how you get your open quotation marks to do that.
Theres a big difference between “at will” employment (as I understand it) and it being impossible to fire someone.
Here in New Zealand there are various protections for employees but you can still be fired for good cause, you just can’t be fired willy nilly.
I use a German keyboard setup. The „“-style is the German way, and apparently my browser does it automatically even when typing in English. I actually use the same character, (usually SHIFT+2) and it’s converted for me.
Yeah, Brexit only happened comparatively recently anyway - there really hasn’t been sufficient time for the UK to re-establish workhouses, reopen coalmines in order to send children down them, and such.
In Britain (which appears to be part of the question), people do have some rights (typically these rights are not in full force until 2 years of service) against being unfairly dismissed - some details over a few pages starting here: Dismissal: your rights: Overview - GOV.UK
That would certainly be constructive dismissal
I’ve also read stories of people in Britain being fired for “No damn reason” so I don’t know what to believe.
Lots of people who are fired for “no damn reason” in their own words, are actually fired for very good reason.
Typical in Europe (in every job I’ve ever had) is a “test period”, usually for a couple of weeks, where a brand-new employee can be fired pretty easily, if the employer is not satisfied with her performance.
After that, there is no fired at will: as a bare minimum, there has to be substantial cause, the employee has to receive notice weeks in advance that her contract is going to be terminated, and gets paid until the day comes.
So, as I understand it, very different from the U.S.
In Norway you cannot fire anyone without cause, and all employer/employee relationships must involve a contract.
In general you cannot have a trial period of more than six months, and both employer and employee have to give two weeks notice. The employer still has to have cause, such as the employees ability to do the job / learn on the job.
After that the minimum notice time is one month if your contract doesn’t mention anything else, and shorter times cannot be negotiated with an individual employee, only a union.
If you are a long time employee, especially if you’re an older long time employee, notice have to be given even earlier. If you have worked for the same business for more than ten years and you are over sixty they have to give you six months notice, while you only have to give three months.
If you lose your job due to downsizing you are first in line if the business starts re-hiring within the year. Most corporations will use severance packages to get employees to resign instead, for increased flexibility.
This is the minimum legal requirements. The actual agreements between corporations and relevant unions are quite often better.
This. In not quite 30 years of doing employment law I have almost never heard any employee agree they deserved dismissal, and usually quite the opposite. Needless to say, a significant proportion deserved dismissal.
One thing that happens a lot in the UK, mostly in local government, but probably also in larger corporations is restructuring - it seems to work something like this…
The existing structure of management, teams and roles is declared in need of change; new management and team structures, and roles/job descriptions are defined. Some of these roles are judged significantly equivalent to the old roles, and:
If there are fewer or equal people already in the equivalent roles, they are moved across without interruption to their term of employment.
If there are more people already in the equivalent roles or if there are no equivalent roles, these people all have to apply for the new roles. Those successful are moved across as above; the unsuccessful ones are permitted to apply for other roles in the new structure, and if unsuccessful in those applications, are made redundant.
In a large local government organisation (like the one where I worked for a while), this process was almost constantly happening somewhere or other - I was there 6 years and the IT department where I worked went through it twice (and another restructure came along a couple of months after I left).
Briton is really part of Europe. They’re no longer part of the European Union, which does not encompass all of Europe.
Just for grins: all of Iceland is also considered part of Europe even though half of it is on a different continental plate (it straddles the mid-Atlantic Ridge). Hawaii is part of the US despite being in the middle of the Pacific. A lot of the political/treaty distinctions were made before the geological plates underlying land and sea were completely delineated, and in other cases it’s a strategic alliance, relic of empire, and so forth.
Do you have temporary employment? If so, is that handled as a short-term contract?
For example, during the winter holidays my store hires a number of people for just around 3 months. Would that limited a time be possible in Norway?
I will note that the short-term nature of this employment is known up front by both parties. After the end of it, if a person is a particularly good worker, they might be offered long-term employment, but it’s not unusual for the employer to be turned down because some people only want short term employment.
I’m a Brit but I’ve worked in continental Europe too, and the laws didn’t seem that different.
It’s rather more nuanced than being “impossible to get fired”.
If you’re a permanent, full-time employee there are basically only 3 (and a half) ways to lose your job:
There are many other forms of employment beyond being a permanent, full-time employee though:
Employment law is a national competence in the EU; there are some EU directives harmonising some aspects of it, but by and large it’s national. Nonetheless, there are some common features that you will typically see in European employment law regimes.
One of these features is that typically, good cause is needed to fire an employee. The cause may be misconduct on the employee’s part, or it may lie in organisational needs of the company; for instance, if a company downscales its business layoffs can be permissible, but in some jurisdictions (such as Germany) there are criteria based on the employee’s social vulnerability that must be taken into account when selecting the employees that are laid off.
Then there are people who enjoy an even stronger protection from layoffs and who cannot be fired save for very severe misconduct; such protection often applies to representatives on the elected staff committee.
Another rule that you will often find in European employment laws is a limitation on fixed-term contracts, in order to prevent circumventions of the rules of termination. In many cases a justifying cause is needed to limit a contract to a fixed duration, such as a seasonal nature of the firm’s business. Concluding an employment contract that has a fixed duration without such a justifying cause being present would result in a permanent contract.
Very often, there are limitations as to the conditions under which this scheme applies. In some jurisdictions, it does not apply to very small businesses below a minimum number of employees. Very often, there is also a trial period of six months during which the rules on termination do not apply, or to a lesser extent.
I don’t think “having contracts” is key to distinguishing American from European labour law; I’m pretty sure an employment relationship between employer and employee is of a contractial nature in the U.S. too, in legal terms. The key difference lies in the fact that European law severely restricts freedom of contract here in the sense that many contractual provisions that aim to deviate from or suspend statutory labour law are unenforceable in Europe.
I live in the Netherlands.
As Mijin mentions there are a number of types of employment:
Entry level jobs fall mostly into the “flex” category.