Is it impossible to get fired from an entry level job in Europe because they have "contracts and proper rights"?

Factual Questions
41

Looking at Canada, which is mid-way between the USA and the civilized world:

Unless you are in job in a union (which have contracts with employers) or have a specific contract, there is an “implied contract”. Labour law and legal precedent set the terms for this, and there are nuances, but generally -

you can be fired for “for cause” for egregious behaviour - theft, assault, insubordination, etc. For problems like habitual lateness or bad performance, need an escalating set of warnings from HR and opportunities to correct first. Things like sexual harassment may be immediate or corrective, depending on the seriousness.

When a person is hired, contract or company policy may lay out a probation period, usually 6 weeks to 6 months, during which the employer may decide to terminate the arrangement because, for example the person is not a good fit for the job or incompetent or unreliable or whatever.

Yes, an employer can say “we don’t want you here any more” or “I’m letting you go so I can hire my son-in-law” BUT!! After a certain amount of time they have to pay for the privilege. The same applies if they are closing the doors and laying everyone off. (It goes without saying, if the action appears to be discrimination against a protcted category - race, creed, colour, orientation, etc. - the employer will pay a LOT more for the action.)

Provincial law usually sets a minimum - for Ontario
|Period of employment | Notice required|
|Less than 1 year | 1 week|
|1 year but less than 3 years | 2 weeks|
|3 years but less than 4 years | 3 weeks|
|4 years but less than 5 years | 4 weeks|
|5 years but less than 6 years | 5 weeks|
|6 years but less than 7 years | 6 weeks|
|7 years but less than 8 years | 7 weeks|
|8 years or more | 8 weeks|

Note it says notice - the employer can give you a warning and require you to work that time, or pay you to not show up. What they cannot do is say “here’s your paycheque, don’t bother showing up from now on.” But then they have to hope the employee keeps performing for the weeks leading up to the end.

This is the minimum - for more complex jobs, situations like age, specialization, availability of alternative jobs in that field, etc. the amount can be higher. This may require a lawsuit for wrongful dismissal, if the employer does not offer what the employee thinks is appropriate. amounts up to 2 years and a maximal rule of thumb of a month for each year for managerial and higher professional jobs might be to result.

(There’s also “Wallace damages” if the employer does not treat the employee fairly. Wallace sued when he was marched out by security in front of all employees for no good reason. Also, trying to claim “fired for cause” when the cause is invalid can be a very expensive thing for employers to do.)

There is also an issue called “constructive dismissal”. If a person is significantly demoted (or their tasks and responsibilities cut back) or their pay cut for no good reason, they can choose not to accept it and sue for “constructive dismissal” - equivalent of being let go. it’s a gamble, depending on how the court sees the situation.

If the employer lays off a large number of people at once, there are laws about notice etc. Friend of mine worked for a large employer who closed a plant - because over 100 were affected, part of the law said he was entitled to the X% of his best possible pension. I.e. he could have retired at 55 with full pension, but at 45 he could look forward to collecting 2/3 of full pension at 55 instead of the default in the plan’s rules, which would have been much less, and starting age 65, for people who did not reach 55 and 30 years.

the biggest complaint recently is that in cases of bankruptcy, employees’ outstanding wages and separation pay are at the end of the lineup for payouts.

There are also a lot more rules that tend to favour the employee. But bottom line, it can cost a lot more to lay off all the employees in Canada.

42

My wife once worked for a large global company, employees in dozens of countries, company history going back to the 19th century. Due to a series of spectacularly bad decisions, the company was spiraling toward insolvency, and did in fact go bankrupt, and effectively laid off over 90% of the employees (the rest became employees of operating units that were sold off as going concerns)

In ALL the “developed” countries (say Australia, Western Europe, Canada, Japan & S. Korea) except the US, every employee received their severance payments in preference to bondholders and unsecured creditors a few weeks or months after the bankruptcy. In the US the bondholders ended up getting 100% and the employees got ~20% of their severance amounts more than five YEARS later, by which point most of them had sold off their claims to speculative investors.

43

I always figured it was a lot like working for some level of government in the US.

By that I mean that there are a lot of built-in worker protections- they can’t just fire you without cause, and if there is cause, it has to be egregious, or they have to have followed some specific rules/pathway (usually some sort of performance plan, etc…). And typically restructuring tends to mean that people get transferred around within the organization- maybe you go over to another department that has an opening for a similar job, for example.

So in practice, it means that you have to be either a complete numbskull and doing something expressly prohibited like drinking on the job or being violent, or you have to have exhibited a pattern of sub-par performance to the point where the powers-that-be are willing to go through the red tape to get you out of there, versus just keep you out of the way doing some scut work.

Contrast this with the private sector, where you can be fired for merely not looking the part, or having an attitude that doesn’t coincide with the rest of the group, or merely being considered a follower of the previous manager. Or for that matter, any number of reasons that aren’t particularly performance-based. The point is that if they want to get rid of you for whatever reason whatsoever, they can and there’s nothing the worker can realistically do.

Most companies have the performance plans and various HR policies that on paper, sound similar to the ones in government, but the main difference is that in the private sector, the decision to get rid of someone is made first, and then they pick a legal fig leaf second, if there’s even one of those. Or they set people up to fail- they add responsibilities to them knowing that they’re not humanly possible, and then fire them because they didn’t achieve them.

I imagine the European concept is much more like the government way of doing things- there’s a procedure and a method for getting rid of someone that is more restrictive than just being able to shit-can someone for any reason (or no reason) whatsoever like in the US private sector.

44

Probably there would not be any legal penalty, but the lack of a good reference, or any reference at all, could be a major problem.

In the U.S., references are only contacted later in the hiring process, and sometimes not at all. In Switzerland the references may be even be part of the application packet. A missing reference would be a big red flag for the hiring manager.

45

I’d like to point out a problem with excessive worker protections: it results in lots of unemployment for people without references and work experience. For example, new immigrants and working poor people.

If it is really hard to fire someone, You will be much more selective about who you hire, as the risks of a bad choice are higher. So if two people apply for the job, who are you going to hire? The ex-refugee with an unknown background and work history, or the nice kid who looks like you and whose parents are upstanding members of your community?

If firing is at-will, employers can take a chance on anyone, knowing they can easily fire them if they don’t work out. So the disadvantaged have a better chance of getting a job in the first place. Strong worker protections advantage the connected and the cultural majority.

46

There are definite economic downsides of strong worker protections. It is one of the oft-cited reasons why the US typically has unemployment at about half the rate of a European country.

However the idea that it leads to racist or classist hiring policies isn’t typically mentioned as one of those downsides. Sure, biases exist but worker protection is unlikely to make a big difference here. Remember; you can still fire someone easily in their probation period, or if they screw up after that.

The main downside usually is just that it leads to less fluidity in the labor market.
In Europe, you might not be quite so quick to create a new team and launch a round of recruitment as you would in the US. Because if, 6 months later, you find you don’t need those people any more, it’s gonna cost a lot to make them all redundant.

47

I think if anything it makes the hiring process more important to get right because it costs money to hire the wrong person. I agree though that it makes it difficult for inexperienced people to break into a role they want. But there are rules about how you employ people. You cannot discriminate against people because of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or a number of other things. Yes it might be difficult to prove in a one off incident but the penalties are serious enough for any self-respecting company to ensure it has the right processes to prevent such things happening. And because everyone knows this rule, it is difficult for one bigot to push an agenda - though of course there are plenty of subconscious biases. It does therefore become pretty obvious when a company has a lack of diversity.

I’m not sure if it’s the case in the US but in the UK whenever I apply for a role I have to fill out a form that asks me about my ethnic background, if I have any disabilities, my sexual orientation etc. The people hiring (in theory) do not see this form - it’s done to track who is applying and who is being hired. I assume this is a legal requirement but I’m not sure. Some companies automatically give disabled candidates an interview if they meet a minimum selection criteria.

48

As I point out in previous post, Canada - probably midway between the USA and Europe in terms of employment policy - the main issue is separation pay. You can let an employee go if you don’t like how they fit in, don’t like their attitude, etc. However, it will cost you. The longer they worked there, the more it costs.

I suspect the OP’s question comes from much earlier - allegedly, up to the 1970’s I remember reading that some European countries (Italy comes to mind) it was virtually impossible to fire employees and some took advantage of that. I recall a finance publication article that outright said about hiring differences in Europe - “some countries don’t even consider incompetence as grounds to fire someone”. (Serves you right for hiring them in the first place). However, this attitude has changed quite a bit in the last few decades and as I understand, are less rigid…

The main point in these protections is that a job is a very important part of someone’s life, and a measure of economic stability is good for society. The extra rights simply recognize that the employer enjoys an imbalance of power and tries to level the playing field a bit. More economic stability is good for the country and he economy. People are less likely to commit to long term debt - mortgages, automobiles, etc. - if they are insecure about income.

Interestingly, another concern particularly in the USA is about references. Many places limit references to whether the employee worked there and whether they are eligible for rehire. Any negative detail could result in a lawsuit if it is cited as a reason they did not get a job.

49

I have to say that when I was at the BBC it felt like it was impossible to be fired.

Not that I did anything dodgy, and most people there were very very good, but I think the only thing you could get fired for was for gross incompetence or for owning a TV without a licence. There was the odd truly incompetent person and some senior staff were epically lazy and comfortable in their jobs. The only way to get people out was a restructure (which meant redundancy and a full month’s pay for every year of service tax free) and new people would be hired on fixed term contracts so you had to be interviewed along with other candidates to get an extension or a permanent role, which of course allowed bosses to get rid of underperforming staff.

Now here’s a waste of everyone’s time: going for an interview for a BBC job when one of the people you’re competing with is already doing that job and is doing it really well. You’re basically part of a rubber stamping process for someone else and you will never know it.

50

This came up at one CBA continuing professional development session I attended. One of the presenters was from a Montreal law firm specialising in mergers and acquisitions. She mentioned that it was not uncommon for a US company to buy a Canadian company, with the goal of major re-structuring.

Only after the purchase was complete and they were moving to the re-structuring did they bother to consult Canadian employment lawyers, and often discovered that the differences in Canadian employment law on severance were so significant that they had to kibosh their restructuring plans - the cost of firing the Canadian employees without cause made it prohibitive.

51

Brexit hasn’t impacted employment law that much yet, and our laws were always our laws, same as other countries in the UK have their own laws re employment. There weren’t that many that applied cross-EU, or, rather, those that did apply were ones that most western European countries were using anyway.

Aaanyway… No, it’s not at all impossible to be fired from a job in the UK. The employer has to give a valid reason. That’s usually that either they don’t need you any more (redundancy) or you’re no good at your job.

They’re supposed to demonstrate that you really aren’t needed and really are crap. Straightforward link:

How much effort the employer put into the hiring and dismissal depends on the organisation. In real world terms, the more effort you have to put into applying for the job, the more effort they put in to firing you.

IOW the takeaway you can get a job at on the same day will also happily fire you on the same day, and unless they’re on video saying “we hate black, gay, disabled people, you’re fired!” then you wouldn’t have a chance taking them to court. They are technically expected to give you two verbal warnings and a written warning and some extra training, and some big fast food places will actually do that - especially the training because it actually does sometimes solve the problem - but it can all be over and done with in a week.

But a job where you go through three rounds of interviews will generally not even want to fire you immediately because they’ve put so much effort in - they’ll definitely go through all the legal steps and more. And that’s partly to be expected because they already had time to check whether you were right for the job.

For the in between jobs, the employer will follow those steps, and it’s expected that you will try to be good at your job and your employer will try to help you be good at it, within reason. I mean, they won’t pay for advanced training, but they might give you extra training within the organisation. It’s a win-win for the employer and employee, because not everyone’s going to get everything right first time, but once they do, they’re solid employees - and they are still doing some/most of their work well in the meantime.

52

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) requires employers with at least 100 employees to notify their workforce 60 days in advanced of planned closings or layoffs. That’s the only federal law I can think of off the top of my head regarding advance notification of losing a job but there may be some state laws I’m unware of.

53

No, that’s exactly the same here. Any low-level job will have an application form that includes a space for references, and for any more professional job, the first step in applying is typically submitting a resume, which is expected to have references. Either way, you’re not getting your foot in the door without a reference.

So it seems that in practice, the system is the same, with the penalty for not giving notice being a bad reference. The only difference is that in Europe, the appropriate period of notice is defined by law, rather than by each individual employer.

54

If they really can’t stay open, you’re out of a job. Covid was complicated due to government support to help businesses stay open, so in most cases it wouldn’t have been justified to say the business was just, basically, dead, and there was no job to be done, no wages to pay the employee with. A few big companies in the UK did fire most of their employees while also taking the government grants - and that wasn’t legal - they were either entitled to fire the employees, and not have to to pay them, or take the grant and pay the employees, not both.

But in general yes, if the business suddenly can’t function, you can be fired.

From: Dismissal: your rights: Reasons you can be dismissed - GOV.UK

There is statutory redundancy pay, but the amounts we’re talking are really, really tiny, and only apply if you’ve worked for a company for 2 years or more.

You’ll get:

  • half a week’s pay for each full year you were under 22
  • one week’s pay for each full year you were 22 or older, but under 41
  • one and half week’s pay for each full year you were 41 or older

So if you’re 40 and have worked there for ten years you get ten weeks’ pay. It’s not a huge amount for that length of service, and it’s capped.

Your contract with your own employer might give you more, but that applies to any country. Some people who work for big companies get great redundancy pay due to their employment contracts, and there seems to be a general impression that being made redundant means big bucks, but even the upper limits aren’t that high, unless you’re in the “I’m basically a secondary cast member on Succession” level.

55

No. You’re supposed to give a week’s notice, legally; in practice, it’s unusual and very newsworthy to get in trouble for just leaving a job straight away.

Most contracts ask for a month; some jobs ask for longer, but in practice those jobs don’t actually require the employee to work for them for that period of time - it’s called “gardening leave.”

The month-long thing is common enough that most jobs that advertise for jobs that have a one month leave requirement also expect the applicants to be in jobs that have the same requirement.

In practice you can often ask your employer to let you leave earlier, and they almost always will, but if they can’t, it’s not usually an issue, because your employer will be planning for the job to start a month after offering. They know how the system works, after all, and quite often they’ll have someone also working out their notice period.

56

A “zero hour contract” sounds like what we would call “casual employment” in New Zealand. You are not hired for any particular number of hours, you may be offered a shift and you may refuse. You still have an employment contract that spells all this out though. It sets out obligations / expectations from both parties and sets out conditions around dispute resolution, payment, rates etc.

An issue around casual contracts is that an employer may attempt to have a casual contract for someone who is really part time. If you are rostered a set number of hours, can’t refuse a shift, and so on then you are probably”part time”, not “casual”, and are entitled to sick leave, annual leave, parental leave, and various other entitlements that would normally be rolled into a higher hourly rate for a casual employee.

57

COVID was sudden and unexpected. My employer was required to show projected rosters that demonstrated we were over staffed. They were then required to go through a consultation process and offer alternative employment (if available) to affected parties. Finally three months notice had to be given in addition to a payout. If the notice period couldn’t be given, the notice period would be paid out in addition to the redundancy payout. Employees could also choose to take a payout in lieu of the notice period.

They did all of the above in addition to working with the unions to investigate alternative options such as unpaid leave.

I knew for about 5 months that I was going to be made redundant.

As others have said, if the company actually goes under, then you become one of the creditors.

58

And this pitfall/abuse of the zero hour/casual contract format is often a subject for suits in the USA, by personnel technically hired as “independent contractors” as opposed to “employees” and where it can get shown that they were not really independent at all and the intention was to avoid covering even the minimum employer requirements (such as witholding, and paying an employer’s share, of Social Security tax).

Generally in most of the western industrial world, it is perfectly possible to get fired from your job for just cause, or to lose it because the enterprise fails; and someone can even be fired as a discretionary managerial decision but in this latter case it simply costs management to do so. In those jurisdictions, that reality is baked into operational cost planning (under normal circumstances, of course – 2020-2021 has not been normal).

59

Very simply, if European countries are like Canada - the separation pay is legally mandated if you are “laid off” for lack of work. It’s very simply a debt. If the company cannot pay it, then they are essentially bankrupt. Depends on the jurisdiction - as I mentioned, in Canada outstanding wages, separation pay, and (very sadly) pension plan obligations are unsecured liabilities, so go to the back of the line after things like mortgages and liens on property. In what country (other than the USA) can an employer decide to stiff his workers and contractors and get away with it without going bankrupt?

There was an interesting case a few decades ago in Canada- after some interesting board infighting, a rabbi was let go from his post. He had a 1-year contract, and the board decided not to renew it (not offer him another 1-year). No doubt with some pro-bono from some of the congregation, he challenged it and asked for his separation pay. The board said no, it was 1 year so no termination was due. However, he’d been the rabbi there for 20 years with regularly renewed 1-year contracts. The court found in his favour, basically saying he was effectively continuously employed for 20 years, and the board could not hide behind the fiction of a mere 1-year contract. This is the other point - the courts tend to look much more favourably on the employee’s side of employment issues in places other than the USA.

Should also point out a very very bad no-no in letting someone go is to denigrate their work to try to pay them less. Saying “we have no work for you, so we’re letting you go… but we’ll only give you have the normal severance for someone in your position because your work was not up to par.” The employer still owes the full severance amount. Either you are firing the employee for cause - no severance, egregious behaviour - or you are letting them go without cause and full severance is due. There are no mitigating circumstances that allow an employer to give lesser severance pay for alleged lesser quality work. If you are unsatisfied with an employee’s performance, then you need a full paper trail to show they’d been warned over and over, and given an opportunity to correct things. Employment cases in Canada are full of employers who tried to insinuate poor performance to justify a layoff after the fact and paid for that.

60

I understand “stiff his workers” to mean “fail to pay for services rendered,” not “fail to pay for services not yet rendered because they are unneeded.”