"no_name" wrote in message
...
David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

"Daniel Rocha" writes:


David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

Every job I've had in my life has been that type of "at-will"
employment, and I've been working now for 37 years. Most jobs are
like that in the US.

In France it's not the case.

In France and in Europe, nobody can fire anyone for _no_ reason.
There is a law.


Which means you have to work with lots of incompetent malcontents,
right? I'd rather risk being fired myself sometimes than put up with
having to work with people who *should* be fired all the time.

You're confusing "cannot be fired for NO reason" with "cannot be fired for
ANY reason".

You can be fired in France.

But the employer would have to demonstrate sufficient "cause" (misconduct
or documented failure to perform the work for which you were hired, or a
layoff - "lack of work" i.e. the company has no work for you to do).

What they cannot do is fire you and hire someone else just because they
can pay the new hire less money; so the CEO can line his own pockets at
the expense of productive employees.

Under current French law you have a 90 day probationary period where you
can be let go with no reason given. But after that first 90 days an
employer would have to show cause for terminating you.

The proposed law would set up a new under-class of employees, based on
age; workers who would have less protection. Instead of 90 days, the
probationary period for this under-class would be 2 years.

Such employees would be generally paid less than longer term employees,
and corporations could churn employees from this under-class to keep from
ever having to pay higher wages. It's a foot in the door for the kind of
outsourcing we've seen here in the states where vested employees are
replaced by temporary employees who are paid less and enjoy fewer
benefits.

It's a hidden "tax" transfering wealth from workers to managers.

Which is why the French labor unions & student unions oppose it.

There are a couple of ways of getting around such laws here in the US.
People sometimes hire workers through temporary agencies. The agency does
the actual hiring, and "lends out" the workers to the business. Then the
business can let them go at any time. Another method is to dissolve your
business by selling it out to a friend or relative for a dollar. (or some
small fee) Then you fire everyone, and when the business reopens under a
different name and under new management, they can just rehire whom they want
at new lower wages. This is frequently done by huge retail store chains,
whose union wages have grown to become a burden.....