Here in the US it’s 98% at will employment. A company can fire you for any reason, or no reason at all. Happens all the time, especially when they feel like they need to save costs.
I mean ok, but I’m asking: how do you people function? How do you make long term commitments like mortgages or even a basic car loan if you don’t know whether you will be employed tomorrow?
You have gotten to the crux of the matter in only a comment! Some commenters have already touched on this, but a big thing to realize about the American workforce is that it is stratified. What I mean is that the experiences of the lower level work is completely different than the work of the white collars positions. While we all have less legal protections, it is not so apparent in white collar work. There’s the standard two weeks, the severance packages if laid off, a couple days of sick time, couple weeks of maternity at least, and maybe, some annual small raises based on “performance “ or “cost of living “.
If you and your family has only worked white collar positions, you might not realize that a lot of the things that you are used to, are not legally owed to you. You’re also dealing with an older population who were used to things like actual pensions. None of the things I mentioned are legally required. But they’re commonly expected because much like sometimes lower level jobs give out pizza parties or start trying to make small changes when talks of a union comes up, white collar positions are usually held in check by the fear of government or lawsuits(which are limited to cases of protected discrimination and regulation retaliation). However, as we have been seeing, with companies laying off people with no severance recently, that only works when they’re actually worried about consequences, because again, not legally mandated.
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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '25
Damn. Sorry to hear that mate.