10 sats \ 7 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 7 May \ parent \ on: Full-Time Jobs Fall Again as Total Employment Flatlines in April econ
That is not generally true. "At will employment" does mean that an employer can fire an employee without cause, but there are a bunch of specific reasons why they aren't allowed to fire someone.
The reason it's difficult to fire someone in the US is that they can allege that they were fired for one of those reasons. The resulting legal issues terrify employers (especially big ones).
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I've been on the employer side of this and I promise you that's often not the case.
If your employee is a straight white guy, then you can fire him pretty easily, but if they're part of any protected class it's very easy for them to claim that they were fired for discriminatory reasons.
There are tons of terrible workers who keep their jobs because their employers are scared of firing them.
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Interesting.
I always thought it was a precarious situation.
Not that I ever worried about being fired. Only the one time when I shut down the plant on accident.
I did see many people keep their jobs, even though they were inadequate.
Cant seem too remember if they were part of a protected class.
I do know they were paranoid and always watching over their shoulder.
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There are other reasons to keep unimpressive employees. I often had to choose from a very small number of applicants, because I wasn't allowed to offer competitive pay. When there are no replacements, you just keep limping along with whoever you can get.
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Penny wise and pound foolish
I wondered that a lot when I was younger and worked retail. I did about 4x the work of the other employees (and it's not like I was trying particularly hard, there just wasn't anything else to do). I often wondered why they didn't pay people like me twice as much, hire half as many, and get twice as much done.
I think the answer is that there are far fewer good employees than you probably think.