Comment by carlosjobim
6 hours ago
> This is just false, firing people in most of Europe is still not easy.
Down sizing is a perfectly legal reason to fire people in Europe, and it happens all the time when big companies do mass firings. The difficult part is getting to choose which individuals to fire.
1. Most of Europe make it hard to do layoffs and most countries have different systems to prevent mass layoffs (including a state contribution to the salary, the Italian Cassa Integrazione is an example). Down sizing needs to demonstrate that you need real reasons for it, which implies demonstrating financial issues and lack of work and inability to reassign/retrain to different roles. Not easy.
2. American companies find every time that doing layoffs is very hard for them in Europe. Most recently Amazon, which, unable to lay off their people in Milan went through secondary tactics like demanding Return To Office (from people that signed hybrid or fully remote contracts) and other tactics involving mobbing or generous severance packages (up to 1 year in salary). Still, if the worker said no it was no.