Comment by NoImmatureAdHom
18 hours ago
Yes, but if you don't allow corporations to lay off people when it makes sense you end up with low salaries, meaningless jobs, and economic stagnation (like Europe).
Europe is nice to visit but a giant pain in the ass to do business in. Certainly don't even consider aspiring to anything. If you can manage that, then yeah...France, Spain, and Italy are cheap and have good food and weather :-)
As someone who has worked in tech in the EU and Canada (and for US companies, and ran a small company in Europe) -- I agree. The extremely high bar for letting someone go in Europe is a significant problem. It does lead people to hire slowly and fire slowly, however.
But having a union doesn't mean "never do layoffs" either -- it just means that they are negotiated. Usually that means severance packages are standardized and the layoff process is transparent. It also often means you have to try and place suitable employees internally, rather than let people go while you are actually still hiring for roles that they could be doing.
In general, even with a union, the company has far more leverage anyway (they control the money) -- a union makes it a negotiation between two organizations (one of which, the company, has more power) vs. a negotiation between the HR & legal departments of a company and one individual employee.
You can fire people when it makes sense, for example if there is not enough work, but you cant lay off half of your workers and demand that the rest work twice as hard.
In my country we don't have minimum pay in law, but union contract defines minimum pay and they also negotiate collective salary increases. So everyone (even non-union workers) gets higher pay because of unions.
"So everyone (even non-union workers) gets higher pay because of unions."
The median per capita GDP numbers say otherwise. I have watched Europe get noticeably poorer in my lifetime. Even the tourists can see it.