As an American who has friends in sane countries, I feel the same way. But keep in mind we still have unemployment insurance in the US, where the government pays you for a few months after you lose your job (although it's capped pretty low). Also sometimes the way the USA does it makes sense too.
I was at a company that did a layoff once where they wanted to get rid of some underperformers in Europe, but Europe had such strong employment protections, the company was forced to get rid of good people in the USA instead to maintain cash flow.
After the layoff, I had coworkers in Europe who literally just stopped showing up, but had to be paid for six months anyway.
If the US had similar protections, the company would have just closed up shop and put 200 people out of work, instead of just a few.
Now if the US could just get a decent social safety net, then the way the US did things wouldn't be so bad.
Right, completely agree. We have the example of Orange telephone in France (previously France Telecom) : A company that needed to reduce workforce, but because of the strong labor laws (skewed in favour of the employee) the executives decided to make life miserable to employees to push them to quit... the result was tragically pushing them to suicide ( https://www.dw.com/en/france-orange-top-bosses-caused-employ... ).
I like the safety net option. It kind of decouples it from the goodwill of the company, and (I being kind of in favour of socialist practices) it will be easier to apply to the whole population.
I was at a company that did a layoff once where they wanted to get rid of some underperformers in Europe, but Europe had such strong employment protections, the company was forced to get rid of good people in the USA instead to maintain cash flow.
After the layoff, I had coworkers in Europe who literally just stopped showing up, but had to be paid for six months anyway.
If the US had similar protections, the company would have just closed up shop and put 200 people out of work, instead of just a few.
Now if the US could just get a decent social safety net, then the way the US did things wouldn't be so bad.