Can someone explain me something about USA employment law?
Can you rescind offers and suffer 0 consequences?
I can easily imagine a situation, where manager A wants to get rid of employee E. So manager A, asks a friend in company B, to make an offer for 10M dollars. Then employee E leaves, offer gets rescinded by company B.
Employee E left on their own from company A, so "problem solved". Obviously some other employee, this time from company B gets another miracle offer, just to quit and be rescinded.
I imagine that this is somehow banned, or everyone would be doing this?
Yes, that would be sue-able over and if you could prove the pact you would probably win (promissory estoppel). But in the ordinary sense you can typically just rescind whatever you want and as long as it is not for a protect reason, you are good.
For the extremely high end of salaries (your theoretical "10M" offer), you would do well to negotiate explicit terms of severance pay, or a signing bonus or other incentive, in your offer before signing it. Your employer will be bound by the terms of a signed job contract or other legal document. You should at the bare minimum not quit an active position on a verbal offer, wait until the full legal paperwork has been fully negotiated and signed. But there are almost no "default" protections applied at the state or federal level. Also job contract terms are often highly in favor the employer and non-negotiable language at most entry level / minimum wage jobs, leading to the vast majority of Americans working with a very low level of employee legal protection.
There isn't a federal law that covers stuff like this. We really only have employment discrimination laws at a federal level (i.e. you can't fire someone for being a certain race, religion, etc.). So it's up to each state and local area to define employment laws and it varies a ton. In some states they have 'at will' employment laws that effectively say you can be fired for any reason and with or without any notice. I imagine rescinding offers fall under this and are perfectly legal in some areas.
If the offer is in writing (always get offers in writing), then the employee has some recourse. I imagine this is why CB is offering 2 months severance to affected people, or so I read elsewhere in this thread.
The situation you propose is more than just rescinding an offer. It's colluding with another company to make an offer in bad faith with the intent of rescinding it, in order to entice an employee to quit.
Can you rescind offers and suffer 0 consequences?
I can easily imagine a situation, where manager A wants to get rid of employee E. So manager A, asks a friend in company B, to make an offer for 10M dollars. Then employee E leaves, offer gets rescinded by company B.
Employee E left on their own from company A, so "problem solved". Obviously some other employee, this time from company B gets another miracle offer, just to quit and be rescinded.
I imagine that this is somehow banned, or everyone would be doing this?
I saw much wilder stuff going