Tech companies have been making headlines lately for laying off hundreds and even thousands of employees. Twitter was the first, cutting hundreds of staff members overnight on November 3, and Meta followed suit, announcing it would cut more than 11,000. At the end of November, DoorDash announced it would lay off 1,250.
While some workers impacted by these latest cuts could be protected by the federal WARN Act, under which those considered to be part of a mass layoff are owed a 60-day written notice and their regular pay and benefits through that time, some may not.
In fact, under the U.S.’s at-will employment system, workers have very few protections in place to both help them keep their jobs and to cushion the blow ― financially, emotionally ― should they lose them. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world with such a system.
Here’s how at-will employment works, why it’s the de-facto system in America, and how other countries handle their workforce.
Loosely defined, at-will employment “means that you can be fired for any reason or no reason at all,” says Najah Farley, senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project.
You can get fired “because the boss is having a bad day,” says Arick Fudali, partner and managing attorney of civil rights firm the Bloom Firm, as an example. “Because he’s in a bad mood. Because you didn’t laugh at his joke.” None of these would necessarily qualify as unlawful...
Kyiv claims that there was no agreement between the two sides not to disclose that North Korean POWs had been transferred from Ukraine to South Korea The Blue House demanded a formal explanation an...