They Can Fire Me

Most (US) employees and contractors can have their employment terminated by their employers at any time, for almost any reason. There are exceptions - government regulations, unions, and employment contracts may provide some protection - but in the US almost everyone can be fired under some set of circumstances.

(There was an AmericanCulturalAssumption in the above, but it's been updated to reflect the fact that this situation does not exist in most of Europe. The U.K. is an intermediate case. I don't know about elsewhere.)

Employees should remember this. Working hard, doing a good job, and getting along with your bosses will generally keep you employed, but there are no guarantees.

NoOneIsIndispensable. Employers don't want to pay the costs associated with replacing employees, but eliminating employees is usually considered to be a cost-saving measure. People are not perfectly interchangeable, but they are adaptable. Regardless of how special or valuable you think you are, you will not be missed a week after you are gone.
Nobody owes you a job. You are hired and kept employed because the employer believes your work will provide value, not out of a sense of kindness or social responsibility. Employers have the right to let people go when they believe those people are not providing sufficient value.
You may be fired for reasons beyond your control. People are not fired only for incompetence or low productivity. Employers fire people for a lot of reasons: economic conditions, cancellation of a project, elimination of part of the organization, changes in marketing strategy, personality conflicts, managerial whims, etc. And employers have the same right to be stupid that everyone else has, and may fire their best people when they are needed most.
It's not always fair. Once an employer has decided to fire some employees, the selection of whom to fire can be based on quite trivial factors, such as a single unauthorized telephone call, being five minutes late one day, number of lines of code written in the past week, etc.
It's not always in the company's best interests. Per "PointyHairedBoss", they can fire you because you are doing a very good job. If, for example, your metrics differ from the slackers, ManagementByObjectives might put you on the radar.

Because employees cannot count on their jobs being around forever, employees need to take control of their careers and their economic security. If you save your money, keep your skills up to date, and maintain contacts outside your company, then being fired should not be a disaster. Don't become too economically dependent upon your employer, and don't let your self-esteem or sense of well-being be too closely connected to your job.

The flip side of this is that employees can quit at any time. Giving two weeks' notice and/or staying through completion of a project are good ways to maintain good terms with the employer, but are not strictly necessary. If your employers or clients are not providing sufficient value to you, then you can fire them! FireTheClient.

"If they don't like what I'm doing, TheyCanFireMe!" - Some people relieve themselves of their work responsibilities by putting all the responsibility on their employers. When employees reach a point where they no longer want to do their jobs well, and start testing the limits of what their employers will put up with, the result is dysfunction. It is better to JustLeave. Professionals do their jobs well because they want to, not out of fear of reprisal, and they leave gracefully when the time comes.

Note: AmericanCulturalAssumption applies. For example, my Swedish employer can't arbitrarily fire me, and if, for some reason, I do need to quit or be fired, 3 months' notice is required.

What is the punishment in Sweden for quitting without 3 months' notice? Are employer and employee allowed to terminate employment immediately by mutual agreement, or does the government force a three-month period? Is the restriction commonly enforced, or do employers often let people leave immediately upon giving notice? If an employee is being fired for "cause" (gross incompetence, negligence, theft, fraud, etc.), does the employer still have to pay them for three months?

IANAL :-)

Fair enough, but I'd like to know a little more. I have trouble imagining what life would be like if I was forced to remain stuck with a bad job for three months, or if I was unable to get rid of bad employees. I guess it would make me a lot more careful about accepting a job, or about hiring someone (and that might be a good thing.)

In the UK at least, employers often prefer to give pay in lieu of notice, especially if a project is cancelled, or the employee has access to sensitive data. Under UK law, pay in lieu of notice is not usually subject to any taxes.

Also in the UK and, I think, elsewhere in the EU, there is a very strong legal distinction made between making a position redundant for economic reasons, and therefore terminating the employment of the current holder of that position, and dismissing an employee for incompetence (a long and painful process) or misbehaviour (somewhat easier, but not trivial).

Specifically, if someone's position is made redundant, and they are not found an alternative position within the company, they must be compensated (again, such payments are free of tax), and it becomes very difficult to hire someone else to fill that position for a certain length of time (6 months, a year, or something, I forget).

And people wonder why European economies aren't larger. Do they? The European Union is the world's largest exporter of services, largest exporter overall and second largest importer. The US beats us on imports.

Actually it is quite easy to dismiss an employee for incompetence in the UK. In law it is simply breach of contract. The problem is Employment Tribunals and the cost and effort it takes for an employer to prove to the satisfaction of the Tribunal that the dismissal was reasonable. Unfortunately most employers are so frightened of the cost of Employment Tribunals (where you bear your own costs - win or lose) that they put up with ridiculous contractual breaches by employees.

I'm not so sure about this. A friend had just been sacked for "incompatibility" with his job, and that was a long process, involving several rounds of internal investigation and such in order to show that he was incompatible. And now the appeal, and very likely a Tribunal thereafter.

I expect that the investigations tribunals etc are concerned with whether or not he was incompetent. If that's proved the process is straightforward.

The flip side is that in the UK you are often required to work notice, one month is typical but for higher positions it can be three. If you fail to work notice without permission, in theory you can be sued for the loss caused to the company. This would be any expenses that were actually incurred, and could not be avoided above the expenses that would be incurred if you worked the notice. In practice this hardly ever happens. This is because:

The burden of proof that the expenses were necessarily incurred is on the company. They have to show that the loss is above that which would be incurred if you did the minimum amount of work that you were contracted to do in the notice period.
Companies know that they can lead a horse to water but not make it drink. If someone asks for a reduced notice period, they almost always give it because the alternative is someone turning up and being paid for little or no work. The company's only recourse would be to dismiss the person, which is what they want anyway. Also, having someone doing nothing in a team has a negative effect on the morale of others.

Generally, UK courts limit damages against employee breaches of contract to the wages they would have received. The general wisdom being that is all the employee's labour is worth to the organization. The main reason for not breaking a notice clause in an employment contract is to make sure that all the other clauses have to be honoured by the employer - pension and holiday payments being the most common

I have a great story about notice periods in the UK. I worked at a DotCom company where the investors required everyone's contracts (about 25 people at the time) to include a three-month notice period instead of more usual one month. The idea was that the company would be more secure since people couldn't just up and leave at a moment's notice; the proposition being that in such a small company, this could be highly damaging.

So anyway, the predictable DotCom thing happened and about half the 25 had to be laid off, and this was announced at an all-staff meeting one morning. But by this time the company couldn't even afford to give those leaving the three months' pay due to them! The result was that everyone on the lay-off list was asked that day to sign a new contract with the notice period reduced to one month, after which they were immediately fired. The CEO explained to everyone beforehand that this was the only way for the company to survive.

The first question on everyone's minds at the time (and perhaps yours now) was: "what if some or all of the leavers had simply refused to sign the new contract?". When asked this at that fateful meeting, the CEO made clear that in this case the company would go bust that very day and nobody would get paid anything at all.

Pretty Shabby, probably illegal and certainly wrong. In the UK the Employment Service pays any outstanding wages owed to employees when companies go bankrupt.

And the next question: "is this legal?". I don't know the answer. At the very least it seemed pretty unfair that the investors had had their cake and eaten it, in that they'd had the benefit of the 3-month lock-in when they wanted it, but in the end they effectively hadn't had to adhere to the contracted notice periods.

In UK, the Government is highest priority creditor, followed by employees, and both are before preferred or secured creditors. Indeed failure to honour the proper order is classed as misappropriation of funds, it is illegal in UK Company Insolvency law.

Didn't affect me, though. I had resigned a couple of months before all this happened, and was two thirds of the way into my three-month notice period. Turned out to be about the longest and most depressing three-month period of my life. Ho hum.

You can renegotiate a contract at any time by mutual agreement. What was done was perfectly legal. Any one of them could have stood their ground and they would have got paid something - because employees are first in the queue of creditors after the taxman. Ah, I didn't know that. In fact the speculation at the time was that employees were quite far down the queue. If that had been me, I would have refused to sign the contract and then immediately put the company into liquidation as a preferred creditor. Most employees don't know that they can do that though... Indeed! Can you provide any more info/references? I'd be most interested.

Companies House is the best place for a noddy guide. http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk. The liquidation and insolvency leaflet is http://ws5.companies-house.gov.uk/notes/gbw1.html.

In Canada, under the Bank Act s.427, secured creditors have precedence before employees seeking to claim pre-bankruptcy wages. cf. Kassian v. National Bank of Canada (1998), 61 Alta. L.R. (3d) 92 (Alta. Q.B.).

In Sweden and the UK, are these notice periods mandated by the government, or are they just typical terms in employment contracts (and therefore open to negotiation)?

Even though Sweden has more legislation in this area than most countries, I think notice periods are just praxis. Most of these things are based on agreements between employer organizations and labor unions.

In the UK, I believe the law says that the notice period a company has to give to the employee has to be at least as long as that which the employee has to give the company. This means that the law does not require any notice, but most companies give it so that they have time to arrange a handover if the employee leaves. I know people working in supermarkets on 7 days' notice, whereas 30 is typical in IT.

IANAL, however under UK law, an employer cannot enforce a notice period longer than your pay period. Though they typically try it on with contracts requiring 3 (or more) months for senior roles, it is really an issue of professionalism not law. So if you are payroll employee paid weekly, one week notice. If you are salaried (monthly) then ...

I like the fact that the employees are above creditors. We're still trying for that in Australia, despite having had several high-profile collapses where the employees got screwed over big time. In at least one case, a major creditor (which just happened to have a large number of directors in common with the bankrupt company) got paid out in full while the employees didn't even get paid for the last week of work.

Countries with more "fire" protection are also more likely to have higher unemployment percentages. Part of the reason is that companies are reluctant to hire people because it is "too hard to get rid of them". Thus, the total time that one is employed throughout their life-time still might be more in countries with stricter termination laws. Legislating wealth for the common man is tough, but leave it to Europe to try.

The UK has more employment protection than the USA, and lower unemployment (also longer holidays and shorter working hours, as well as minimum wage and welfare). As of August 2003, the U.K. minimum wage is about USD $6.72 while the American minimum wage is USD $5.25.

Countries with no minimum wage and no welfare are far more likely to have lower unemployment percentages; people have to work to eat, and the employers can pay them squat for the privilege. That doesn't mean that welfare and minimum wage requirements are bad ideas, just like having to give a reason for firing someone isn't bad either.

Not only does it stand to reason but it holds true like clockwork. It's very highly correlative, especially over the medium to long term (5-10+ years of sampling).

I guess that is a DevelopedCountryCulturalAssumption?, in ThirdWorldCountries?, either there is no minimum wage, or the minimum wage is ridiculous, there are no welfare, or welfare is ridiculous, and they have higher unemployment percentages. And yes, people have to work to eat, but what happens in ThirdWorldCountries? is that they just starve. So it doesn't hold true like clockwork. (Oh, and in ThirdWorldCountries? TheyCanFireYou? anytime they want)

CategoryEmployment