Businesses in the US generally have to pay into unemployment "premiums" to the appropriate state labor dept. If the business has a lot of terminations, then its premiums go up. However, employees resigning doesn't result in higher unemployment premiums because those employees aren't eligible for unemployment benefits.
However, forcing employees to resign instead of be fired is a huge labor law violation, and in many states also constitutes unemployment fraud. On top of paying fines to the state labor dept, at a minimum you'd be paying employees for lost wages due to the unlawful terminations (or lost UE benefits)...and if the company is stupid enough to fight this in court, usually a much larger settlement or award for employees' financial losses plus treble damages (aka punitive damages). Usually ends up costing the company 10x of what they thought they would save.
> Employers with more unemployment claims against them will pay a higher rate, and employers with fewer claims will pay less.
Anything else and the dismissal would be completely illegal.
I’m not sure, but I would guess the Poland has similar or equivalent worker protections (the EU is generally pretty hot on worker protection). Which means that Revolut are opening themselves up to quite a bit future legal liability and pain. Doubly now that it’s in the press and there’s probably lawyers who see an opportunity to earn a paycheque and do some public good.
Normal behaviour is for the company to pay for the legal advice up to some reasonable limit.
I would be a little surprised if this was true. One of the big reasons for Western European companies to hire in Poland is because Eastern European countries are very cheap.
For most Western European companies, Polish people _are_ the foreigners (along with all the unfair preconceptions and prejudices that comes with that).
But the other reason companies in the US do this is to shield against liability. If you are terminated, you could later claim wrongful termination. While if you resign, it's much harder.
The distinction I was trying to draw was between firing-for-cause and layoffs; I believe there is more negative association with the former.
> But the other reason companies in the US do this is to shield against liability. If you are terminated, you could later claim wrongful termination. While if you resign, it's much harder.
Pretty hard to claim wrongful termination for a non-cause layoff in the US with typical at-will employment.
Not saying this is always the case, but there is some truth in this concern that might make hiring managers weary.
Also, generally, well-run companies don't need covid-like events to cull the herd. They're managing low-performers out regularly.
Found the relevant part of the article:
> In Poland, workers say they were told by their line managers and HR that they were underperforming and would be terminated if they didn’t leave voluntarily. But in Portugal mutual agreements stated that dismissals were a result of a reduction of 40 per cent in the group’s activity and a 30 per cent excess in staff numbers. By getting employees to voluntarily leave, Revolut has avoided launching a group redundancy consultation, that, among other things would give employees the right to severance payments and the chance to be offered alternative roles within the company. “[Mutual agreement] is better for Revolut because they can’t go to labour court [employment tribunal],” says the source from the HR department. “The way they prepare the terminations are so bad that if someone would go to court Revolut would lose,” the source claims.