Anyway I've seen similar laws in several countries in EU, but I talked to a lawyer friend and he said he looked into it (briefly) and couldn't find examples of it being enforced through court in my country (Croatia).

As for termination - probation periods exist for sure but passed that it's really hard to get rid of people, the two year thing exists if you give someone extended temporary contract but that really sucks for people because it messes with their credit score etc.

I remember working in a company where a woman got hired to work in office A she was then moved to office B because of a reorg (15km away from office A) she refused to accept this - got fired - sued - got pay for the time she was without work, times two in damages and got reinstated to previous position.

Yep - I mean once the company is >500 employees and has mixed ownership (funds etc.) it's mainly just between her and management that got overturned and they know better than to keep pressing on it.

Again, UK, but you can't just move an employee around willy-nilly. This could be construed as constructive dismissal.

You might know the employee can't relocate, and are trying to force them to quit so you don't have to pay redundancy pay.

In which office? A or B

In what sense?

It's not just an amicable separation of bureaucracies.

If you're in the UK (as I am), the kinds of headlines coming up regularly make it really clear the UK government is trying to not be part of Europe in all sorts of bizarre ways.

For example the most recent big deal was the UK has formally decided to break international law by reneging on the UK-EU withdrawal treaty it signed up to less than a year ago.

That's a very unusual thing for the UK to do, and it has people up in arms because it means the UK will now not be taken as seriously when it makes future international commitments (including trade deals), and when it is finger-pointing to other nation-states breaking their international commitments in future.

It's keener than ever to trash human rights and civil rights enshrined into EU law and show that it wants to take them away from people in the UK, which is a curious turnaround because at one time the UK was a leading champion, drafting the legislation and putting them into place.

It is all very tribal and symbolic, and doesn't appear to be rooted in any kind of advantages for the UK or people and businesses within the UK. Costs to businesses are going up (new tariffs on import and export). Trade deals are defaulting to worse terms (there's no good trade deal with the EU). Cooperation on major scientific projects is breaking down. Financial institutions are starting to move headquarters out of London. UK citizens living abroad are losing rights (a UK passport is much less useful than it used to be), and the cost of travel for UK citzens is going up (need more visas, need to pay for medical treatment, can't retire in the EU any more, if you already did you may have to move back and be poor).

What it does appear to be rooted in is the UK Brexit leaders being able to see "we did it, as you can see we are visibly not part of Europe any more".

Of course, I'm sure those who support the European Union are generally also very much in favour of it being treated as synonymous with Europe. But it sounds like nothing short of absurd rhetoric to me.

There's a long history of using "Europe" in news or political writing to refer to the continent (excluding the UK), and also to the various political and administrative entities such as the European Union, EEC, EC, ECHR, ECJ, etc. Also referring to "Europeans" as people in those countries.

Much as, say, "China" is use to refer to the political entity that is the Chinese government rather than the geopgraphy, and "America" is used to refer to the USA government, not the continent.

The way language is used, with "Europe" in the UK usually taken to mean "that landmass on the other side of the English Channel to the East of the UK, not us", might be a reason why a lot of people in the UK have such cognitive dissonance over it that most don't recognise they had "EU Citizenship", including some great citizenship rights, which they will now lose at the end of this year.

Because for many, "EU Citizen" conjures up images from other countries to the East, immigrants by definition it they are in the UK. Yet in reality all UK citizens have been EU citizens for decades.

Ireland is also in Europe and the EU yet people don't think of Ireland when thinking about "Europe", and sometimes not even when thinking of the EU, although the last few years of politics have raised the profile of the EU Irish border issues.

If you're thinking it's absurd rhetoric, fair enough, but you would be mistaken to think it's just language of those who support the EU, within the UK. It has a long history.

>Much as, say, "China" is use to refer to the political entity that is the Chinese government rather than the geopgraphy,

That's not at all a fair comparison. China is country, not a continent, and thus is pretty much defined as being the area under control of the PRC (and other Chinese regimes). Europe, being a continent, remains (in all relevant senses) constant in size, regardless of what happens to the European Union.

>and "America" is used to refer to the USA government, not the continent.

That's absurd rhetoric, too. I don't refer to the USA as America (well, sometimes I do, but I try not to). Besides, it would be strange to talk about California leaving America. One would say California left the USA.

First year or so, you're in a probationary period. Unemployment benefits will kick in, but you and the company are still feeling each other out.

After that, you get certain protections, whereby firing you becomes a more lengthy (3-6 month) process with specific regulatory milestones.

Speaking from a management perspective, if I have had an employee that has been solidly meeting the bar for a year, I am better off to work with them to remedy performance problems afterwards, then I am to fire-and-replace.

Training costs are a thing, and there's also a real benefit to not having your workforce continuously worried about being fired on-the-spot.

It is fair for newcomers to "earn their stripes" as it were, to show that they can productively participate in and contribute to the organization, but people that have cleared that hurdle do deserve some protection from bad actors in their management chain.

As always, I like to hear from others where they think this doesn't work. :)

In the US you can pivot your startup if something isn't working, roll off 20% of your staff and you don't have to talk to a govt tribunal or go through appeals.

You can make your own management calls on who you want to work with - you don't have to justify things or provide the verbal -> written -> tribunal -> appeal cycles process.

And founders are notoriously bad managers - while they should perhaps spend the time to do PIP's and training plans and being better managers, most of them are very focused on outcomes - so startups can be a very self managed area.

You can do this in the UK too, without a tribunal or appeals.

What you've described is covered by "redundancy", and it's completely fine legally to make people redundant, in large numbers or small numbers.

"Collective redundancies can be void by an administrative court, if the latter recognises shortfalls in the employment protection plan or if an administrative authority did not validate or approve the employment protection plan at all. In case the administrative authority validated or approved the employment protection plan without stating sufficient reasons, its decision might be invalidated by the court."

In the UK (which is MUCH more liberal and I wasn't considering the UK part of the EU) there are still plenty of steps.

For the UK "Non-compete clauses and restrictive covenants are highly enforceable in the UK in order to protect the business the employee is leaving."

https://www.ms-solicitors.co.uk/employee/faqs-employees-guid...

Redundencies can be overturned if the selection criteria for them is "unfair" or discriminates.

"You can select employees based on their length of service (‘last in, first out’) but only if you can justify it. It could be indirect discrimination if it affects one group of people more than another".

Because often some type of group is affected more than others if you lay off new hires you get into a quagmire pretty quickly.

Limited NC for v senior people for short periods possibly - and by v senior I mean board level.

If you don't sign the agreement I suspect a lot of the time you'll just have to do gardening leave for the rest of your contract. Also don't forget if you were a director you still have a fiducary duty to the company once you've left.

What I'm slightly unclear about is how practical this is for sales folks where this is an expectation they will steal prospects or existing clients. I suspect you might only bother with lawyers if it looks like they are poaching from your existing clients.

In the UK non-competes in my view for engineering staff are basically unenforcable, IP theft is much more likely to succeed (and I've been involved in a direct copyright theft case).

24/7 IP ownership is enforcable but my experience is that most places don't care if you're not going to be a direct competitor. I always feel it's worth getting that in writing though, my current contract limits this to areas of the companies business. Our corporate lawyer limited this when we had to sign a new contract post a takeover (it was a bit broad and could have covered things like photographs of your kids). Also I have in the past asked if I'm contributing to open source as part of my work as like things to be clear.

IP rights is probably the one area I check in a new contract and usually it's fairly easy to get agreement for some minor changes.

Your right about trade secrets though.

They let me go just before 2 years of employment, when a redundancy payout would have started. I don't think there would have been a longer notice period after 2 years, just a payout.

It was legitimate redundancy because they let go of a number of people at the same time. So it wasn't personally targeted, though of course there was an element of deciding who to let go of.

Yes I do because it was so close to the 2 years, and that did leave me feeling slightly cynical.

But I wouldn't call it "protection", because the only benefit would have been a small cash payout, worth a lot to me, but small relative to the company's ongoing salary bill for people staying behind, so easily affordable to them.

That led to financial hardship for a little while, but I recovered, set up as self-employed, and to be honest I was glad of the new freedoms to work on my own projects from then on.

Modulo EBITDA per employee.

Of course, those regulations should step in gradually -- sharp cliffs are pretty much always antipatterns when it comes to regulation, law, and government services.

Yes, I know in France that companies try and get around this by splitting into lots of smaller firms, but that's an issue for the regulators and the specific legal framework.

Nobody ever said these things are easy.

Why would labor protections be needed if the rational move would be to work with the employee to improve their performance?

> Why would labor protections be needed if the rational move would be to work with the employee to improve their performance?

Because management isn't necessarily rational?

Dilbert's pointy-haired boss resonates with a lot of office workers for a reason.

We've all had, or at least heard about, that boss who was utterly incompetent, who masked that incompetence in self-important blustering, and who were physically unable to listen to the rank-and-file.

Regulation is and should be there to deal with the abusers, and not with the companies that do, in fact, look out for the long-term welfare of both their employees and their customers.