GP made a huge generalization by saying "in europe" while talking about labour laws. It's like me saying "in asia, (something about the labour market)", there is no such thing.
Hiring/firing/Employee-rights are very different between Spain and Czechia.
Here i am waiting for more than 2 months for a legal contract because my employer is in a different country and does not have a legal entity in my country.
EU to a large extent is a failure to nurture talent and multiply capital.
No, Europe is 44 countries the subset of Europe that is EU have 27 members
Russia is about 40% of the continent but few people want to go there, especially under current circumstances, and the remaining 16 countries are either EU associated (Switzerland & co), former members (UK), EU candidate countries, or countries frankly too small and/or poor and/or remote.
The EU is the elephant in the room.
It always possible to get rid of either an employee or a role. The problem comes when you're getting rid of a whole department or say 10% of your employees. There are a lot more rules around that.
That's a pretty wild comparison?
> What if I moved out of the country? This seems bizarre to me as an American. I’d do as little work as possible for that time and be resentful about it.
Well, things are usually a little more relaxed during that period. The employer is also required to make accommodations for you to find a new job, e.g. allow time off to go to interviews. As for leaving the country or not showing up, sure, the company might have grounds to sue and they could certainly stop paying you in that case, but, y'know, generally people act like adults.
There are exceptions to this rule about notices, so a day-to-day firing is possible in extreme circumstances. Like if you're not showing up at all, or blatantly not doing your job, are violent etc., you can be banished from the workplace and not paid from that day. But the point is, if you've been doing your job and get fired, you have the option to be at least somewhat reasonable about it and in return you get three months to find your feet and move on. By far most people take this.
Also, in the converse situation, where it's you who wish to leave, the rule is that you give at least one month's notice. This is sometimes not what you want, of course, but I think most people view it as a fair and reasonable trade, especially in light of the rules about getting fired.
finding a new job you will compete with people that have this 3 month notice so most of the companies plan hiring around it. also if you are unemployed in europe it will look really bad during your interviews.
now compare that to USA. you give 2 week notice, job market is very fluid so you can likely find a new job 2 week after stay there a few months helping the company and then use that time to apply to a new job in a better company.
Obviously the french model might be better for low earners/blue collars that do not have a job security. but for everyone else it is really hard to move to another company, managers know that too so they dont need to carrot you into a raise or a promotion as much as they do in US.
You're also missing that nobody is forcing you to quit to start looking for a new job, the protection is mostly that if the company wants to get rid of you they need to give you at least the same length of notice, giving you extra time on top of the unemployment to find something.
Furthermore, in the US model, if you quit you don't get unemployment.
Oh, and there's also RSA if you don't have revenues, which can provide some income when unemployment stops.
How exactly is hiring a very tedious process? Seemed quite fast and easy to me.
And btw, it's not that hard to fire a wrong hire. You have few months to do so basically for any reason at all, and afterwards, you can still do it, if you have a good reason to do so.