Would it be fair to you if _all_ employees had a default lay-off protection ?

That would be for the best as well.

Once hired, you can never be fired. Great idea!

Enjoy companies never hiring anyone because they'll be completely unable to let them go.

Too much protection leads to dismal performance, because people know whatever they do, there are no consequences. I am not a fan of such an approach.

"Too much protection" doesn't match "whatever they do" to me.

On your larger point, looking at countries with pretty strong worker protection, companies still have a flurry of tools to punish or get rid of workers that are way below their expected performance or crossing lines. "We can't fire people" is basically a myth, or what people really mean is "We can't willy nilly fire people like they're cattle".

I've seen people fired on the spot after heated discussion with the direction or people let go following a month or two of HR monitoring. The company only needs to do its homework and properly document offenses, follow the processes, or pay the full price if it really wants to get rid of someone with no objective reason.

Most developed countries have consultation requirements and notice period requirements for layoffs that would have made this either a non-issue or at least significantly less of a problem.

The US (EDIT: given this was in Canada, clearly the US isn't as extreme an outlier as I thought) is a pretty extreme outlier in how it allows employers to deal with redundancies, because almost every other developed country recognises there's a massive power asymmetry.

But the article talks about Canada, not the US. Why/how is the US relevant here?

I missed that it was Canada (title cut off, and yes I didn't read the article), not least because I didn't expect Canada would be as awful as the US in this respect.

This occurred in Canada, not the US.

Fire the employee who has put in 10 years building the business up for you, has deep internal knowledge, knows their way around the maze of infrastructure instead?

> Why do you think this is fair?

Immigrants are paid less than locals… do you think that is fair?

Source? At least where I am from, people are payed according to what they do and know, and not according to where they are from.

Not immunity, but extra support perhaps, as their position is extra-vulnerable. Yes. Next question.