I worked at a globally remote company. Most of the European devs worked for a one man consulting company, that my employer then "contracted" out to. I'm not sure if that nullifies all the protections, but I'm sure it did a lot.

Wealthier European countries seem to be moving towards clamping down on this kind of consulting. See IR35 in the UK as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IR35

This is still possible in many European countries, especially less wealthy ones.

I mean, IR35 happened because you could avoid a lot of tax as a contractor. In Ireland however, being a contractor is fine, but you end up basically paying the same tax as an employed person, so the tax authorities don't mind.

Using agencies largely solves the "hard to fire someone" problem.

That's a myth. How is it hard to fire someone?

I live in Austria and you can fire people for pretty much any reason. You have to give them 6 weeks notice, and there are some extra protections for people who are old or who have disabilities and who have been working for your company for a long time, but even then you can fire them.

You can even fire people for getting sick a lot.

And that's assuming you directly hire them as employees in the first place. Many people work via agencies or as contractors, and they have practically zero protections.

Wow, I am genuinely shocked by this post. I had no idea. Honestly, I assumed that most central European countries have reasonably strong labour laws that make it difficult to fire employees. Let us assume that your post is (mostly) true. How does Austria have such a large, robust, stable middle class without strong labour protections, or a wide/deep social safety net? Or does Austria have the equivalent of "Flexcurity" from Denmark (easy to fire, but wide/deep social safety net for a moderate period of time)?

Labour protections doesn't mean you are protected from being fired.

You have to pay people the minimum salary depending on their trade, you have to give them 5 weeks of vacation, pay overtime, pay for health insurance and so on.

Employers can't exploit their employees, but employees still have to do their job.

But there is also a big area of the economy where employers ignore the law and treat employees like shit. For example, service workers are not generally treated well in Austria, and many are afraid of losing their job so they don't complain to the authorities.

>That's a myth. How is it hard to fire someone?

Maybe the statement isn't true for EU as a whole, but some member countries have far higher bar than what you describe. For instance in Spain the company must provide justification to the government before firing someone.

https://www.rippling.com/blog/termination-in-spain

I don't know about the situation in Spain, but what a lot of people in Austria mix up is that there are different types of terminating contracts.

In Austria, the employer can terminate a contract immediately if the employee behaves in a manner that would harm the employer.

If the employee does nothing wrong, the contract can still be terminated, but you have to give notice 6 weeks ahead (or longer if the employee has worked at your company for a long time).

People get these things confused and think employees generally can't be fired without a reason, but that's not true. They just can't be fired on the spot without a reason.

That's a low bar for "hard".