Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division

Re:Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division by pjc50 on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @08:59AM (#45732275)

I think we may be hitting an issue in translation between English and American; in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy". "Job losses" is a perfectly reasonable neutral phrase here. Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process.

People like to make too much out of active/passive word choices. Granted it can get very propagandistic ("officer-involved shooting"), but if you try to make people say "unhoused" instead of "homeless" everyone just back-translates it in their head.

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Re:Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division by iamacyborg on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @09:11AM (#45732433)

> Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process.

This is only true when an employee has worked for a company for 2 or more years

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Re:Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division by nsxwolf on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @09:03AM (#45732319)

I think American English is the same colloquially. “I got fired” means I didn’t perform or did something wrong. “I got laid off” is our “I was made redundant”.

“Fired” is also a technical term for both cases, in academic/economist speak.

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Re:Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division by pseudalopex on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @10:17AM (#45733208)

Fired means terminated for any reason to many Americans. And academics, economists, and lawyers avoid it in my experience.

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Re:Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division by thaumasiotes on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @09:37AM (#45732732)

> in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy"

OK. I was fired for no stated cause in a process that didn't involve headcount reduction, or the firing of anyone except me specifically. (The unstated cause seems to have been that I had been offered a perk by the manager who hired me that the new manager didn't want to honor after the original guy was promoted.)

How would you describe that, in British English?

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Re:Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division by pjc50 on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @10:58AM (#45733718)

"Breach of contract"? "Sacked" would probably work colloquially.

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