IANAL, but I believe "cause" means "the employee gave the company cause to fire them". Poor performance, bad conduct, etc.

It's not so much that "cause" means anything as that "for cause" has a specific meaning.

Cause in this context specifically refers to the employee having done something wrong or illegal and means the employee is guilty of misconduct.

It is very rare for someone that is fired to be "guilty of misconduct," unless you consider poor performance misconduct.

In Britain we have quite strong employment laws and a bit less of a ruthless corporate culture, so in many sectors it's fairly uncommon for people to be terminated for poor performance, so I suspect "misconduct" is a higher percentage of overall firings here.

Yeah for sure. Unfortunately in the US it’s not uncommon for companies to find “a pattern of behavior” or “less than stellar work” that is enough to justify not giving you your severance, but also not too severe that they can’t be blamed for never bringing it up and putting you on a PIP (performance improvement plan, not sure if that’s a term in other countries).

With cause think crimes or near crimes. Sexually harassment of a coworker, taking things from the warehouse...

In the US, if your employment is terminated for cause, i.e. due to your underperformance at work, then you are not eligible to receive unemployment benefits from the government.

There could be other conditions too depending on whatever employment agreement exists, but the point is to determine if an employee’s lack of performance caused their employment to be terminated or something external to the employee caused their employment to be terminated.

> In the US, if your employment is terminated for cause, i.e. due to your underperformance at work, then you are not eligible to receive unemployment benefits from the government.

You meant i.e. or e.g.?

Under performance may be considered termination for cause in your state. It is not generally.