Amazon Makes It Harder for Disabled Employees to Work from Home

Agree with this, but do want to let employees know that if this happens to them, that changes in working conditions can be considered constructive dismissal even if you quit.

Yeah, that only buys you unemployment though, not severance (which is typically much greater but comes with an NDA of some kind).

Man, nothing makes you appreciate EU labour protections like reading the HN comments.

Man, nothing makes me appreciate USA labor laws like reading the HN comments. I (unironically) love how it's easy to get a job here; since firing is easy, employers are more willing to take a chance on hiring someone. Plus it would suck as an employee to be forced to give your employer 4+ weeks of notice if you want to resign. Whereas in the USA with at-will employment we can quit tomorrow with zero notice and suffer no financial penalties.

I'm mostly with you in general. Especially for the amount we pay in taxes, we really ought to have better protections for vulnerable people.

For me in particular, if I were fired a year into every job and had to be unemployed for ten, counting all the health insurance bullshit and whatnot you have in this country when you're unemployed, I'd still be better off financially than in any EU tech job I've found. HN isn't exactly a representative sample of the sort of people who benefit from EU labour protections.

Must be nice to work under the eternal threat of being laid off on a whim.

It's nicer than the alternative.

I have worked both in the EU and in Brazil and I do have to say that the Brazilian system is better. Labor protection is high (25 vacation days, guaranteed overtime pay, etc), but companies can still fire people. However doing so involves paying severance proportional to how long you been at the company.

When you leave a company you need to give one month notice (so you can't just get up and leave). I never seen a "layoff" (you get notice that you are leaving, but still have your job for a few months and usually no severance) like they do in the EU. When you are fired, you are out of there the same day with your severance and unemployment benefits.

This specific practice does have a few problems:

1) companies not firing about-to-retire employees who have been at the company for 10+ years because of the huge severance required. Instead they just wait for them to retire. However employees also really don't want to get fired in their last few years either before retirement because of how the pension system works, so it balances-out. 60+ year old people usually take it easy, but they are usually not just showing up for a paycheck.

2) Younger employees trying to get fired instead of quitting. If you been at a company for 3-4 years and you want to leave it is really a lot more beneficial to get fired instead. I have seen this happen, but not nearly as much as you would think (at least in IT).

Although you would think companies would want to "recycle" employees by firing them every year to prevent the severance from piling up. The math doesn't really work out like that on top of all possible disruptions of such high attrition rate.

> like they do in the EU

EU is certainly not a single country and states have sometimes wildly different rules and labor laws. That specific situation is impossible at least in some countries.

Making an extra $50-150k+ per year (as long as you are in the correct field) might be very well worth it though?

I used quoted "layoff", in my experience when people are let go it happens during a reorganization mediated by an union where some positions are found to be unnecessary and people are given notice that their employment is being terminated but still work for a few months.

Since this is mediated by an union it only happens if there is a good reason (usually financial problems). I never seen it on an individual case basis it is always multiple people at the same time.

Yes but in some EU countries it's very unlikely that any union would be directly involved and the company would still be required to pay severance.

Sorry if I wasn't specific, but the severance part is Brazilian specific which I was claiming works better than the "can not fire anyone ever" way a lot of EU countries work

> I (unironically) love how it's easy to get a job here; since firing is easy, employers are more willing to take a chance on hiring someone.

Also on HN:

"Looking for a Job Is Tough" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42132125

It appears the facts don't fit you opinion.