In Japan, for example, one way to get the employee to resign is to place them in an isolated area of the workplace and give them nothing to do.

34 comments

  1. Denmark might be an odd-one-out, since our labour-market-model, “_Flexicurity_,” is based on giving employers some *flexi*bility in their organising and delegation of labour, in the terms of hiring and firing, while guaranteeing some se*curity* for workers in terms of economical assistance during unemployment, and guarantees of income. Basically it means employment is, generally, more precarious—without pushing workers into the precariat like in the gig-economy—but at the same time, there is a high degree of quick re-employment, so people aren’t out of a job for particularly long, _and_ when you’re unemployed there is a relatively high income guaranteed through collective insurance, _arbejdsløshedskasser_(“Trade union unemployment boxes” though nowadays many _a-kasser_ are independent from trade unions.)

    So being fired is somewhat easy in Denmark, despite our high unionisation rates, and the model is definitely more pro-business than pro-worker; particularly with the cuts successive liberal and social democratic governments have made to the social safety net since the 1980es. During times of crisis, it is easier for employers to simply fire workers, instead of finding other solutions, and the cost of those layoffs is then transferred to the rest of society, but carried in particular, by the workers who were just fired.

    On the Danish *Left*—Capital “L”—there is a growing consensus that the famed “Danish Model” is failing, or rather, that it is being destroyed, and some serious changes are necessary, in order for the conditions of Danish workers not be completely destroyed.

  2. In Finland: bullying and smoking out.

    Also corporations tend to do “co-operation negotiations” ie. kicking people out due bad economy or organizational changes. Below 20 people company, you don’t have to make this play at all, you just can kick people due bad economy.

    Although a company has to offer same position to previous employee about 9 months from firing, this can be skipped by changing the organization and making the job slightly different.

  3. There is a way to end the contract on the agreement of both sides, this is a very mature decision, I’m aware what you’re describing happens too but is an abuse of power honestly.

  4. I’ve personally never heard of companies doing anything like that. When you start a job, there’s always a probation period for a few months at the start of the contract where the employee can leave with less notice but also the company can let you go easier if things aren’t working out.

    Sometimes companies will also initially offer people a contract role for a set period which have less job security than permanent positions.

    Edit: In a permanent position, it’s also not necessarily that you can’t be fired or let go, it’s just that the Company would need to follow a definite process prior to taking that step so they’re not open to wrongful dismissal claims.

  5. It’s not difficult, it’s a question reason and of cost.

    If I have an employee that steals, or bad mouths the company etc I can kick them out on the day of the incident. No notice or nothing.

    If I have an employee who does his job but is a dick and I want to get rid of said person it’s just a matter of how much money I will to give for them to fuck off. (Ricky got Lahey to fuck off for $100 here it’s usually a couple months wage.)

    If I need to get rid of staff due to downsizing because economic constraints it’s pretty easy but there are limitations to who I can fire first, senior employees leave last

  7. It is not hard, you just pay 3 months of salary and compensate for an unspent vacation days.

    there is 3 ways to do so.

    – Employee resign by own free will and get compensated for vacation days and thats all.
    – laying off with 3 months+vac days. Process is straightforward, but too bureaucratic.
    – firing an employee is actually bad for both sides and payments may vary.

    As a general rule: employer with employee sits down and do negotiations and in 99% of cases they do following: Employee quit by “its own will” and get compensated vac. days + 1..2 months of salary. Because it is in the interests of both sides to avoid as much bureaucracy as possible.

    And people generally do not held for a workplace where they are not welcomed

  9. In France isolating an employee and giving them nothing to do would be considered harassment and would open the company to a lawsuit and would have the quitting be requalified as firing without cause.

    Most of the things you could do to pressure employees would generally be illegal in France.

  10. The most common way to fire somebody otherwise unfireable is simply canceling his working position during “reorganisation”. It is completely legal, you just have to pay him 2-months salary as “golden handshake” (is that really the right english term?).

    Some companies are issuing only timed contracts.

    Forcing someone into giving resignation is illegal and may backfire, no matter how you try to justify it. So finding legal excuse is the only way.

  11. My boss called one of my colleagues on her desk pone 17 times in a day to ask for anything. Among other things, this contributed to her quitting

  12. Company restructures always end up as whichever person the manager doesn’t want in their team anymore then suddenly their role isn’t required. Funny how that works out..

  14. What OP described happens in Germany as well. Siemens, a big company many people in my region are working for, had a reputation for that kind of stuff, as they tend to move in and out of lines of business quickly and therefore have to turn over staff often.

    ​

    One thing that you keep on hearing about is trying to fire people for very minor offences, like charging your private phone at work or using the office printer for private stuff, which technically is stealing from the company. Usually nobody would get in trouble for something like that, but if they’re trying to get rid of you anyway, they might use something like that to try and save that settlement money.

    These kinds of tactics often attract major media attention, and more often than not they get successfully challenged in court.

  15. ​

    Here in Ireland, it varies a lot, as there are some “zero hours” contracts, but You would generally have a probationary period in your contract of 3 or 6 months, but in actuality, you can be let go without an issue in your first year as well.
    After that you need to follow a process that’s supposed to be outlined when you start the job.
    But in reality, most private companies who want to get rid of someone beyond probationary, will just bring them in and offer them a “goodbye” deal to go. its happened to me twice, the first time was unexpected, but the job was going terrible, but they liked me, it was just the industry was in free fall, the second time, it was because the owner wanted to bring some one in on a government scheme as a “intern” but i needed to be gone so they made me an offer on the condition i trained the new person in, i negotiated a great deal, and i left at the agreed time, directly into a new job. The intern quit after 2 weeks.

  17. In the UK it’s actually very easy to fire employees within their first two years of working for a company and we can’t file for unfair dismissal (there are exceptions to this) and aren’t entitled to statuatory redundancy pay (but a lot of companies have enhanced terms). I know of employers who will let people go after 23 months, and some of them will later re-hire the same people.

  18. Rules of termination in Finland are rather simple; hire them from a temp work agency for “work on demand” -> kick employer anytime you want for any reason since they don’t work for you specifically but for the temp work agency and agency has “for as long as this customer wants you” in the contract. Otherway is to simply exploit the loophole of terminating a contract while on evaluation period and set it to max. 6 months, mainly you don’t need to specify a reason for termination unlike with an actual contract since with a normal contract you need “3 strikes” written against an employee per calendar year or “company financial difficulties with negotiations with an entire work force” etc. to terminate a contract. In other words not particularly hard as long as the reasons are legal (not for pregnancy, racism, personal opinion etc.) in other words in Finland you can be all sorts of a dick as long as you do your job well and manage for those 6mo to sneak past the radar to that desired “permanent position”.

    Chaining evaluation periods is illegal but so prevalent that nobody actually seems to give a F*** especially common this is with teachers who are often kicked out on summer and then hired back on fall again and often they agree to it since there is no other way to find employment from the government as an elementary teacher and from their standpoint they don’t work on summers anyway.

    To combat this there has been a move from the society at large to stack all of these “temp works” on a same employer as one continuous employment even if they aren’t that from a strictly legal stand point and in some cases municipalities have lost on courts over that with payment and employment disputes.

  19. In Italy there was a big issue: when you got hired, bosses would often (completely illegally) make you sign a resignation letter with the date left blank, so if they wanted to get rid of you they would just fill in the date and have you “resign”. Nobody wanted to sign this but obviously it often was “either you sign this or no job”.

    They solved this problem, now you can only resign online through a state website, or you can go to a public office that puts your resignation in.

  20. The company refuses to offer you a contract, instead they will hire you as a freelancer. So the company will not pay any taxes on their side, and can simply “not ask any further services from you” if they want to get rid of you.

    This is extremely common in Portugal, and there are tons of different professions doing jobs as freelancers when they clearly shouldn’t.

  21. In the Netherlands a company needs to have a solid reason and a certain amount of official written warnings to fire someone. For a specific set of reasons (theft, fraud, severe incompetence, refusing work without a reason) you can be fired on the spot.

    If an employer wants to fire someone for other reasons that are not the result of the employees incompetence, before the end of their current contract, they have to give them a pretty sizable sum.

  22. That would be illegal in Finland. Generally, the only way to get rid of an employee is to buy them out, i.e. 3 months salary.

    In my last company, the only person I know that got fired after their 6 month probation, was because they had been saying they hope their manager and baby dies. She got paid 3 months salary when fired.

  23. There’s a very funny Italian film called “Quo vado?” that essentially looks exactly at this issue (specifically in the public sector in the south of Italy) in a comedic manner.

    Essentially, the protagonist is a “mammone”, whose only achievement in life was getting a “posto fisso” (literally a “fixed job”) as a bureaucratic worker in the public sector. For this, he’s revered by his parents and his wife, not to mention his wife’s parents. It’s like he’s some sort of noble (even though a posto fisso usually only gets you a pretty low-mid pay).

    Then, suddenly, after a change in policy brought by a new director of his sector, he’s the only one out of everyone else in his town that is in the precarious position of possibly losing his beloved post.

    A lot of other people in different towns, which find themselves in his same position, have been convinced by the director to leave with a relatively meagre sum of money or be otherwise sent somewhere else, far away from their posts.

    Despite this “threat”, the protagonist resists and is convinced to stay out of principle. The director nonetheless aims to get rid of him, and sends him anywhere she thinks could lead the protagonist to finally quit. She (the director) even sends him to Antarctica at some point lol.

    I’ll leave you the opportunity to imagine how these shenanigans end hehe.

  25. In slovakia putting an employee in isolated area and giving them nothing to do would be dream job for many.

  26. Isolating that peraon isn’t allowed either. Honestly none of my friends or family have expereinced that, at least not that I know of. I don’t think it is that hard to fire someone for poor performance. Not sure how it is in cases where one employee does not get along with the other employees. You can also fire employees for economical reasons. Or you only hire them through agencies, so you don’t need to fire them because you never really hired them either. Or you just accept that you are stuck with that employee. I know my husband’s employer wants to fire him, but since he is in the works counsel they can’t do shit and they don’t try to either. I am sure that harassment etc happens here too though. But usually being rude is enough I guess. Hard to prove and still very effective.

  27. usually employers find some reason to fire someone who isn’t contributing as much as he/she would be.

    And also their very careful when hiring, especially smaller businesses, one mistake and the firm is bankrupt. That’s how small the margins are for some. Which makes it very hard for youths to get a job. And especially hard for older people in their 40s and 50s.

  28. You have to differentiate between actual firing (on the spot) and simply ending the contract according to civil law. Generally the employer can let anyone go at any time, but they have to give notice in advance. The only exceptions are certain motives (like letting a pregnant woman go or because of certain forms of discrimination) I know other countries make it much harder though.

    Firing someone on the spot is only legal in very specific circumstances. (Basically if you stole, assaulted someone, gave away company secrets or gravely endangered others, among less prevalent reasons)

    So ending a contract never really was a problem here for employers, what did cause contractors to become much more commonplace is the lower cost.

  29. Contrary to popular believe across my nation it’s actually not that hard to fire someone or either replace one with someone else as long as it is fairly reasonable. You just need to provide value reason. That’s obligatory.

    I mean when do you actually want to fire someone? If he/she is under performing? No problem, and I find it fair:

    https://www.rp.pl/prawo-w-firmie/art11576551-slabe-wyniki-uzasadnia-zwolnienie-z-pracy#:~:text=Pracodawca%20mo%C5%BCe%20wypowiedzie%C4%87%20umow%C4%99%20o,zawinienia%2C%20niestaranno%C5%9Bci%20lub%20niesumienno%C5%9Bci%20pracowniczej.

    Or maybe you just can’t find common ground between you as a boss and your employee – it’s just not working for to too many differences in your viewpoints in regard to work? No problem. I also find it fair:

    https://www.rp.pl/prawo-w-firmie/art9817371-brak-dobrego-kontaktu-z-pracownikiem-wystarczy-aby-go-zwolnic#:~:text=Prawo%20w%20Firmie-,Brak%20dobrego%20kontaktu%20z%20pracownikiem%20wystarczy%2C%20aby%20go%20zwolni%C4%87,dobry%20kontakt%20i%20wsp%C3%B3lny%20j%C4%99zyk.

    As far as I recall employee can always sue you and wont pay any costs except when he/she gets a lawyer

    Of course when you fire someone there’s a notice period. Usually 1 month that’s always counting from new month start. 3, if you’re employed more that 3 years.

  31. If that happened to me, I’d be like « say less ». Get paid to put on my headphones and sit on Reddit all day.

  32. … place them in an isolated area of the workplace and give them nothing to do.

    ​

    Where do i sign up? Dream job right?

  33. >one way to get the employee to resign is to place them in an isolated area of the workplace and give them nothing to do.

    Isn’t that a reward? Lmao

  34. What they usually do is that they create a hostile work environment that forces you to quit. They start assigning you tedious work or even work that is not what you signed up for. They will stop including you in company events. They will put a complete stop to bonuses, you won’t even get a chance to work overtime.

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