Oracle lost a case around 2000 where they were forced to compensate someone wrongfully terminated for her unvested stock options. Other cases have been designed against the company on the grounds that firing someone just to screw them out of their options violated the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing in the employment contract.

I think there is a colorable claim here. The law isn't as cut-and-dry as you're assuming.

They're demanding an act from the employees under threat of personal/property injury (being fired). They would have been much better off simply firing them if they were underperforming. Sometimes voicing out the thought process is all that's required to make something extorsion.

Like if I say "I'm going to sue you if you don't X, Y or Z" can be considered extorsion. Whereas simply suing them isn't.

I'm not so sure that's true. Zynga is headquartered in San Francisco and is subject to California's employment laws. I may not be an expert on California's laws regarding at-will employment, but I sat on a jury for a wrongful termination lawsuit and "at-will" never came up. I would assume any lawyer worth his salt would bring that up in the company's defense if it was valid. Does anyone know what California's laws are regarding at-will employment?

Edit: After Googling around for a bit, my impression is that California is an at-will employment state without many exceptions (basically can't fire someone out of discrimination).

I strongly support, for instance, laws making it straightforward for people to sue for discrimination and sexual harassment. But after 15+ years in this industry, it is impossible for me to deny that discrimination and harassment claims are routinely abused by deadweight chaff employees to extract settlements from employers when they're terminated, or, worse, to keep their jobs and continue inflicting themselves on their teams.

Discrimination and harassment are two narrowly defined public policy exceptions to the rule of at-will employment, and by themselves they already create a huge amount of pointless† risk. Imagine if instead of narrowly defined exceptions, employees could evaluate every performance, compensation, and staffing decision a company made, and then litigate over them. Welcome to the United States Postal Service.

You might as well have this argument with the wind, by the way, because America is not going to move away from the at-will employment doctrine. It is a fundamental difference between the way the US and Europe conduct business, and most people who run companies would rather the world worked more like the US than Europe in this one regard.

† but: see above

Yep. And most people who are employees would probably rather the world worked like the EU.

at-will versus employee rights is choosing different sides of a power balance (Should we give employees more power? Or give employers more power?). It is clear that most people mostly choose the side that gives them more power.

If you want to work at companies run like the US Postal Service, staffed with lifers, then you want to be in a heavily regulated workforce like France's.

If you want to work in a more dynamic environment, where there isn't a structural disincentive to ever change jobs (because once you clear 1 year, you're can more or less lock yourself in) --- and, for that matter, and environment where you yourself could start a company and easily hire people, you want to start a business in the US.

You can turn this discussion into a soap opera if you'd like, but Hacker News is ostensibly a discussion among people interested in, trying to found, or working at startups, and I think I can safely assert that at-will employment is a clean simple win for startup founders.

It's like when consumers pay for subscription services, such as TV or internet. You pay a certain amount each month until you change your mind. Don't want TV anymore? No problem. Just cancel it. Imagine if you were required to prove you had reasonable cause to cancel your TV service. Just like with employment, the option for signing a contract is on the table (very common with mobile phone service).

In a way, at-will employment is the government choosing to minimize its meddling in employment agreements. It goes against my emotional intuition, but it makes perfect sense intellectually.

Agreed, at-will employment gives the general audience here more advantages. However I wonder if limiting the power of start ups would help start ups?

If it becomes common for some start ups to try to claw back stock options, then highly valuable employees might, in future, not accept stock options in lieu of salary, since they have a legitimate fear that it might amount to nothing. This means start ups might have to pay higher salaries, and requiring more capital. However if a company were to agree (somehow legally binding) that it would never use "at will" to fire someone (i.e. it will never fire someone for no reason), then a highly valuable employees might accept stock options in lieu of salary.

France has had huge problems recently because they have strong 'workers rights'. The problem is that the unemployment rate for young people is huge because there is no movement of labor capital. In general the entire economy gets gummed up from a lack of labor movement. Also, businesses have to subsidize the costs of retaining their worst workers.

"Am I protected against unfair dismissal?"

"In most circumstances you must have at least one year's continuous service before you can make a complaint to an employment tribunal."

From:

http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1797

So an employer can pretty much get rid of anyone in their first year of employment - they just take it through gross misconduct and the employee can't fight it.

I think it's different in Scotland, though.

[citation needed]

France is doing fine. They laid off thousands in the Auto industry when they were in trouble. "Strong workers rights" isn't a "problem", it's a trade off. It has good sides and bad sides. IMO, more good than bad and I think this Zygna scandal just reinforces that.

French labour laws and the accompanying tax system are the key causes behind France's huge problem with youth unemployment and a cripplingly bloated and inefficient public sector (google Aurélie Boullet).

Add the powerful transport and general workers unions in to the mix (who's members go on strike at least bi-monthly) and you can see that the French labour market has some serious problems.

The above is why the auto-entrepreneur scheme (introduced by Sarkozy) is such a runaway success as it gives individuals a chance to bypass all this bullshit.

The public sector has massive unfunded pension liabilities (because virtually all of France works partly or fully on the "black" due to the crippling tax regime) and the young working population are shut out from the majority of higher paying professional jobs as these are all occupied by unsackable (often unionised) career workers that still expect a job for life. Meritocracy plays second fiddle to who you know and what connections your family has.

Hiring someone always represents a risk. You don't know if the person is going to succeed at the job you hired them for. You don't know if they're going to wind up a positive asset to the company. You need the option of firing them, and the possibility that you might wind up in a legal battle because you did so -- that even if you have an airtight case, you'll have to lawyer up and spend time in a court room -- is scary and could therefore have a chilling effect on hiring in the first place.

For that we have trial periods (usually three month).

After that employees can still be fired, but there's a notification period involved.

(Edited to correct bad autocompletion.)

My point in all this is that there is no legal claim here. What's at dispute is shares that have not vested. It's kinda like being pissed off that you will not get the free coffee you get at work if you get fired or if the employer chooses to not provide it anymore; or next year's bonus, or whatever else you have not earned yet.

I guess the downvotes mean fellow readers do not like what I say, which is ok. As long as what I say is not false I'm ok with it.

In the case for which I was a jury member, a women sued her previous employer for wrongful termination, claiming she was fired for whistle-blowing. Her job was a safety inspector at a refinery and she raised some concerns about the safety procedures involved with cleaning some tanks. She even had documentation (in the form of emails), which showed that some of her coworkers raised a stink about her concerns.

The problem is, no matter why a company actually fires you, they can always make a reason. And I don't think it's hard to come up with a pretense for firing someone. In the case that I served on, the women had hired one of the company's contractors to do work at her home using company machinery and provided reasonable evidence that her bosses knew about it. She was fired for "conflict of interest." Ultimately, we decided in the company's favor. It honestly wasn't even close. There were about 10 questions that would have had to answer yes to, and we only made it to the second one (and almost didn't make it that far).

Still, I'm surprised that at-will employment never came up in this case. It seems relavent. And the company's lawyer definitely seemed worth his salt.

It doesn't seem that different from reneging on retro pay that an employee might have been promised for example.

And this is where I thank you for your time and go find a real lawyer.