As a fellow tech worker, I'm fine with at-will. At least in the US, shitty bosses aren't particularly constrained by not being able to fire you; they can be shitty to you in plenty of other ways. E.g.: http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2015/06/randy_henr...

I'd much rather have an honest firing than a subtle, long-term shadow war with people for whom politicking is their job.

(Note that I don't think it's as good for routinized jobs or situations with illiquid labor markets. But there I'd rather solve it with unionization than direct government regulation. US governments just don't seem to be very good at this sort of regulation, possibly because our diversity of peoples and political viewpoints means we lack a strong shared understanding of "fair" in the same way one sees in, say, France.)

I'd much rather own/operate a business in an At Will environment. If someone isn't performing, you don't have to worry about tens of thousands of dollars (or more) in legal fees to defend your decision to get rid of them. Add to that all of the lost productivity and taxes paid funding a position for someone who is wholly incapable and then having to create a year-long paper trail to back up a decision you came to as little as a month into their employment.

That is time and money that could have gone towards hiring high-skill, productive people who actually WANT to work at your company and supporting expansion (e.g. new job creation).

Contrary to your statement, Knowledge Workers fare the same in At-Will situations as they do in others because of the high levels of job demand. The demand itself motivates employers to retain them (and if they don't want to incentivize their retention, there are thousands of other companies that will).

I'm speaking, of course, as an employer who has offices in both At-Will and other states in the U.S.

The term "Right to Work" doesn't mean that employment contracts are required. Right to Work is a euphemistic term for "employees cannot be required to join a labor union." Totally different issue. Many states are both "At Will" and "Right to Work." All US states implement "At Will" employment but some states have exceptions to the rule.

> Right to Work is a euphemistic term for "employees cannot be required to join a labor union."

I thought forcing someone to join a labor union as a condition of employment was illegal under Taft-Hartley across the entire U.S.? One can be required to pay agency fees to unions for contract negotiations, however.

Taft-Hartley outlawed closed shops but did not outlaw union shops:

A pre-entry closed shop is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times in order to remain employed. This is different from a post-entry closed shop (US:union shop), which is an agreement requiring all employees to join the union if they are not already members. In a union shop, the union must accept as a member any person hired by the employer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop

A union shop is a form of a union security clause under which the employer agrees to hire either labor union members or nonmembers but all non-union employees must become union members within a specified period of time or lose their jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_shop

A Right to Work law is a state law that outlaws Union Shops in that particular state as well.

Likewise in EU/CoE. There is a right to form and join a trade union, and that extends to not joining a trade union. However no-where in EU has "at will" employment.

Terminology has been corrected. Though, not all states are "At Will" given the severe restrictions they place on it.

The problem is who defines what is under-performing. For some employers, not performing may mean not wiling to assist to meetings at 8 pm or taking job related phone calls on weekend.

In many European countries it is possible to fire a worker who is not performing, but the employer needs to prove the reasons, and also which steps have been done in order to correct the situation before taking the decision to fire this person.

> high levels of job demand

But then there are the normal boom/bust cycles. Tech workers were largely immune to the last bust, but that isn't historically the case.

> I'd much rather own/operate a business in an At Will environment.

Laws that are good for employees are usually disliked by employers.

At will employment screws over all workers. At least white collar knowledge workers are somewhat less fungible. The ability to fire an unskilled worker is unconstrained by law or business efficiency.

The rhetoric around at will employment as being good for employees, because it makes them more flexible, is a fig leaf. It is carte blanche for exploitation.

Tech workers over here are paid about twice as much (before taxes!) as tech workers in Europe, so I'm not terribly worked up about US employment law. All those regulations aren't free, and one way or another the cost comes out of your disposable income.

Do you have a source for that? I work for a large international company with engineering teams in many countries including European and American ones, and the workers in Europe generally make a bit more than the ones over here. Small sample size, but I feel like you are comparing a small subset of workers (Developers in SF/NYC) to a large one (Developers in all of Europe).

I'm European, and have seen numerous anecdotal numbers of salaries in US companies, and it seems much higher than what I'd expect to get here.

I understand your point of view, but I would point out the other side of the coin.

People who are not able to give their whole lives up to their employer's demands, for any number of reasons, are less able to work in tech in the USA - they're not good value with even if they have reasonable human needs. This contributes to a very unequal culture in the industry.

(Even if people on this forum might generally benefit from that)

It's almost as if people with different cultures vote to create the kind of society they want to live in. :)

At-will employment puts FTE/Salary employees on an equal footing with contractors. Which really just brings employment back down to pay, benefits, and working environment & employer culture.

You just have to recognize that nobody can truly predict the future, nobody's going to protect you in every situation, and that you have to have your own "big ball of money" to sit on in case of emergencies.