Here's another controversial take: as long as healthcare is tied to employment, companies shouldn't be allowed to fire someone except for actual negligence / malice. If they suck at their job, find them another one at the company -- there has to be something they can do in a company of 5k employees.
On the other hand, it may end up the other way: pressure you or bully you into quitting yourself. Here in Spain it happens sometimes: firing you is expensive and they don't want you around for whatever issue, so they'll try to find any justification to fire you, or just pressure you in some way on another to make you miserable enough to quit. No doubt that would happen in the US.
This can easily backfire on the employer with discrimination, hostile workplace, and a variation on wrongful dismissal lawsuits.
From Wikipedia:
From a legal standpoint, it occurs when an employee is forced to resign because of intolerable working conditions which violate employment legislation, such as:
Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA)
Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA)
Change in schedules in order to force employee to quit (title 12)
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)
Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA)
Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA)
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII)
It would take significant change to multiple parts of federal legislation and that in many states with additional worker protection laws.
To succeed on a claim for constructive discharge, you must be able to prove at least three elements:
Your employer was trying to force you to resign by intentionally and knowingly creating an employment environment that was intolerable and aggravated;
This unbearable, hostile workplace gave you no choice but to resign; and,
Your employer was motivated to get rid of you for illegal, retaliatory or discriminatory reasons.
so you have guaranteed employment for life with the same company? that is about as radical as it gets. this would shoot the unemployment through the roof if I, as a business owner, am unable to fire anyone that I hire! health insurance or not, that is to radical for even the most "social" country in existence (or that previously existed)
You're uninformed. France has that, and it doesn't result in excessive unemployment; in fact, the unemployment rates in France and in the US are practically the same, respectively 7.5% vs. 7.8%.
What changes between the countries is the hiring procedure.
US and UK companies mostly use a "hire anyone, keep the slightly useful ones for as long as they seem slightly useful, fire everyone else, fire them too, wash, rinse, repeat" narcissistic-sociopathic trial-and-error pseudo-method that's just guesswork dressed up as "choice".
French companies, and those in countries with similar preferences, take their time to very seriously vet the people they're hiring with a focus on the long term, and do it right from the start, following scientific hiring methodologies that leave little to no space for guesswork and gut feelings.
The result for the company is the same: the proper employee, at the proper position, doing the proper job the company needs.
The result for the employee is that the first "method", being as it is narcissistic-sociopathic, promotes unnecessary human suffering with zero actual benefit to anyone, whereas the second promotes well-being, satisfaction, and good work-life balance.
And, again, unemployment rates don't vary between them.
Now, if you believe your company would do badly under this system, maybe it would indeed. Which only goes to show you don't know how to hire properly. Start hiring better, and it'd make zero difference for you whether you're in a system or the other. In fact, start hiring better, and you may even move ahead compared to your narcissistic-sociopathic competitors, since then they will be the ones going with simple trial-and-error, while you will get the right employees from the start, and without regrets.
> You're uninformed. France has that, and it doesn't result in excessive unemployment; in fact, the unemployment rates in France and in the US are practically the same, respectively 7.5% vs. 7.8%.
You might want to expand that to the youth unemployment rate.
> Youth Unemployment Rate in France decreased to 18.90 percent in October from 19 percent in September of 2025. Youth Unemployment Rate in France averaged 20.52 percent from 1983 until 2025, reaching an all time high of 28.20 percent in November of 2012 and a record low of 14.50 percent in February of 1983.
While the overall unemployment rate may be similar, the "hire them once and have to take exterodary action to fire them" significantly impacts the employment rate of college new graduates where it can be difficult to identify how well they actually work in the work force.
> ... High unemployment, especially for young immigrants, was seen as one of the driving forces behind the 2005 civil unrest in France and this unrest mobilized the perceived public urgency for the First Employment Contract. Youths are particularly at risk as they have been locked out of the same career opportunities as older workers, contributing to both a rise in tensions amongst the economically disenfranchised underclass, and, some claim, a brain drain of graduates leaving for better opportunities in Britain and the United States.
Good points. But notice that, if the overall unemployment rate is the same, and in one country there's higher unemployment rate for youth compared to another, this means in the other there's higher unemployment rate for older workers compare to the first. The question then becomes: which is worse, more unemployed youth people, or more unemployed mature/elder people?
I'd argue more unemployed mature/elder is worse. Mature people in an at-will system don't become younger over the years to start finding better and better opportunities, rather their prospects become worse as time goes by. Conversely, young people become mature and find more and more opportunities as they age, so long-term not-at-will systems favor everyone, at the cost of making the start more difficult.
In both the corresponding difficulties can be reduced via welfare. But at-will systems tend, or at least it seems so to me, I may be wrong in this, to provide worse welfare, which may add weight to the comparison.
You can get the overall unemployment by demographic breakdown at https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm (this also gets into how do you count unemployment https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm - the reported numbers tend to be the U-3 rate, but people also like to quote the U-6 rate if they want bigger numbers ... the demographic numbers are likely based on the U-3 rate).
The United States is currently showing 4.1% for 20 and over with the 20-24 range at 8.3% and 25 and over at 3.7%.
United States by that measure is 4.6% while France is 7.7%. For the US at 7.8% would be the U-6 number which includes everyone working a part time job.
> U-6 Total unemployed, plus all people marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all people marginally attached to the labor force
> The unemployed under the International Labour Office (ILO) definition comprise all working-age persons (conventionally those of at least 15 years of age) that 1°) during the reference week had no employment, even for one hour, 2°) were available to start work within the next two weeks and 3°) had actively sought employment at some time during the previous four weeks or had found a job due to start within 3 months.
Note the "even for one hour" means that comparing it to the U-6 rate is inappropriate. So comparing it to the U-3 (4.6%), U-4 (4.9%) or U-5 (5.6%) would be more correct.
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With that in mind, I would urge you to reconsider your comparison about how increasing the difficulty to fire someone impacts employment.
Furthermore, there's only one state in the US that is not at will... Montana.
> Montana is the only state that is not an at-will employment state. In Montana, employers must have a valid reason for terminating an employee, and employees can only be fired for just cause.
However, that is "just cause" not "have to attempt to find another position for them at the company before they can be fired."
Comparing employment stats for Montana (45th state by population) may be difficult to compare with other states. https://montanafreepress.org/2018/11/17/where-the-jobs-are-m... -- would you compare the unemployment Mato Grosso do Sul to the rest of Brazil - and would you be able to attribute employment stats there to one difference in employment law vs the rest of the country?
> French laws don’t recognize at-will employment. In France, you can’t simply dismiss an employee without reason. In fact, the French labor code makes it extremely clear that it considers termination to be an absolute last resort, especially in cases of voluntary or involuntary personal grounds for dismissal. Instead, it encourages employers to try to find other ways to resolve the problem. For example, let’s say the employee in question is having serious interpersonal issues with their manager or a coworker. You can only dismiss them after you’ve tried everything else, such as holding a meeting in which you talk to the two of them and try to find a solution, or by putting them on different projects so they don’t have to work together directly. If the company is putting technological changes in place to increase its competitiveness, before you can start the dismissal procedure, you must demonstrate you tried another course of action, such as redeployment or employee training.
> Everything must be documented. This is extremely important: You must document evidence of all events and/or incidents that led to the dismissal of the employee, even if the reasons have nothing to do with their conduct specifically. You’ll use this evidence both during the interview when you’re telling the employee why they’re being dismissed and should also keep it in case the employee decides to bring a lawsuit against your company.
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If someone is having difficulty with their job, you first provide them training before you can fire them. From what I understand, it has to be a "we tried everything for the past year, here's all the documentation and they're still unable to do the basic requirements for the position.
> companies shouldn't be allowed to fire someone except for actual negligence / malice
France sure does a lot of things right here but above is what OP stated that I commented on which isn't the case for France. While one might have to go through some additional paperwork / procedures / ... you can in fact fire an say an underperforming employee
True, if you prove they're in fact a completely underperforming employee. Notice this is not only for the position they're in at the moment, but for every other conceivable position they might be reassigned to before the conclusion becoming it's impossible to keep them and the company positively, absolutely, needs to hire someone else for their place.
For absolute unfireability, there are countries where government employees cannot be fired no matter what, but that's not private employment so it doesn't count for your question.
The closest to that for private employers, that I know about, was Japan before the 1990's economic crisis, in which the culture (not the laws, but the culture was strong enough for it to be the same in practice) prevented companies from firing employees. If an employee became useless, the company assigned them a desk and nothing to do. After a few weeks of this the not-fired employee felt so ashamed of being paid for doing nothing 8 hours a day, they themselves asked to be let go (which was also the expected cultural thing for them to do, so they did it).
Regardless, the point is that at-will employment vs not-at-will employment doesn't affect things as much as it seems to do. And if you look at statistic comparing US States that don't have at-will employment vs those that have it, there's no practical difference either.
