When we first came to the U.S., my father started working as the lead researcher in a pretty new pharmaceutical company. About two years into it, the CEO was changed and decided to close down the entire R&D department, meaning my father along with his entire department would be laid off. The process went like this: someone from HR showed up, and everyone was asked to hand in computers and lab keys by the end of the business day and leave, and were paid their share of that paycheck up until that day. No notice given. Now we were privileged enough that my mother was employed at the time and my father found a better job pretty quickly, but many others were not. One person had to delay her wedding because she had just lost the source of income to pay for it; another had to delay a medical procedure because he had just lost his only insurance. Important life events were derailed because the company had the right to fire people without notice, a policy known as “at-will employment”.
So, if companies can do this, why can't workers? Until laws demand that employers give notice before firing or laying someone off, what duty do we have to provide the courtesy that we are denied? Why is it that workers get hate, even on this sub, when they choose to practice their legally guaranteed right of not giving notice?
As u/Alamak_Ancalagon put it, “US Capitalists always want socialist safety nets for themselves and social darwinism for everyone else”.