&#62; The exception is for people working under a contract that explicitly spells out remedies for termination without cause. Almost nobody has a contract like this.<p>You can negotiate for it or look for a job with it if it's important to you. A secondary effect of making it harder to let personnel go is that it makes companies more cautious when hiring. I'm thinking of situations you get in places like France, where a company isn't sure if they'll need the extra personnel in a while, so they rely on temp workers or go understaffed so as not to risk having problems letting people go later.<p>Tangential: I think people feeling more comfortable freelancing and doing entrepreneurship and transitioning in and out of salaried jobs and freelancing and building companies will greatly reduce employee/employer tensions. Lots of people tend to think of it as "their job" as in their property and a huge part of their identity, which I think is bad for their personal and economic growth.