In the United States, the labor laws are very much in favor of the employer rather than the employee. In fact, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranks the United States as having the absolute weakest laws protecting workers from dismissal in over seventy countries worldwide. Pennsylvania is, like all states but Montana, an “employment-at-will” state, meaning that an employer can fire someone with or without cause. In direct contrast, in the European Union (EU), companies cannot fire people “at will”; the EU commission states quite clearly that employers cannot fire their employees simply for the “wish of the employer.” Yet, in the United States, there are very limited protections to the “at will” rule.
The Tolls of Uncertainty, How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America, Sarah Damaske