🚀 go-pugleaf

An example can be found in Sweden:

Their law *allows* to fire someone... then the employer pays him his full
wage for about 2 years. 

Like a *soft* version on no-layoffs law.

Guess what are the results?

First of all, it becomes damn hard to get hired. Employers would rather
shot themselves than to take a guy from the street. They run extensive
tests and inquiries and covert inquiries to make sure that they hire a
reliable person... still everyone knows that one can't rely on tests. So
they too often look at what school is the guy from, or simply prefer to
hire friends of relatives of friends. 

Vacant positions tend to remain vacant for a long time, until a boss makes
this damn tough decision: to hire or not to hire.

Quite contrarily, positions to be opened remain occupied too long ... firms
allow poor personell to stay for very very long. They just keep people off
promotion and gently persuade them to find a position elswhere. That's
awfully nice ... and in no way stimulates creativity. 

And finally, people know that the hardest task is to get hired. Then, one
can relax ;-)

still I think that there might be another *soft* approach to layoffs:
to impose legal upper limit on personell flow. Say, to allow a firm to lay
off 10% or 1000 people a year, whichever is more.