> In essence, the point here is that if a corporation decides it can live without X% of their workforce

The open secret is that layoffs are also used as a gentle way to fire low performers.

By including people in layoffs, you can give them a potentially very generous severance package and you allow them the courtesy of saying they were laid off as opposed to being fired. They get mixed in with all of the good performers who were laid off due to budget cuts.

Putting a lot of restrictions on a company that does layoffs creates a perverse incentive to fire these people explicitly instead of giving them a gentle landing with a layoff. You would see far more people fired instead of "laid off".

At the extreme, you incentivize companies to start firing people to make budget cuts.

So, this is actually a very bad idea. You do not want to start putting handcuffs on companies who do layoffs instead of constant firings.

I think it's exceptionally unlikely that companies are doing layoffs instead of firing for the benefit of employees. You're holding up reasons like severance and saving face.

From everything I've seen, the much more common reason is that firing someone typically entails a much longer paper trail for CYA reasons. Batching them up and including them in the next round of layoffs is easier and safer.

>Putting a lot of restrictions on a company that does layoffs creates a perverse incentive to fire these people explicitly instead of giving them a gentle landing with a layoff. You would see far more people fired instead of "laid off".

Given that we long since decoupled terminations for being based on performance, I'd rather employers just be honest.

But they won't do that because they don't want any risk of lawsuits. Even if they are truly low performing, firing a pregnant woman or someone who happens to be an outlier race in the company is just too easy a setup for scrutiny. I've seen plenty of those kinds of people mixed up in these layoffs as well.