What exactly is incorrect in the reporter's statement about U.S. labor law? Everything Dean says is correct, as far as I know, but none of it conflicts with the (accurate) statement about U.S. labor law that Dean quotes. Why would I "flunk" a student who wrote exactly the same sentence in an exam book?

Baker's point is unlike Italy, in many cases no evidence is necessary in the USA to fire someone practically at will.

The broader point is how labor is blamed for the deep recession, specifically exaggerating the claimed reluctance of a business to expand with more hiring on the upside for fear it cannot lay off workers on the downside, and never mind job sharing. The implication is that businesses can only grow unrealistically when overall growth is steady absent business cycles.

The question instead should be how risk associated with fluctuations in growth should be shared between employers and employees. In the past employees accepted lower, but stable wages, benefits and jobs in return for allowing employers to keep upside gains and bear downside losses. Casual abrupt firing or quitting justified or not was off limits as a rule.

Today in the USA, many jobs have been converted to the equivalent of a commodity spot market for labor, consistent with the disconnect between productivity and wages that began in the '70s coupled with the heavy pressure of high unemployment now.

Together they strip employees of bargaining power, yet MSM wants the public to think labor doesn't share enough downside risk from business cycles, despite everything given up to this point, including millions of jobs themselves, which represents way more than what a "free market" would demand from labor at full employment.

It's another economic paradox from the right. The more we can fire you, the more we can expand and hire you, which eventually results in full employment, so firing is irrelevant since another job is always available.

The NYT comment is factually correct but it could be taken to imply a "suspicion of just cause" level of protection for a worker's job when in fact there is no level of protection outside of anti-discrimination laws, etc. Using "by contrast" when you then underplay the actual contrast suggests either some lack (e.g. of factual understanding or writing skill) or bad intention.

"Workers who are not protected by union contracts or civil service guidelines can be fired any time for any reason that does not violate anti-discrimination laws."

These laws are extremely fluid, and most HR departments are all about this. The fear of such lawsuits is huge, and most employers will tell you they err on the side of not firing anyone who could play the discrimination card. I have heard it, I believe it. And this is definitely not just union and civil service protection, although clearly the problem is worse there...such as the rooms for "fired" NY city teachers.

Small businesses are suffering as a consequence of a global recession caused by fraud at the level of the financiers who are squeezing them, making profits off of the work of businesses and by extension the workers employed by them. It's simply missing the point to talk about high labor costs or burdensome regulations on labor relations when the financial sector has done far more damage to these businesses: it created the atmosphere of weak employment (of both labor and capital!) and deliberately defrauded countless businesses and governments, on top of which many in the finance sector have made profits far disproportionate to their investment of funds and labor in these businesses.

But I guess its hard or financially inconvenient to talk about why these issues (especially in Italy) are more pressing than labor costs. The NYT has been basically the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party since Wilson's candidacy, and having a political regime so embedded with the finance sector means an atmosphere of pro-finance reporting, be that enforced or not.

I'm sure employers every where would like nothing more than to slash labor costs, after all, its gotta be easier to fight the proles for the scraps from the financier's smorgasbord. And as journalists, I guess its only fair to report on that dynamic. But it is bad reporting to talk about any dynamic like this without giving the proper context or weighing the interests of stake-holders proportionally: for instance, shouldn't we be concerned about legislation making firing easier at the time that an austere economy is being imposed on an ever-weaker working class?

Why is the potential growth of a small business more important than the potential loss of consumer demand that lower wages and more firings implies?

There is no need to include the "unless." In most instances, a person can get fired for stealing. They have more to be concerned about than discrimination laws. How about defamation?