When you hire someone you have taken on an obligation. The depth of that obligation depends on where you operate. I am happy I live and work somewhere where we hold companies to a higher standard.
Companies are owned by people too. The idea that somehow the decision to engage in a consensual pooling of resources to organize an entity to conduct business somehow degrades a person is a wild take. In fact, the existence of companies as separate entities is in some way an insulation from the sort of state intervention upon the individual and their right to association that you describe. That's not a higher standard. That's higher barbarism, at best. Courts have the power to compel, coerce, and enforce through, however removed, the use of force upon the individual who may or may not have voluntarily assented to such power. Why would anyone hire anyone in the first place if you can't downsize when needed? You'd leave, if the state lets you, and in many places, it simply won't.
> I am happy I live and work somewhere where we hold companies to a higher standard.
I don't know where you live, but virtually every place I can think of with strong labor protection policies have them for the benefit of those with jobs at the expense of those without jobs who would like to get one. Harder to fire equals harder to hire with few exceptions.
How do the demographics and labor force participation rates compare? Does the youth unemployment rate match the overall unemployment rate? Does your country have an exceptional growth rate that could sustain maximum employment despite those barriers to entry?
They do have an obligation to improve the common welfare: that’s why corporations were allowed to exist sans monarchal decree.
I reject the 70s-80s re-interpretation of corporations as “vehicles for maximizing shareholder value.” This is a modern neoliberal take, and is rewriting history.
