Court? You must not live in the US. We got rid of any wisp of legal protection from job termination years ago... It has a catchy name invented by the lobbyists that wrote the laws... “Right to Work”
I think the only legal protection you get from the US government is on the basis of race/religion and what not, as well as some of the original Union terms like 40 hour work week and overtime. Right to Work has to do with whether you are forced to join a union or not. And if not, then don’t get the supplementary legal protections of whatever is in the union’s agreement.
You become “fire at will” not because the law says so, but because you are not in a union. On the other hand, most unions will still protect nonunion workers.
I’ve never really heard of programmer unions though. Would be curious.
My thought was that if there was a need for a reason to fire him, maybe he was in a place where there are some legal protections.
Usually if you are in a place where you can't be fired at will, firing you for a bad reason is something you can fight in the courts.
If you can be fired at will, why even bother going through the whole thing in the first place, just fire him.
