# Employment Rights newsletter

*Tom Geraghty · Power, Politics, Diversity & Equity*

Explores how legal employment protections relate to psychological safety. Prompted by Mona Chalabi's illustrations of unionisation and the wage premium union members tend to enjoy, the piece contrasts employment regimes: much of Europe — and especially Germany, with its Works Councils (Betriebsräte), employee-set internal bodies that help ensure laws and protections are applied — gives workers strong, well-defined rights, including protection from arbitrary dismissal without a fair documented process and legal protection against workplace discrimination. Most US states, by contrast, operate 'at-will' employment, where either party can end the relationship at any time without notice or cause, with narrow and hard-to-prove exceptions for protected characteristics. The article's hypothesis, drawn from the author's global work, is that strong, well-defined worker rights appear to correlate with greater psychological safety: culture and behaviour still play the largest roles, but robust rights at least signal to workers that they should be treated fairly — and telling your boss bad news is easier when you don't fear being sacked or demoted for it. The piece launches a reader survey to research the link between employment protection and the felt safety of giving 'bad news'.

- **This page:** https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/employment-rights/
- **Read the full article on psychsafety.com:** https://psychsafety.com/employment-rights/
- **Interactive map:** https://explore.psychsafety.com/?node=employment-rights-2023

## Connected concepts (4)

- [PS is Political](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/psychological-safety-is-political.md)
- [Typologies of Power](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/typologies-of-power.md)
- [Employment Rights & PS](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/employment-protections-and-psychological-safety.md)
- [Job Security & PS](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/job-security-and-psychological-safety.md)