> employee protections which would be an utter fantasy in the US (defined redundancy payments, mandated collective bargaining, governance processes around mass redundancy handling at state level).

This can be compared to protectionist policies such as tariffs.

If employees are hard to fire, then companies hesitate to hire them.

If employees on-shore are protected, then un-protected employees overseas are more competitive, eventually gutting local industries.

Etc.

This came up in Australia recently where a liberal government proposed loosening some employee protection laws with the idea that it would encourage hiring.

It did. It worked.

Then the policy was swiftly reversed by a more left-wing party, and a lot of those newly employed people lost their jobs because they turned from an asset to a liability.

Protectionism is a double-edged sword.