All this niggling about delegations disturbs me. You would have thought that Ian Jackson would have cleared this up but he seems to have confounded the issue by paragraphs of equivocation after a firm and sensible statement.

For someone used to nearly-nonexistent labor protections, the idea of not being able to fire someone without due process is one step away from a totalitarian dystopia.

Americans look at European employment laws with amazement and horror. The employees might see the added job security as comforting, but the knowledge that one can quit on 5 minutes' notice is comforting as well, and it is not a freedom that most would sacrifice. Employers see the added security as a potential nicety, but also as a terrible burden. « Not only do we have to keep paying them after we fire them, we have to give them places to sit! » It's tantamount to Evil Communism.

I'm sure you can guess what Europeans think of American labor laws.

Anyway, having anyone with augmented privileges not be fireable at the drop of a hat seems like madness to me. So I'll continue to believe that we can can anyone on the “org chart” any time we damn well please. Any other situation would mean that they have too much power.