The funny thing is that when the whack comes (and to often it is as unforseen as club to the back of the head) you can bet that the company has prepared very carefully every aspect of our severance package before they apply that hit to the sweet spot on your noggin.
Very few people have the clout to get an employment contract let alone negotiate up front for a separation arrangement. For most of us we live in an "at will" world. The author points out that this "at will" isn't necessarily as once sided as our employers would have us believe.
They rely on the shock of the moment, our lack of preparation, and our shame for losing our job to streamline us into signing away rights and getting the heck out of dodge. It isn't in their interests to give you time to think and prepare, and, frankly, when you are laying off 1,000 or 10,000 people you simply can't enter into separate negotiations with every one of them. However, I can tell you that in the UK employees are routinely given employment contracts as they are hired.
This is why every employee should read this book today. Prepare and think about the ever more inevitable separation. Empoyees need to be on as equal a footing with their employer as they can; given current laws and the limitations of economics. We need to have more open eyes and be less sentimental about our jobs.
This book is a great first step or two on that path. Just as profits are made when you purchase an asset (buying at the right price) - not when you sell them, the basis for your separation (which you should accept as inevitable in some non-specified future) is laid when you are hired. We need to be smarter when we go into these situations and realize the planning and, well, practiced sincerity (masked insincerity) that employers now use during hiring, throughout the term of employment and during termination.
They aren't bad people, necessarily, it is just that they are prepared for what is happeneing and most employees are not. The message of this very helpful book is "Get Prepared!".
It isn't that they are all bad people; it is the nature of the current business and legal climate that leads to much of this nonsense.
This book will provide a great morale booster and provide some thoughts that can help even a newly terminated employee create a decent plan of counter-attack. Better to use this information and take positive action than be pushed downstream like so many cut trees.