Yes, free lunches exist but to see them you have to measure in utiles rather than straight-up dollars.
At-will is a huge risk for the individual, since they're going from roughly 100 % employment to 0 % employment.
On the other hand, in a decently sized organisation (where employee protection is typically enforced), being stuck with a bad employee and asking them for meaningless work that bothers nobody else means paying for 100 % capacity and only getting, say, 94 % of it. Over a large number of employees, the organisation can be fairly confident of what this percentage will be. Much smaller risk.
In other words, the utility cost for the employer of employee protection is smaller than the utility cost of at-will for the individual.
(Homeowner's insurance is a similar type of situation. Makes no sense to the individual if you look at the dollar costs, but in terms of utiles it does actually work out for both parties in most cases. Another case is hedging major business expenses -- costs more, but you and the counterparty both lose fewer utiles from it.)
At-will is a huge risk for the individual, since they're going from roughly 100 % employment to 0 % employment.
On the other hand, in a decently sized organisation (where employee protection is typically enforced), being stuck with a bad employee and asking them for meaningless work that bothers nobody else means paying for 100 % capacity and only getting, say, 94 % of it. Over a large number of employees, the organisation can be fairly confident of what this percentage will be. Much smaller risk.
In other words, the utility cost for the employer of employee protection is smaller than the utility cost of at-will for the individual.
(Homeowner's insurance is a similar type of situation. Makes no sense to the individual if you look at the dollar costs, but in terms of utiles it does actually work out for both parties in most cases. Another case is hedging major business expenses -- costs more, but you and the counterparty both lose fewer utiles from it.)