People need to pay rent. Honesty doesn’t pay the bills. Outside of America, there are worker protections for this stuff. Worker protections are more important than ceos deciding to raise shareholder values by firing random people.

Yes, it’s malevolent. If they fire you “for cause”, you don’t get unemployment. You don’t get a severence package. You aren’t treated the same as if you were laid off. It also makes it harder to find new employment as interviewers want to know if you were fired “for cause” or laid off.