whether an employer has an obligation to provide work to his or her employee.?

Question

Labour law.

Answer 1

Well, you spelled "labor" the British way, but in America, if there is not enough work for someone to do, the employer has the right to lay them off. The fiction is they will be called back when things pick up, but the fact is they rarely are. They are also entitled to unemployment compensation, which is like an insurance policy which is paid in part by the employer and in part by the taxpayers. They are obligated to look for work, and accept anything in the same general range as what they left, but as I say, the fiction is they may be called back to their old job. So there's no requirement to accept a job significantly less well paid or significantly less appealing (longer commute, lousy hours, more hazardous) than the old job.

The other thing we have is a system of retraining for "displaced workers." These are people who are not expected to be called back because the industry in which they were working is undergoing contraction (jobs moving overseas, being automated, that sort of thing) or their skills are obsolete. That was my category when I was laid off. I'd been working on Word Perfect 6.1 at a time when they were up to about 12, and in the meantime, the software preferences of the industry were shifting to Microsoft. So the state paid for me to go to an 18-week school program in Microsoft Office Suite and several other useful programs, including Dreamweaver and PhotoShop.

Answer 2

Heavens no. How could the capitalistic economic system work if that were true. For cost effective reasons, if there is inadequate work for an employee, a reduction in staff is in order.

Answer 3

Do you mean "provide work to do" or do you mean "keep on paying when there is no work to do"?

Re-think your question, express it more clearly, and re-submit.