their peers know that communications skills are lacking and then don't even raise the issue to avoid the possibility of a (quite common) poor reception of the feedback.

That's an interesting thought. It never occurred to me that feedback on technical skills is more commonly given than feedback on communication skills. How did you discover that?

Also, withholding certain kinds of feedback because of fear of reprisal does not seem like an effective way to manage or improve your employees. So they'd rather fire you without telling you how you needed to improve? That doesn't sound like good management to me and it sounds like these are the types of managers I should avoid.