Wrongful Termination

imjustme

We have an employee that has been terminated recently. During the termination meeting she complained about it being a wrongful termination that she had worked here for 2 years and never had an evaluation. She said that if she had had any evaluations that showed her lacking in any area she would have had an opportunity to correct her action. Now she feels she is unfairly being laid-off and not given an opportunity to move to a different position and let someone who has only been there for a few months go. Does she have a leg to stand on here if she gets a lawyer?

nohr4u1yr

Was she terminated due to performance or was she laid-off due to the position being eliminated?

If she was terminated due to performance do you have any documentation regarding this? (i.e. verbal, written, final warnings)

If she is being laid-off and you have an open position that she qualifies for why is she not able to interview for it. (doesn't mean she will get it)

Don D

Maybe. She most assuredly will win the UI contest. If she's a member of a protected class and files an EEOC charge against the company, and it can be shown that you evaluate others and did not follow your policy and have retained others who were equally poor performers, etc, etc, etc, she may very well prevail and won't even need a lawyer. But, if her only charge is that you should have reviewed her and did not, it won't fly.

imjustme

Another item that she voiced was that she feels discriminated against because she is not connected to the owner like everyone else is. This is a very small family owned business and 98% of the office help are connected to the owner in some way. She is the only person aside from the Asst.General Manager who doesn't have strong ties to the owner or other management staff. The office manager's father, father-in-law, and husband work here, the Asst. controller has been friends with the owner for years and the owner is the coach of a VERY competitive serious softball team the asst. daughter plays on. The receptionist was moved 200 miles and put into the position that she was in because the owner wanted her daughter on his softball team, they didn't even have interviews after advertising when this woman put in her app. The other Admin Asst. has been best friends with the Trucking manager for 35 years who in turn has been friends with the owner for 45 years. It is just a tangled web and it just screams problems. I am just wondering what position the company will be in if she does seek legal councel and some type of settlement.

System

Even if that's the discriminatory reason why she was let go, that itself is not illegal. Look at age, race, etc. If she's not in a protected class, she probably doesn't have much; unless, as the others say, you didn't follow the review process fairly.

Parabeagle

Another thought occurred to me. In Oregon, it is illegal to discriminate based on familial status - the fact that she's not an "insider" may be brought into play as well.

Parabeagle

Another theory she could try is to assert a legal claim that the employer breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing - especially if she wasn't reviewed and others were. Since this isn't a protected class issue, she can go straight to court and avoid the EEOC.

HR in CA

Was she terminated or laid off? If it is a lay off, will the criteria used to determine who is laif off at your company appear non biased to anyone outside your company? All important questions, that will better help answer your question.

Don D

I disagree with Parabeagle's notion that this might violate a 'familial or domestic status' statute. Those laws don't relate to who you are related to. They address your marital or domestic status; for example, making it illegal to terminate a single mom with three kids, for that reason. Or making it illegal to terminate a person because they are married as opposed to being single.

An employer is perfectly within his/her rights to hire only softball team players' family members or persons with moles on their left thigh, as long as he/she is not refusing to hire or retain people based on protected group status (assuming he's not asking them to show their moles in the interview, I suppose).

And although it's a recipe for disaster, if I choose to, I can fill my company up with cousins or blondes with pug noses wearing cheerleader skirts.