So my husband was fired after being with the job for more than six years. The company he works for has been in dire times for the past year. They filed for bankruptcy, have been bought by a private equity group, gone through several layoffs, etc. My husband survived all of these... until now.
He was one of only a handfull of people that still had a job - seemingly due to the fact that he was a good worker. They had been regularly laying people off over the past year. Each of those received a severance package, from what I understand. During these changes, his work load more than tripled, they took away sick leave, incentive bonuses, etc. He was not even able to take a day off for vacation. He was working so hard doing his part trying to keep the company afloat.
He has never had any sort of write up, reprimand, etc. citing unacceptable performance. However, they are firing him due to his "lack of performance". He had been working through lunch, working nights, working weekends trying to keep up. Several months ago, he approached management informing them that he could not keep up this pace and that he needed help to keep the client happy. The client has threatened to take his business elsewhere (and may have, although that is just speculation).
Basically, his inability to do his job stemmed directly from their laying off the workers and my husband was not able to do it on his own... there are only so many hours in the day. Plus, there was no incentive for him to do anything as his pay had been reduced, his vacation unavailable, workload increased and company's low morale was evident everywhere. He was just hanging on hoping that things would change as the economy recovered.
Since they "fired" him, he will not get a severance package. I know there is no law mandating a severance, but it seems this is more personally directed to my husband versus all of the other employees that had been removed. The reason they are citing him to be fired are false and misleading. If they wanted him removed, they should have just layed him off. It appears to me they are creating this scenario to keep from having to pay severance. And now we can only hope we qualify for Unemployment... although we'll fight that if we need to.
Does he have any recourse to get his unpaid vacation that had been accrued over the past year? Can he/Should he report his manager to his direct superiors letting them know how poorly managed his department was? And that if they indeed lost that client, it was more due to poor management and not my husband's lack of performance?
Right now, he just wants to wring someone's neck as he is being treated so unfairly. It's just so sad that these employers can get away with doing whatever they want and we have no recourse.
He was one of only a handfull of people that still had a job - seemingly due to the fact that he was a good worker. They had been regularly laying people off over the past year. Each of those received a severance package, from what I understand. During these changes, his work load more than tripled, they took away sick leave, incentive bonuses, etc. He was not even able to take a day off for vacation. He was working so hard doing his part trying to keep the company afloat.
He has never had any sort of write up, reprimand, etc. citing unacceptable performance. However, they are firing him due to his "lack of performance". He had been working through lunch, working nights, working weekends trying to keep up. Several months ago, he approached management informing them that he could not keep up this pace and that he needed help to keep the client happy. The client has threatened to take his business elsewhere (and may have, although that is just speculation).
Basically, his inability to do his job stemmed directly from their laying off the workers and my husband was not able to do it on his own... there are only so many hours in the day. Plus, there was no incentive for him to do anything as his pay had been reduced, his vacation unavailable, workload increased and company's low morale was evident everywhere. He was just hanging on hoping that things would change as the economy recovered.
Since they "fired" him, he will not get a severance package. I know there is no law mandating a severance, but it seems this is more personally directed to my husband versus all of the other employees that had been removed. The reason they are citing him to be fired are false and misleading. If they wanted him removed, they should have just layed him off. It appears to me they are creating this scenario to keep from having to pay severance. And now we can only hope we qualify for Unemployment... although we'll fight that if we need to.
Does he have any recourse to get his unpaid vacation that had been accrued over the past year? Can he/Should he report his manager to his direct superiors letting them know how poorly managed his department was? And that if they indeed lost that client, it was more due to poor management and not my husband's lack of performance?
Right now, he just wants to wring someone's neck as he is being treated so unfairly. It's just so sad that these employers can get away with doing whatever they want and we have no recourse.
