Layoff? or a legal-friendly termination workaround?

[David T]

Jurisdiction

California

I received a layoff from my position on Monday, July 8th and I have several concerns that I hope to get addressed.
The excuse given for my layoff was that my position was eliminated due budget issues and so I was being laid-off with no warning at all.
I was also the ONLY person laid off in the entire company.

Here are the details and reasons for my concerns:

1. Recent promotions and Team Expansion: My supervisor, I'll call her "Candace" was promoted to Director of Software Development to oversee software projects for two divisions within out larger organization. This new role indicated a need and company willingness for expansion within our software team. Previously, she was a Development Manager for one of these divisions, and I reported directly to her.

2. New Positions Created: The company created two new Product Manager roles, whom I was supposed to report to. The goals of these positions was to streamline documentation and reporting processes between development teams and create essential system documentation for other employees to use.

3. Management Promotions: Two of my colleagues received promotions, one to a manager signaling growth in our domestic software team and improved processes.

4. QA Oversight: Another representative from the parent company was assigned to oversee employees with Software QA Engineers like myself. However, despite what started as a good relationship between us, a pattern started where he would cancel meetings with me and also failed to include me in planned group meetings with other QA personnel.

5. No Communication from newer management: The new Product Managers never reached out to me at all. One of these PM's was new and required onboarding time, but the other had been on our team for a month without any communication with me.

6. Company Financial Health: Despite the excuse of my position being eliminated due to budget issues, there was a recent all-hands meeting where company announced major financial investments into the company and projected that they were lready exceeding last year's sales goals.

I had weekly meetings with my supervisor, Cindy, before her promotion and through my layoff day. These meetings remained unchanged and I was never introduced to the new Product Managers, whom I was expecting to be working with well before today.

Despite the company's apparent success(they are indeed very profitable), I was told that my position was eliminated due to budget constraints. This explanation seems inconsistent with the software team's hiring expansion with now 3 managerial positions and only one of those managers had any subordinate employees. I was probably the lowest paid employee as well.
The pattern of poor communication appears that they no longer wanted me and that I was going to be fired, but absolutely nothing was ever said to me about my job performance at all. My last review went well and there was no follow-up at all to confirm if I was on track with these goals, so I had no reason to believe anything was wrong with my work. Also, Candace often boasted how the company had NEVER laid anyone off before. I feel as though I was no longer wanted on the team, but that Candace was trying to be nice by not firing me and fabricated this excuse to at least let me go more gracefully with a layoff.

During ,y last meeting with Candace, an HR Representative was brought in and I was informed that my position was eliminated, effective immediately. My company access was immediately blocked. This abrupt termination leads me to believe that the "eliminated position" rationale might be a pretext for an unjust termination. This seems more true to me when considering that the product managers and others were not communicating with me.

I feel misled and unfairly treated in this situation. I would appreciate your legal perspective on this matter, especially concerning California employment laws and regulations related to layoffs.

I would also like to confirm the legality of companies that offer unlimited PTO and if it's legal to not pay employees for unused vacation time, because I didn't use more than 4 days in my time at this company.

Additionally, their policy is to dispense severance pay in the pay period following the the signing of my severence agreement, which won't be until the 31st. (I was laid-off on July 8th and signed on the 12th.) My understanding of California law is that this is due wihing 72 hours of notice, although the company HQ is in Boston.

Any comments that help are very welcome.

 

[adjusterjack]

Your termination was legal (though annoying and inconvenient) unless you can prove illegal discrimination of a protected class, a breach of a real employment contract, a breach of a union contract, or a breach of civil service requirements. Nothing in your post suggests any of that.

That takes care of most of your post. I'll defer to my colleagues for the pay questions.

 

[cbg]

Long, long time HR manager here.

Just for clarification, there is no such legal term as an "unjust termination". I think the phrase you may be looking for is wrongful termination. As Jack, who has been reading my responses for a great many years, indicated, for a wrongful termination claim you are going to need to show, and at least initially the burden of proof is on you, that the actual reason for your termination was one prohibited by law or by a legally binding contract. As Jack also correctly states, nothing you have posted suggests this is the case. If you have a valid reason to suggest that the elimination of your position was actually a pretext for an illegal reason (Jack has posted most of the illegal reasons; he missed retaliation for use of or inquiry about a right or benefit protected by law such as FMLA or workers comp), please post back with details.

California law requires the payout of any accrued but unused vacation time. Do you have time accrued? Or do you just take it as needed?

If California has a law regarding the payout of severance pay, this is the first I've heard of it. (@Tax Counsel @zddoodah ?) I'm not going to say it's impossible, because it's been a long time since I've managed pay issues in CA and it's possible things could have changed in the interim. I think you may be confusing the rules of final pay with severance. Severance is not required by law in California (or 46 other states; granted MA is one of the few that does require it in some situations, but this is not one of them.)

 

[Tax Counsel]

As I do with most of these wrongful termination questions, I'll start by defining what wrongful termination means generally in the U.S.

When the employer is not a government agency, then the employer may legally fire you for any reason (or no reason at all) except for a few reasons prohibited by law. The prohibited reasons include firing you because:

(1) of your race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation, gender identity, etc) national origin, citizenship, age, disability, or genetic test information under federal law (some states/localities add a few more categories like marital status, veteran status, etc);

(2) you make certain kinds of reports about the employer to the government or in limited circumstances to specified persons in the employing company itself (known as whistle-blower protection laws);

(3) you participate in union organizing activities;

(4) you use a right or benefit the law guarantees you (e.g. using leave under FMLA);

(5) you filed a bankruptcy petition;

(6) your pay was garnished by a single creditor; and

(7) you took time off work to attend jury duty.

The exact list of prohibited reasons will vary by state. CA is more employee friendly than most, however, so take a look at the CA Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) page that addresses what actions of the employer are illegal in that state. That page appears to have a chat function in the lower right that may allow you to ask about this and find out if anything the employer did in firing you was illegal. I don't see anything in your post that is obviously illegal, but perhaps some fact that left out might change that.

The termination might be unjust in the sense that it was unfair, but that doesn't give you any legal recourse. The employer had to fire you for a reason that is illegal under federal or CA law.

The reason that the employer gave you was budget constraints. Even if that's not the real reason, the termination is not wrongful unless the real reason is illegal under federal and CA law, like the list I put up above. It might have just been as simple as the person who makes those decisions didn't like you. While that would be unfair, it isn't illegal.

The best thing you can do if you think the employer did something wrong in firing your or in how the employer paid out final wages and severance is to consult a CA attorney who represents employees in disputes with employers. Usually those consultations are free and will give you a much better idea if there's anything to pursue. You don't want to wait around to do it because a lot of wrongful termination claims require that you first make a complaint with the appropriate state and/or federal agency within a pretty short time period, some in as little as 180 days from the date you were terminated. For a lot of these claims if you don't make the agency complaint on time you won't be able to sue the employer even if you have a good case.

As for when final wages must be paid, CA law requires that at the time of termination, including any unused vacation pay. There is no specific deadline for severance pay. The DIR summary of the state's final pay rules will go into more details on that.

 

[zddoodah]

Additionally, their policy is to dispense severance pay in the pay period following the the signing of my severence agreement, which won't be until the 31st. (I was laid-off on July 8th and signed on the 12th.) My understanding of California law is that this is due wihing 72 hours of notice

If California has a law regarding the payout of severance pay, this is the first I've heard of it. (@Tax Counsel @zddoodah ?) I'm not going to say it's impossible, because it's been a long time since I've managed pay issues in CA and it's possible things could have changed in the interim. I think you may be confusing the rules of final pay with severance. Severance is not required by law in California

Agree.

California Labor Code section 201(a) provides that, "If an employer discharges an employee, the wages earned and unpaid at the time of discharge are due and payable immediately." There is a 72-hour exception where an employer "lays off a group of employees by reason of the termination of seasonal employment in the curing, canning, or drying of any variety of perishable fruit, fish, or vegetables." There is also a 72-hour exception where an employee quits and doesn't give at least 72-hours' notice. Labor Code section 202(a).

However, given that there is no law requiring "severance" pay, there is also no law governing the timing of such payments (the previously cited code sections apply to the payment of "wages," which doesn't include "severance" pay).

 

[Zigner]

The matter of PTO being unlimited is also a complicating factor. The employer may not have to pay anything, as long as their PTO policy is correctly set up and adhered to.

 

[cbg]

The matter of PTO being unlimited is also a complicating factor. The employer may not have to pay anything, as long as their PTO policy is correctly set up and adhered to.

That was what I was trying to get at with my questions. However, the OP has not responded.

 

[David T]

Thank you all. This is not what I wanted to hear, but I appreciate your input.

 

[army judge]

Thank you all. This is not what I wanted to hear, but I appreciate your input.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.


The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Former President John F. Kennedy

 

[justblue]

The situation described raises concerns about whether the layoff is being used as a workaround to avoid legal obligations associated with a termination. If your employer is laying off workers under questionable circumstances, especially if they're rehiring for similar positions shortly after, it may be an attempt to bypass severance pay or unemployment benefits. It's crucial to document everything and consult with an employment attorney (spammer phone # edited out. ) to assess whether your rights are being violated and to explore potential legal actions.

One would have to be stupid to call a random # provided by a spammer.

 

[Tax Counsel]

If your employer is laying off workers under questionable circumstances, especially if they're rehiring for similar positions shortly after, it may be an attempt to bypass severance pay or unemployment benefits.

A layoff is a not a termination for cause and would not result in the laid off employee losing unemployment benefits. As for severance pay, the employer is not required to pay that unless there is a guarantee of that that the employer has with the employee, or the employee's union. Calling it a layoff would generally make the employee more likely to get severance pay over one fired for cause.

It's crucial to document everything and consult with an employment attorney to assess whether your rights are being violated and to explore potential legal actions.

The OP is in California. The number you provided traces back to a law firm in Fort Lauderdale that does personal injury cases, not employment law. Because none of the attorneys are licensed in CA and it's likely that none of them know anything about CA employment, this is a number the OP should NOT call. There is nothing a Florida law firm with no one licensed in CA can do for the OP.

 

[cbg]

The phone number has now been edited out while I decide whether to delete the spam post altogether or not.