Jim was fired by the company he was working for (they’re going to call it laid-off so he can get unemployment insurance). They gave him his two-week notice, forced him to work through it or they wouldn’t pay him, and now they have him working for them as a casual, hourly employee with no contract, no commitment from them, and forty-plus hours of work each week. Can they do this? Is it legal to fire someone because they “don’t have a role in the company”, then turn around and have them working like a full-time employee with a drastic pay cut, no benefits, and no security? And how about working through his two weeks’ notice with no severance pay?
(Just for the record, I understand very well that employers can and do get away with doing just about anything they want to employees. This seems particularly grey to me, however. If they can turn a salaried employee into an hourly one with no benefits and no repercussions, why doesn’t every company do this? Also, we understand that any opinions offered here are just that, opinions, and we will in no way take them as legal advice.)
I’m not certain what you mean by turning a salaried employee into an hourly one, but there is no real advantage to a company from switching a salaried employee to hourly. Sure, they only pay an hourly for the hours worked but they also have to pay an hourly for every hour they work and time-and-a-half for those over forty.
The advantage for this company switching him from salaried to hourly is that he gets paid by the hour with no benefits, no UI, no income tax deducted, just the straight dollars/per hour, with no contract - it’s just project by project. I really don’t think this is kosher.
me to. He should have been an at will employee which means any side can end the contract for any reason - no 2 week bs - but you did say there was a contract.
As for your question - I think they can do it but he doesn’t have to continue to work there. If I were him I’d be seriously looking for some other job and leave w/o notice.
He was given notice that he would be “let go” in two weeks as is required by law. Of course he has to work those two weeks to get paid for them. Two weeks is the minimum, by the way, sometimes people are given longer notices.
Most companies will give you two weeks pay in lieu of notice because they don’t want disgruntled, soon to be ex-employees in the work place. Apparantly they trusted Jim enough to not steal or damage company property so they had him work for his pay. It’s one of those times that it sucks to be an upstanding citizen.
As for the lay-off and then rehire to hourly situation, something does seem to be fishy there.
Companies are required by law to give you two weeks’ notice before firing you? Never heard of such a rule, quite frankly. Two weeks’ notice before you can quit a job, sure, but even that’s just a strong suggestion, not a law.
A guy I work with had a similar thing happen to him.
He was/is some kinda programmer at a big plastic factory. They cut his job, and he went on unemployment for a while. Then a few months later they hired him back through a temp agency. They are technically paying more per hour through the temp agency than they were paying when he was their employee. The beauty part for the company, though, is temps don’t get benefits, no sick leave and no vacations.
Bad as they screwed him, it is/was unfortunately in your friend’s best interest to work the 2 weeks notice. Why? Because otherwise they would have screwed him a second time when a new employer called them for a reference on them. Happens all the time.
That’s just an old wives tale. Most employers will only confirm the dates you actually worked at the company and maybe your salary. They generally don’t give out any information on why you were let go because they are worried about getting sued.
Personally, I wouldn’t have come in to work after they fired me. If I really neede the extra two weeks pay, I would come in, sit at my desk and surf the net and stare off into space until the end of the day for two weeks. Kind of like what I do already.
They don’t have to give you any notice to fire you for cause, obviously, but that wasn’t the case here. The person in question was laid off which means that their job was being eliminated. You must be given at least two weeks notice (or paid two weeks salary in lieu of notice) if you are a victim of a lay off.
A company cannot hire a new person to fill the exact job of someone who has been laid off (for some period of time.) A lay off means that the company does not have need for that job anymore and that is why the person is being let go, not because they are incompetent or violated company policy or some such. If you’re fired, you’re ineligible for unemployment. It’s an important distinction. The fact that this person was rehired as an hourly employee doing essentially the same job after having been laid off is what stinks here. Perhaps the new job duties are just different enough to call this a new position.
You don’t have to give any notice when you quit a job but it is generally good practice to give a couple of weeks notice to your employer. As msmith537 correctly stated, the company (i.e. HR) will generally only give out your job title when you left and your dates of employment. You may, however, have a hard time finding good personal references from your former co-workers if all of them feel like you screwed them over by just up and leaving them with no notice.
There are ways for corporations to give bad references without getting caught.
If they wanna screw you, they will, and they will get away with it because they know that your average Joe doesn’t have the time, money or energy to get a lawyer and sue them (much less even TRY to prove it).
Corporations stick together. Corporation B is not going to tell you “Yeah, your old boss from Corporation A told us you were a real son of a bitch and you showed up drunk to work every now and then.”
I was laid off via a phone call at 2:30 one afternoon and that was that—the layoff was effective at that moment. Nor did I receive two weeks pay, but that’s another story.
In the past, as a member of management, I have had to conduct layoffs and I have NEVER heard of any kind of rule requiring a two-week notice of intent. UNLESS you are working in a union shop and that rule was a part of the union-company contract.
I would really like to know the basis for the above quoted statement.
This situation sounds a fishy to me. Your husband should start looking for another job that will give him benefits. By him remaining there is no benefit for him.
I too was laid off with no notice. Me and 106 other people that were laid off where escorted back into the building so we could get our personal belongings.
More companies are doing these lay off with no notice, because they do not want a disgruntled employee working for them.
Five months after I was laid off, they called me back and offered me another position, with lower pay.
I had already started a new job with better pay, benefits and managment.
Of course, I said, “Stick it!”
Being laid off was the best thing that my previous employer ever did for me.
It’s a good way to send morale plummeting and cut the amount of effective work being done. A company whose workers have no real connection to the outcome is not going to be around for long.
This encourages the employees to look for work elsewhere, for jobs that do offer benefits.
Conversely, it also makes it difficult for the company to hire anyone. “Yes, we’d like you to come and work for us. Hourly wages with no benefits. No medical, no dental, and we can dump you at any time. Whaddya say?”
You mention that as an hourly, this person is not having taxes taken out. Also the lack of benefits.
To me, it sounds like this shift was designed so as not to have any documentation of Jim’s employment status.
Does Jim agree to this? Depending on the situation, he may have been in on it to hide this job for tax purposes. Or even employment eligibilty – if he’s a good employee, the company may have arranged to keep him over the government’s objections.
And in fact, I’ve even heard of this- a person is laid off or fired from a company that still wants to employ him but can’t really afford to, he continues to work for a lower rate of pay off the books,and makes up the difference by collecting unemployment
Sounds like the job I’ve held for the past twelve years: adjunct faculty member at two or three different colleges at a time.
I become a new employee every semester. I can bail out at the last minute, or they can decide not to rehire me, whenever. Not a great situation, but it does provide a lot of cheap labor.
One thing that I didn’t add is that this does not apply if they’re shutting down the whole company. Anyway, it’s what I was told when I was laid off. In addition to that, I got an extra week’s pay for every year that I was with the company but that was just them being nice. Maybe it’s a California labor law thing. I’ll ask someone who will have the difinitive answer on Monday and get back to you.