Actually, there’s no indication that she lied on the application, she may have very well left to work closer to home. But she did so without giving notice, and that’s not someone I’d want working for me. Someone who has burned bridges in the past is likely to leave me in the lurch someday. I wouldn’t care if her resume was all true.
I recently saw a statistic for a relatively large company. On average for the last two years about three times more people quit than were fired.
Make of that what you will.
I understand at-will employment and how it applies to an individual employee, but don’t somes states have restrictions or penalties for “mass” lay-offs or reductions-in-force (RIFs)? For example, I once worked for a California company that staggered their RIFs over many years. I heard it suggested that this was partly to avoid penalties for eliminating such a large percentage of the employees. Are there really such restrictions/penalties or was this invalid speculation?
I think that this gives a misleading impression of the state of the law in Canada to suggest it as easy to get fired in Canada as it is in an “at will” state in the US. (IAAL, but one who has not practiced in the area of labour law for several years.) By and large most employees are governed by provincial laws. There is variation amongst the common law provinces when it comes to labour law, and the variation may be reflected in that province’s Trade Union Act. I won’t pretend to speak to the state of the law in Quebec, operating under the civil code.
That said, in the common law provinces, generally speaking, for those not in a union, an employee’s employment can be terminated either for cause or without. If someone is terminated for cause this means that the employer is not obligated to pay compensation. In these circumstances, the employer had better be prepared to defend the decision to dismiss should a wrongful dismissal suit ensue. Document, document, document.
If cause does not exist, then the employer may still end an employee’s employment, however, the employer must also provide to the employee “notice” either that their employment will end in X period of time, or else pay to the employee an amount equal to that notice. Provinces provide for minimum notice requirements based on the length of employment. These are, however, minimums only. An employee may still assert that the notice provided was insufficient, and follow through with legal action.
The notice provisions will vary somewhat from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In Saskatchewan , The Labour Standards Act section 43 provides for the following notice periods:
43 Except for just cause other than shortage of work, no employer shall discharge
or lay off an employee who has been in his service for at least three continuous
months without giving that employee at least:
(a) one week’s written notice, if his period of employment is less than one
year;
(b) two weeks’ written notice, if his period of employment is one year or more
but less than three years;
(c) four weeks’ written notice, if his period of employment is three years or
more but less than five years;
(d) six weeks’ written notice, if his period of employment is five years or
more but less than 10 years;
(e) eight weeks’ written notice, if his period of employment is 10 years or
more.
Section 45 makes clear that these are minimum provisions only, and that if contract or custom exists that would dictate otherwise, the employee is entitled to the more favourable settlement.
In practicality for most employees in non-union situations, a careful assessment has to be made as to the sufficiency of the grounds for dismissal before an employer would dismiss for cause. The employer has the choice to: take the chance and dismiss without notice, give the employee notice either in time or money form, or retain the employee and start a performance management/documentation process.
Right, it’s completely equal. Except that your boss fire, not “fire”, you.
Well, if saying that people should only get fired for reasons related to their job performance makes me a communist, I must have really misread my Marx.
You do understand the alternative here, right? I’m not saying employers shouldn’t be allowed to fire employees - only that employees should have the right not to be fired for reasons unrelated to their job performance or illegal activities. In other words, do a bad job, get fired. Commit a crime, get fired. Do an average job when some other employee could do it better, get fired.
But get fired because of your race or religion or gender or political party? No (unless it can be shown that these are actually related to your job performance). Get fired because your boss is a Dallas Cowboy fan and you wore a Green Bay Packer jacket to work (a true case)? No.
Couple of histories.
San Francisco City & County Civil Service. New guy (still on probation) is fired for cause: he did a no-show three days running without calling in. In my very brief & casual observation (I didn’t work there), he might be a loser. The day before the three-day no-show, someone in his depart told him he was fired, & “don’t come back.” So there’s more than one way to kill a cat.
Corporation. This phone tech N-- had many stories told about him. For a long time I wondered why he wasn’t canned, but it was OK, he looked like a good buffer in case of layoffs: that is, we expected him to be the first in line. That was before three layoffs in a row, & N-- was still there.
N-- stories:
=He found a girlfriend in the Philippines somehow, and spend 2-3 hours on the phone every afternoon on company time, expensive long distance bills that the boss verbally noticed when the bills arrived.
=The homeless broke into N–'s Astrovan. Fortunately it was into the cab, which was screened off from the back where all the expensive tools and equipment was, and nothing was taken. Cause of laughter among the other techs as the story was passed along; everyone was positive that he had locked his keys in the cab & couldn’t be bothered to call Three A’s.
=I was doing the reports for a few months; you would see N-- dispatched to a customer 2, 3, 5 times in a row for the same trouble; then his co-worker J-- would be dispatched and after that, the trouble was fixed and stayed fixed.
=He had worked a customer’s trouble in the afternoon, then it was tested OK and the trouble ticket closed. That night, another ticket was opened & the on-call (me) isolated it to an open at N–'s site. He went there and the trouble cleared immediately. 50-to-1 he had left the test set inserted into the circuit after the last test, blocking the circuit, so all he had to do at 9:00 pm was unplug it.
=A manager or director from another department caught him using the company’s Astrovan to take his family to dinner, against policy, whereupon N-- lied and said he was in the Transmission department and was obliged to be with his van in case of a call-out. The director level of both departments got involved in this one.
=Any number of more entertaining, outrageous, and disgusting stories.
And in private employment, I’ve seen cases where someone wasn’t pulling even half his load and was a cause of discontent, and nothing was done. And where someone’s suck-up skills were the only skills he actually used. Some of these were long-term employees, fortunately some weren’t.
Vet: I enjoy your posts, and the ones in this thread are interesting, but I suggest that you let your attorney know you’re talking about this issue on a public message board. (I suspect he’ll advise against it.)
Too bad. As I said, I like the posts.
Usual disclaimer. I’m not your attorney, etc. etc.
By the way, although this is a common misconception, “right to work” has nothing to do with the ability of an employer to fire you at will.
Yeah… I thought “right to work” laws meant only that you couldn’t be compelled to join a labor union upon taking a job.
That’s perfectly plausible. Very few people get fired in large companies - except for RIFs. A 5% RIF is a big deal - 10% attrition is fairly normal. RIFs don’t happen every year, and attrition does.
Places where I’ve worked the quit/ fired ratio is higher than 3 - 1 I’d suspect.
My attorney is a friend, and I spoke with him this morning. He strongly suggested I shut up, calling me a f’n moron;). I will follow his advice and thank you for your concern and kind words.
In the USA you don’t have to promote the employee that has worked for you the longest into a job either. People will get the job that can best do it. This is part of the same deal with the no cause needed to fire. This of coarse has many exceptions, but holds true for more jobs than not in this country.