I’ve seen many messages here that say that X is a “right-to-work” state so an employer in X can fire you whenever their little heart desires, barring obvious breaches of laws against discrimination. Does that mean that in those states professionals (I’m thinking in particular of programmers, since I am one, but my question could apply equally to other professionals) typically get no severance benefits if they get laid off? Note that I said typically; I’m curious about common practice, not what an atypical obnoxious employer is able to get away with.
I’m curious because I just got laid off. I won’t give exact numbers or exact benefits (I value my “semi-anonymity” here), but I did get a number of weeks pay for each year that I had worked, which works out to a significant amount of $, and free use of an outplacement firm for a period of time to help me find a new job, as well a couple of other more minor benefits.
Are severance benefits like that typical for well-paid laid-off employees in “right-to-work” states, or are they just screwed if they get laid off?
Right-to-work actually refers to a different concept (an employer can’t make you join a union as a condition of employment). You are talking about employment at will.
I think the answer depends on the industry, but I haven’t seen too many deals where a laid off professional gets much more than unemployment compensation from the state.
Sometimes, severance is offered in exchange for a waiver of claims against the employer. While the employer can terminate an employee for any reason or no reason, the employer can’t terminate for a bad reason (discrimination or retaliation, for example), so employers sometimes offer severance in exchange for a waiver of those claims.
The first time they gave me no severance, and I didn’t expect any. The company was going out of business, and I was the last employee. I saw it coming. They had no money to pay me severance, but they were very nice about the whole thing and I had no problem with it.
The second time was much worse. I didn’t see it coming at all - in fact, I had an owner in my office not 4 weeks prior to being laid off telling me how great I was doing, etc. Some sort of weird politics went on, and as a result me and about 4-5 others were laid off (it felt much more like we were being fired… long story but basically the owners and my direct boss had a big argument and next thing we knew boss and a bunch of us were laid off.) This time I got a month of severance. I’d only worked there about a year, so I thought that was OK.
One week’s pay for every year you’ve been with the company plus unused vacation is about standard for a layoff or non-performanced based termination at most decent sized companies.
For some reason, several people I know who were laid off from foreign companies recieved severance pay for a year or more. It’s hard to be upset about getting laid off when you don’t need to work for an entire year.
While there is no law, the concept of severance pay is essentialy the company is buying you off so you won’t make trouble.
My experience as well; the final paragraph is the most operative one. When I was laid off last summer, the financial severance package it was entirely contingent upon my signing an agreement to take no action against my former employer. One is also entitled to have his/her own lawyer review the agreement prior to signing. In my case a letter from my attorney smoothly (and without threats) pointing out certain things (like the fact that they had chosen to eliminate only the jobs of the two oldest people in the department, and that I had been the only non-clerical female employee) netted me a huge additional chunk o’ cash.
In the case of planned layoffs, it’s an incentive to keep the employees there until the company doesn’t need them anymore. Basically, when you know you’re going to be laid off in three months, you’re job hunting now, and you grab the first good opportunity you find. If you know you’re going to be laid off in three months, but that you’ll get four months’ severance pay, you’ve got some incentive to hang around & work out your remaining time. You’ll have plenty of time to job hunt (full-time!) after the layoff, and plenty of cash in the bank to keep you housed & fed while you do it.
That’s what I got when I was laid off at a medium-sized company (100+ employees), plus the services of an outplacement service.
However, I was also laid off at two small (<10 employeeds) companies. At the first one I got no notice and no severance at all (I had been there less than 6 months.) At the second one I got 6 weeks notice and my unused vacation time, but no severance package.
In fairness, both managers threw me some contract work after my formal employment ended, so that was their way of trying to help me out.
OK - Thanks everyone; I was just curious. To elaborate on two points that were raised - yes, I signed a very long-winded legal document giving up any right to sue for wrongful dismissal, and the layoffs were most emphatically not a surprise.