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Comment by throwaway8995 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve come to find out that it’s not illegal if they let you go for other reasons than taking paternity. Getting this to court is hella expensive and uncertain. So, it’s up to me to fight it and show that they let me go for paternity alone.

It might be illegal, but the onus is on me.

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That's how it works for discrimination in general. If you can convince a judge or jury that the choice was based in discriminaton (your simple plotline vs their excuse of how random it was, or whatever), you win. It's a hard fight.

At a big company, likely other people tried to claim paternity leave as well, and non-paternity leave people were laid off, and (with legal discovery) you can do the math on ratios of layoffs across the cohrots.

Sadly, suing your employer will also make you unemployable forever. Nobody wants to hire a litigious worker.

We, as workers, should push to change that. If someone has sued their employer for a legit reason, that should have absolutely no bearing on their employment status.

Yet, tech workers resist unionizing for some reason.

Seems like every time tech workers try to unionize they get fired, and many tech workers know they have it better than elsewhere.

In fact these should be private lawsuits somehow. I dont know much about legal system, so not sure if possibl.

They often are because of forced arbitration agreements.

You should look into federal and state labor authorities; while a lawyer not being paid upfront (one who would be taking a contingency fee) may balk at a case without more up-front evidence, public authorities may be willing to open an investigation with just a basic colorable claim. There will still need to evidence that you were fired for using paternity leave, but you may not bear the burden of uncovering it.

I've seen this idea play out in a differen't industry and if your claim resembles something legitimate then it has promise. The only reason I say legitimate is because in the version I was privy to it was a disgruntled employee lying through her teeth about almost cartoonishly evil happenings. She was threatened with criminal prosecution for intentionally, key word there, trying to deceive the investigator.

Have you gone to the NLRB yet, or is this not something NLRB covers?

I haven’t looked into it. Thanks for the heads up. But, at this point, if lawyers are turning me down, idk what the NLRB can do

Start a GoFundMe, I'd happily donate to this cause. Parental leave is incredibly important.

To add: I also was turned down by lawyers but because of an arbitration agreement. Then I found some help and we kicked a Big Bank’s ass. We’re building a community to help others do the same at levelplayingfield.io.

Can you message me? I might be able to help. I work with some of the biggest attorney orgs for consumers and employees.

dan(a)lpf.io

What reason did they have to fire you? Other than downsizing your team or something, what possible reason could they have had to fire you 2 months into your paternity leave?

Chance of lawsuit * expected payout < cost of paying employee for the rest of their paternity leave.

There's confounding variables in there too like the OP said with the idea that he was an example for the other employees to jot actually take their benefits

Does your employment agreement contain a forced arbitration agreement?

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