Today she was just fired, due to "restructuring". There are plenty of other US-based employees still working there. Her manager didn't even show up to the meeting.
I am livid. The company is Reputation.com.
* US Department of Labor Complaint (as this touches FMLA): https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/contact/complaints
* Do not discuss it further with anyone except your partner and your attorney ("lawyer up").
* Apply for any unemployment benefits immediately.
* Create a paper trail with any existing documents and any further communications with the employer. Do not communicate in any medium you cannot generate a paper trail.
Not an attorney, not legal advice.
Putting down the pitchforks for a moment, we are in a wave of industry wide layoffs. Some quick Googling says that you qualify for pregnancy disability leave in California at 36 weeks (about 4 weeks before birth). Getting ready to file the paperwork doesn't qualify you or infer any protected status.
No pitchforks (I would agree that isn’t helpful), simply taking steps to ensure assertion of someone’s rights and that a rigorous independent examination of the situation occurs.
This!
Unless you're working in a dinky little mickey-mouse outfit, I will bet good money that HR consulted their lawyers before firing. Which means we have two parties here, and one party has already been advised on a course of action by their lawyers.
It's a shitty thing to do, but my money is on the company being in the clear, legally.
You can bet your ass that the company covered theirs.
I worked at Goldman Sachs for 13+ years. I was laid off in the January cull. I've always been a top or near-top performer. I had to take a few months off because my wife got breast cancer and my father had a cardiac arrest that left him unable to care for himself. I was advised by the "Wellness" people to not communicate my reason for FMLA/MLOA. As soon as I heard major layoffs were coming, I knew I'd be selected. Literally every person I've seen take a medical or family leave (aside from maternity, ironically) has been laid off/fired at the next possible opportunity. There are class action implications without question, if it could be organized.
Like the chance if you take FMLA/MLOA, your odds of getting "laid off" during the next round of layoffs. Particularly at GS.
Also, while understandable, showing your cards like this is risky as it'd be easy for the company to identify who you are.
I'm sorry, but I just hope your emotional state isn't blocking logic here.
Who are "they" in your question. I'm assuming you mean they===namedCorp. I am not thinking those lines at all. The "they" that I'm thinking of is anyone else that might possibly be interested, for the lulz or just practice/fun/games, to find out the info. The fact that a new anon account was created means the OP didn't want it tied to their real account for whatever reasoning they had, yet pretty much laid out a red carpet for someone to walk it back. Okay, maybe not a red carpet, but definitely a better trail than Hansel & Gretel left.
And then what precisely? So some random internet person doxes them. This is hardly a news story. What would the negative consequences of that be?
Will they sue? Well possible, but I find that if the facts are on your side, it makes it a tough case for any potential lawsuit.
(I think there are some more plausible things one could imagine happening but I’m curious how likely they actually are? The things I’m imagining don’t feel very likely to me but maybe I’m missing something)
Other comments seem to suggest that OP revealing themselves to the company would be terrible for them but I don’t really understand the mechanism.
Mostly I assume that if some competent company lawyer were to discover this, they wouldn’t go to the CEO saying ‘how do we best seek revenge’ but rather ‘what were you thinking? Here’s how we might avoid liability if it looks like they might fight this’. Maybe you think that’s putting too much faith into company lawyers?
Regardless, if she feels that she was let go due to her pregnancy, talk to an employment attorney for advice. They may tell you if your case has merit for a potential lawsuit but remember that these are extremely hard to prove and burden is on your wife to prove. The company just has to show that she was laid off with others as part of "restructuring".
"I am livid". Yes you are right now. But even if you talk to an employment attorney and say you may have a case, you have to calculate whether the potential payout will be worth the hassle since legal stuff is nightmare and you probably want to focus on the pregnancy and not legal battles. So, take time to cool off and then decide whatever it is you decide.
However, if they've done this in the past, all firings would be discoverable -- as it would show a pattern of behavior. Particularly all firings after requesting FMLA.
Meaning, if you're doing layoffs, and you thought to yourself, "Let's fire person X! They're about to have a kid and won't even be around for two months. That'd be a waste of money!", you would be breaking the law.
We don't not have enough information to make an educated assessment here.
Hmm, it should be a slam-dunk case, the lawyer just needs to ask "Show the court all the paperwork regarding this 'restructuring'. What structures were before, what are they now, and what's the rationale?".
She can file a complaint. If she can prove it was over her pregnancy she can win, but the company can simply lie and say it was part of larger layoffs. Her best bet is to get someone clueless and angry to admit it was over her pregnancy.
Have her pick a fight with her boss over text message. If he admits it she sues and submits that as evidence. If he doesn’t there’s really no way to prove it.
Which they would have to prove by showing others laid off.
>Have her pick a fight with her boss over text message. If he admits it she sues and submits that as evidence. If he doesn’t there’s really no way to prove it.
This some of the worst advice you could offer someone.
2) Talk to a lawyer.
3) Take this post down. See point 2, again.
1. It’s already posted.
2. The post is claiming what happened.
3. No let this company be name and shamed.
You’d expect the settlement, once ultimately reached, to have terms preventing this, no?
So it would be lovely to hear from people who've taken maternity leave, been able to return to work gradually, gained promotions and thrived - can we name those companies too?
OP, I hope your wife finds a good lawyer and negotiates a good settlement at least. In the UK they'd have a hard time avoiding that.
Also HR stands for Happiness Removal.
Without more to go on, I suggest you move on and don’t prolong the grief. And equally importantly, waste time in getting a new job.
Even without filing the paperwork, being [visibly] almost nine months pregnant is evidence enough to make a scene.
There's a reason everybody conspicuously squawks about their disabilities and sexual orientation these days-- it makes them a walking EEOC complaint. Pregnancy counts.
OP needs to see an employment attorney ASAP.
Yeah, cost savings, it's great! Gotta get that 0.3% bottom line improvement. Doesn't matter how much of someone's life they put into the company.
I suggest they disregard random HN advice like this and ask a lawyer.
I feel that in most countries this situation is so illegal that you basically wouldn't be able to ask for a more slam dunk case.
And of course it has to be some shitty tracking company, completely useless, but it's where all our best minds are working right now.
We score a capitalism trifecta with this post.
whoa there. I hope for all our sakes that's just hyperbole. maybe "it's where all our best paid minds are working right now" but to say that best in a blanket term is working in that field is even a bit pessimistic for my pessimistic views.
I assume it won't be too much of a problem in this case as the case resolves around OP's wife rather than OP himself, but if this stuff does end up in court then any statements that can be traced back to OP may be used against them in court.
In a just world, you can share your experiences and opinions freely. In practice, things like "reputation damage" can lessen the payout or be grounds for a counter lawsuit if the company is scummy enough.
OP is free to say as they wish as long as they don't go into libel/slander territory, but freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from consequences and words you vent in anger can hurt your case in court.
It's up to OP to weight the importance of sharing their experience and opinions against the possible impact on a theoretical court case, but I've never heard of anyone getting a worse settlement because they didn't share the details before legal consultantion got involved.
1) Almost everybody who posts here is smart, and it's really low-IQ to post the details and company name here when it sabotages a possible life-changing legal case.
2) "In the process of filing the paperwork" is a really weird phrase to use in this context.
(Not that i believe the BS about the average HN poster being high IQ)
Of course smart people react emotionally too, but when the stakes are high, a smart person would be likelier to be more calculating.
> (Not that i believe the BS about the average HN poster being high IQ)
Define high-IQ.
Not everybody here is a genius, but I'd bet most people here are very comfortably above the average IQ for their population group. Dumb people will never spend their time online reading and discussing computer science and related topics.