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Comment by friendzis | Hacker News Reader

It's not the way it is calculated. All payments attached to employment contract are wages, be it regular salary, bonuses, vacation pay or severance. Say the contract defines severance of 1 month for each full year worked capped at 3 months: at the moment contract reaches 1 year anniversary, the employee should be owed 1 month worth of severance upon contract termination

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You're right, but only if it's in the employment contract. It's not a legal requirement to have one to hire someone [0].

Way more commonly, severance is part of a termination contract, and thus it would not be here.

[0] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/severancepay

And I think some of the severance pay is tax free at least in the UK.

I've worked in the sf tech industry my entire career and my employment contracts have never included guaranteed severance. I've seen severance being paid out to fellow employees but afaik it is done as courtesy and wasn't legally required.

Are you European? Maybe it's different there.

> my employment contracts have never included guaranteed severance

My assumption was that we would not be talking about "unpaid severance" if there was no severance defined in the first place.

> Are you European? Maybe it's different there.

Generally severance is not legally mandated, but can be mandated under some specific circumstances, e.g. no-notice termination. Usually it is similar to US: either defined in collective (union) agreement or part of termination contract.

Well your assumption is wrong. There was no defined severance, people are saying that Convoy should have paid severance anyway because its the “right thing to do” when laying off employees. And others are saying they couldn’t because of creditors coming first.

> done as courtesy and wasn't legally required.

Usually severance is consideration for agreeing not to sue the company, not taking trade secrets, etc.

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