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Comment by brycelarkin | Hacker News Reader

Is “firing” 50 people different from “laying off” 50 people?

In some countries yes. In the UK if you want to make 20 or more roles "redundant", you have to group employees by reasonable groups, rank them by reasonable measures, and then let go those at the bottom. You also have to consult with employee representatives at each stage. Then, employees are entitled to minimum compensation amounts and that isn't taxed in the normal way. Much of Europe has similar or stronger processes.

I think another key aspect of "redundancy" in the UK is that it is a claim that the person's role is no longer needed, and hiring someone else for that role soon afterwards can be seen as invalidating that claim and thus invalidating the dismissal.

Which is why new roles are (or should be) advertised as slightly different - for legal protection against former employees taking you to court for fake redundancies.

Legally, they are supposed to treat mass firings differently than just individual firings. WARN act would require advanced notice for firing of 50 or more persons from a location. The location of travel/remote employees would be their nearest office.

WARN act only applies to layoffs, and doesn't apply at all to firings.

Wrong. The WARN act does not differentiate between mass firings and mass layoffs of full-time workers. Requirements change once certain firing thresholds are crossed. Firing enough people to cross those thresholds, telling them individually that they are being fired for performance reasons, and not giving advanced notice would be a clear violation. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/Worke...

Thanks, I see it now. The document you linked describes three applicable situations for layoffs, but then goes back and says those situations also apply for a bunch of things which are not layoffs.

Yes, you don't get severance if you're fired, in some cases.

You do unless you did something illegal or ethically wrong. Not meeting some company goal or expectation isn't enough. Killing a system with a rookie command isn't enough. Being an asshole isn't enough.

In some circumstances there absolutely is a difference in the amount of money you will be entitled to in the case of being fired vs. being made redundant. It can be on the order of several months of pay. You will also see employers simply make the working conditions incredibly miserable for their employees on the hope that they'll quit instead of the business needing to make them redundant.

Absolutely not true. Cloudflare did this because they didnt want to pay severance or even unemployment to Brittany.

Layoff usually means the positions no longer exist, and cannot be refilled.

Firing means that the person is removed from the position.

It’s harder to successfully sue for wrongful termination if they were laid off as one of many. Perhaps deceptively firing under the guise of layoffs opens the door to greater scrutiny.

You won't be getting unemployment benefits if you are fired. Also professional reputation, negotiation of severance terms, getting a positive reference, rehireability.

... Yes you do? You won't if you get fired for _misconduct_, but you definitely do get unemployment for perf, etc. in a vast majority of states.

You won't get severance if you're fired in most cases.

You won't get unemployment if you voluntarily resign.

> Yes you do?

No, you don't. Oregon Unemployment, Claimant Handbook, Section 6. Source: I helped a friend through unemployment. He was fired from work, and his employer provided a false reason for the firing, triggering denial of benefits. We looked at his options, and it would've been cost-prohibitive to retain a lawyer to fight it, which would've been required.

You have to use a lawyer to get a proper statement and many will take a % of winnings instead of a fixed rate.

Have you gone through this process? You do not just get your benefits. You might need a hearing, a letter, a lawyer. Being fired is handled very differently with regards to unemployment than laid-off. Are you claiming otherwise.

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