Question to the Americans: if in the US you don't need a reason to fire someone, how can you prove the company was discriminating you when they fired you if they didn't give a reason.
> In their complaints, the former employees cite comments that TCS’s global human resources head Milind Lakkad made in an interview with Indian media last year. He said TCS is trying to reduce the number of Americans it employs in the U.S. and would like to provide more opportunities to Indians there, according to the report.
> One former worker said in a complaint that TCS human-resources staff told employees in an all-hands meeting that the company planned to use money saved by closing down a unit that employed many of the American workers to provide jobs to more Indian nationals in the U.S.
That's not quite what "at will employment" in the US actually means. What it means is that an employer can fire you at any time for any reason that isn't an unlawful reason. It doesn't mean the employer doesn't have to give a reason at all, or that the employer can simply refuse to give a reason if questioned, particularly if there is an allegation that the firing was for an unlawful reason.
That's why companies still go through an enormous amount of procedural and documentation hoops before they fire someone, including PIPs.
It doesn’t have to be valid. You can fire someone because you don’t like them, or for no reason at all.
You just can’t fire them for a prohibited reason, such as race, age over 40, sex, disability etc.
Needing a reason is more of a practical problem - every person is a member of at least two protected classes (everyone has a race and sex). If you have no reason for firing a person, it’s often pretty easy for them to argue it was really based on a protected characteristic.
No smart company will ever put down "don't like them" or something more PC like, "culture misalignment." That's an invitation for legal issues. They're going to tie it back to performance as much as they can, and that takes time and effort.
And even when you need intent, these people are like people who do insider trading. They tend to leave a trail. They think they're smart. Then they talk in detail about the crimes they are doing in logged chat rooms. It's hilarious.
Or what do you do when the reason is something somewhat objective like "performance" because you didn't meet your deadlines or something. Can you claim discrimination then?
Otherwise what's stopping everyone from claiming discrimination every time they get laid off?
You can claim discrimination, but then you'll need somebody (usually an attorney you hire) to file a lawsuit against the company. I'm not a lawyer, but I believe you'll also need to cite a specific type of discrimination for your case to have standing.
If there is no reason, why were you fired?
You can easily google/ask chatgpt the answer to your questions - the answer is that some companies are nowadays very risk averse in laying people off precisely because they are afraid of discrimination lawsuits, which is why they generally have very solid documentation of performance problems (hence the reason for the modern Performance Improvement Plan as a papertrail)
Behause they can? To cover their ass? I duuno.
I'm asking since I live in an EU country where you can get laid off for no reason and employers usually provide no exact reason in writing precisely to potentially avoid getting sued.
They just terminate your contract and let you know they terminate your contract by giving you your notice and that's that, you're gone in 30-90 days, no need to provide an explanation as to why they decided to terminate you since they're not required by law.
So I'm asking to know how it's like in the US if it's like here. If employers aren't required by law to provide termination reason, why would they?
What EU country is that?
Austria.
But I didn't really discuss this topic with the coworkers I visited so clearly I was wrong :(
Like here in Spain if I'd get fired I would get a redundancy package for sure. And of course France has even better protections (we're all jealous of their 2 months holidays of course :P ).
I'm not sure if we're unionised though.
Thanks for letting me know. I was not really considering it as a place to live but I won't now - especially as I'm getting older.
Usually if that's the reason the company will go to great pains to document it and fire you properly, for cause. This is where PIPs (performance improvement plans) come in—they document the specific areas where performance is lacking, set specific targets for improvement, show that those targets were not met in the time allotted, and then fire you.
If a company doesn't do that then yeah, they're leaving themselves open to a discrimination suit. It doesn't usually happen because lawsuits are expensive and unemployed people tend to not have the resources to fight back, but larger companies will usually take pains to be sure they're covered.