You need to stifle your indignation first, part of a manager's job is to withhold information about layoffs to maintain productivity and not corrupt the executive message, and his severance package is none of your business. Don't think you won any friends or supporters either, some of your co-workers have possibly been through this before and don't have patience for people who can't just deal with it. But yeah, you need to start contacting recruiters in your field, that's pretty much the only thing you should have done with this gossip/information. You need to remove "butt kissing" and "politics" from your vocabulary and corporate mindset immediately.
please don't quit. people who quit without finding other means of pay always end up worse off. most of the time.
True, but you don't have to tap dance either on your application or interview. Some applications ask directly if you've been fired and that's really just an ATS screening question, aka automatic rejection.
I see fired vs laid off misused quite often. They have two very different connotations. If he gets laid off because of cutbacks and the business closing, he can likely collect unemployment. If hes fired because he called out his superiors in an open meeting, it is very unlikely he will collect unemployment.
Let's be honest, you should take HR Depart's advice, he might well be the only one who has experience in this matter. If not, maybe try personal finance on reddit?
In any other situation I would agree with you, but this company is blatantly doing a disservice to it's employees. They have fired several employees here that were once full time, fired then hired on as contract so as to not pay benefits knowing full well that they can do it bc of the market. As for his severance package, it is my business. He has secured it by recommending that we fire HR,Purchasing,Accounting managers and then have their employees report to him knowing full well that he can't do the job. He is playing the game that the company will close before his ineptness is noticed. The sad part of all this is that all the people he has recommended for layoffs are people that have worked with him in previous companies and are friends. On one side he is saying that he fought for them to get severances but while in the meetings with the executive staff he is saying otherwise.
The bar for not collecting unemployment is extremely high. Basically you have to rape, kill, torture or embezzle not to be able to collect unemployment.
In Texas, maybe; I think the violation has to be tied to previous warnings or some documented corporate policy, also they may have to specifically stipulate the reason and offending acts in your termination paperwork. Companies don't always respond to unemployment inquiries, and sometimes deliberately as a courtesy to the employee, so you can just be vague or mum betting on that.
Corporations have no loyalty to workers and management is structured so the sh** rolls down hill. Your boss is probably being forced into being a prick by his boss. He's probably got a big mortgage, kids in private school, he's older....and he's probably scared sh**less. Stand your ground, be true to yourself and do your job well; that's all you can do there. Apologize if you think you were out of line. Stress makes everybody a little over reactive.
I wouldn't go that far. But he will get a hearing if his former employer attempts to block him from receiving his unemployment and it will be difficult for his former employer to prove that he was fired for cause based on his description. Unless other co-workers are willing to testify during his hearing. Then its he said she said. You might want to fwd any emails (demonstrating good performance or praise from your employer) to a personal email account in case you have to go through a hearing.
Yeah, you're right. I misread the OP and didn't get that last part. Quitting is definitely and option in this instance, though I still wouldn't suggest it. And the employer could terminate and have grounds for appealing the OP's claim for unemployment benefits. He may have just made it easier for them to pull the trigger.
As many others have stated, you get unemployment if you are let go. You get nothing if you quit. Let them lay you off while you look for a new job. You pay for unemployment out of every paycheck and would be crazy to give it up if and when you are out of work. Don't let pride and anger get in the way of money if you are out of work
This is true. The bar is pretty low. The key is persistence. If a company has a good HR person and keeps good records, they can certainly appeal and win. I ran into this situation with my first real job back in my late teens. My dept. boss and I clashed. I was never formally written up and I could have been sent to a different dept with everyone being the happier. I was shown the door because I made a smartelic joke in an email (the proof) to a no-named engineer a 1000 miles away. Needless to say, he challenged all my appeals to ensure i did not get unemployment and won. I chose not to continue the fight and pay back the unemployment...getting another job seemed easier. Interesting enough, more heads began to roll, but most of them were laid off. They even laid off one guy who was always viewing p*rn and gave him compensation in fear he would retaliate.
a friend of mind didn't wait then and left the company. 2 months later, the company gave great compensation package that wuold give him easily 30k had he waited.
a contracting company probably wouldn't fight an unemployment claim, they have already budgeted for layoff costs, it would be more trouble that it's worth, especially if they trim the HR dept. *contracting as in getting smaller to be sold you still might apologize, even insincerely, just to duck the issue. consider your insincerity as sticking it to the man.
Yep, the bar is basically any termination not related to layoffs or performance. That basically leaves misconduct as the only other category, and its and extremely broad one. This is true also, many large companies don't contest AT ALL. There's actually a ton of fraud that happens where scammers will file for unemployment using the info from a person that is still working. Companies don't really pay attention and they just pay it. Many times going on unnoticed until the State's fraud detection catches it.
Texas Workforce Commission hands out unemployment benefits like candy. If the company that fired the worker disputes that they should be getting benefits, the TWC tends to take the side of the worker. And even if the employer proves their case, benefits have been being paid out to the worker in the meantime and it's hard for TWC to get the money back.
There's some strong arguments here for sticking around. You don't get unemployment if you're fired for cause. But, it seems unlikely to me that a company in distress will be challenging filings. So, if unemployment benefits are the concern, maybe you stick around. My concern was what do you tell the next company? If they call the previous employer and are told you've been fired for cause, that hurts your chances to get the next job. If you've quit, you get to make up your own story -- 'oh, the company was going out of business and the atmosphere was getting poisonous. I thought it'd be better for me to remove myself from the situation entirely.' Also, if you give 2 weeks notice, that might immunize you from getting fired for 2 weeks. That'll get you two weeks of pay while you focus on a job search. But the unemployment benefits may be more valuable.
