@Nook I don’t remember the other long time posters that are lawyers, but I was kind of hoping for some general advice here. Backstory I have worked for my company for 18 years. This is in the hospitality industry. we do employee surveys on a fairly regular basis. I mentor a person that is in charge of a couple units in another state. Their last round of surveys came back on the lower end of the scoring spectrum. This is a staff of about 25 people and only six surveys. The vast majority of the six surveys was negative. Nothing crazy kind of mostly petty stuff that you encounter in interpersonal relationships in stressful environments. these units have a employee that has been 22 years 10 years. Let’s call him Juan. He is an excellent employee and if anything he does occasionally ruffle feathers by trying to hold his coworkers accountable. he has high standards of his own and every once in a while, his frustration boils over towards those around him. keep in mind that these surveys are anonymous. When the company received this data, they made the decision to go into the units pick out two or three employees that they assumed the feedback came from and asked for statements. Inside of one of the statements given by another employee who is not crazy about Juanncontained the statement that she knew it to be true that one was in the United States illegally and had been working for us illegally for over 20 years. Based off of the singular statement, our HR department ran the Social Security number verified that it was incorrect and terminated the employee. something about this seems wrong to me and very disturbing. When it was brought to the operations manager in that area, he backed the decision, but he had wanted to get rid of this individual for quite a while because he is very highly paid and works a lot of overtime. I have zero knowledge of immigration law but just arbitrarily checking this Social Security number on the statement of a single person seems wrong. Thoughts from anyone educated?
I'm not a law talking guy, but I would think a responsible HR would check all their hires to verify they are legal to work. Feels dirty to selectively check one guy. But they shouldn't be refraining from checking.
This person was hired 22 years ago in a state that to this day does not require even verify. My question/problem with what happened to him is selectively auditing the Social Security number based off of a singular statement from somebody who doesn’t like the individual.
I'm not a lawyer. That said, I think it's clear that the law we think we have is not the law we have right now. If that is the worst thing that happens to Juan, he's lucky. Already, so many have experienced much worse. And like in your story, there are folks gleefully calling attention to folks who are just trying to live their life. Buckle up folks.
