It seems as though the case is based on not providing the required by law notice for mass layoffs.
I don’t know about Yahoo! specifically, but I have never worked anywhere where the situation wasn’t “at-will,” which seems like it would protect Yahoo! from this type of lawsuit, provided they weren’t breaking the law, which, of course is allegedly the case. The fact that managers allegedly stacked the stack, so to speak, seems irrelevent, if “at-will” is in play. But, IANAL.
U.S. employment is mostly at-will, but still regulated by some exceptions. There aren’t a lot of them, but three of them at the federal level are: 1) you can’t fire someone for reasons specifically prohibited by law (race, religion, etc.), 2) you can’t fire someone as retaliation for whistleblowing, and 3) if laying off many people at once for economic reasons, you have to file a WARN Act notice of mass layoffs 60 days in advance.
Also, you can’t legally fire someone for discussing their pay, except in security-clearance jobs. It’s an anti-unionbusting provision.
Unfortunately, in today’s world, nothing stops a manager who finds out that you discussed pay from firing you “for performance”. Since job performance is so subjective, nothing prevents it from including “must be loyal to the corporate interest, even in spite of legal and ethical options that might oppose it”.
The same applies to whistleblowing. Technically, retaliation is illegal. In practice, most white-collar managers will concoct a phony performance case (“not a team player”, “distracted by side projects”, where “side projects” is code for “that thing we legally can’t fire her for”) and get away with it.
Sure. And 3, it seems, is the one they are potentially guilty of. They may be guilty of 1, but the article doesn’t provide evidence to that, and 2 does not seem to apply either.
Yahoo doesn’t get to opt out of labor law by declaring itself “at-will” (which, anyway, is not really a legally meaningful term in the US). If it was using stack ranking to mandate that a certain percentage of people be identified as low performers and then simultaneously laying off hundreds of those people allegedly for that low performance, to me that seems like a de facto mass layoff, and an attempt to evade the laws surrounding such layoffs by calling it something else.
How is at-will not meaningful? Is there case law where it did not hold up, and it wasn’t determined that there were (other) labor law violations that affected the ruling?
This case is, as I implied before, likely to be decided by ruling on the mass layoff. Whether or not there was intent to evade mass layoff laws isn’t clear, but one would assume that Yahoo! does the right thing and provides a severence package(? Maybe a naive assumption, mind you). Is the potential damage from a lawsuit worth the costs, maybe, saved by laying off without notice? Seems unlikely, but I don’t have numbers in front of me, or the conditions of termination, so, no idea.
What “at will” means is that the length of the contract is undefined. The employee and employer have the right to end the arrangement at any time. A contrast would be in pro sports or entertainment, where the length of the contract and the pay are defined upfront and there are substantial penalties if either side quits or moves to another team.
It doesn’t mean that the relationship can be ended for any reason, although in practice it puts the burden of proof on the employee. It’s also, for the individual, extraordinarily risky to sue because you’re going up against an adversary that will literally pay people to trash your performance on the witness stand and sometimes in the public– and, if they decline to lie about you, it will fire them and ruin their reputations with bad references. (I’ve actually seen this first-hand.) Legislating intent is nearly impossible, and litigating it is, unfortunately, likewise difficult.
It doesn’t mean that the relationship can be ended for any reason, although in practice it puts the burden of proof on the employee.
That is exactly what it means, at least according to wikipedia.
There is also the possibility, (and increasingly so) that the contract stipulates mandatory arbitration, which gives the employee no right to sue. Of course, mandatory arbitration means that the employer picks the arbitrator, who likely has a business arrangement with the company, and, not surprisingly, more often than not sides with the company.
Read what I said. “At will” employment doesn’t mean that the relationship can be ended for any reason. It can be ended for any legal reason, the burden of proof being on the employee to prove that it was illegal (e.g. discrimination, retaliation). Of course, there are many cases where that’s extremely difficult to do.
In practice, employers get away with a lot of shit that they shouldn’t. I don’t think we disagree there. However, it’s not carte blanche. It gives employers quite a bit of flexibility, and then that flexibility is further abused (i.e. retaliatory firings are dressed up as “performance”) but it doesn’t, by the letter of the law, give total freedom.
You’re absolutely right about binding mandatory arbitration. It’s pure evil.
What I meant by saying that “at-will” is not meaningful is that a company, by declaring its employees to be “at-will,” is not actually changing anything about its legal relationship with its employees relative to a company that makes no such declaration. As mjn described above, in one sense all[1] US companies are at-will (since we do not require reasonable cause for termination like most countries), in another sense none are truly at-will (since certain causes of termination are prohibited), but in either case the company’s self-designation as “at-will” is irrelevant.
[1] The exception being those where a collective bargaining agreement is in place.
It seems as though the case is based on not providing the required by law notice for mass layoffs.
I don’t know about Yahoo! specifically, but I have never worked anywhere where the situation wasn’t “at-will,” which seems like it would protect Yahoo! from this type of lawsuit, provided they weren’t breaking the law, which, of course is allegedly the case. The fact that managers allegedly stacked the stack, so to speak, seems irrelevent, if “at-will” is in play. But, IANAL.
U.S. employment is mostly at-will, but still regulated by some exceptions. There aren’t a lot of them, but three of them at the federal level are: 1) you can’t fire someone for reasons specifically prohibited by law (race, religion, etc.), 2) you can’t fire someone as retaliation for whistleblowing, and 3) if laying off many people at once for economic reasons, you have to file a WARN Act notice of mass layoffs 60 days in advance.
Also, you can’t legally fire someone for discussing their pay, except in security-clearance jobs. It’s an anti-unionbusting provision.
Unfortunately, in today’s world, nothing stops a manager who finds out that you discussed pay from firing you “for performance”. Since job performance is so subjective, nothing prevents it from including “must be loyal to the corporate interest, even in spite of legal and ethical options that might oppose it”.
The same applies to whistleblowing. Technically, retaliation is illegal. In practice, most white-collar managers will concoct a phony performance case (“not a team player”, “distracted by side projects”, where “side projects” is code for “that thing we legally can’t fire her for”) and get away with it.
Sure. And 3, it seems, is the one they are potentially guilty of. They may be guilty of 1, but the article doesn’t provide evidence to that, and 2 does not seem to apply either.
Yahoo doesn’t get to opt out of labor law by declaring itself “at-will” (which, anyway, is not really a legally meaningful term in the US). If it was using stack ranking to mandate that a certain percentage of people be identified as low performers and then simultaneously laying off hundreds of those people allegedly for that low performance, to me that seems like a de facto mass layoff, and an attempt to evade the laws surrounding such layoffs by calling it something else.
How is at-will not meaningful? Is there case law where it did not hold up, and it wasn’t determined that there were (other) labor law violations that affected the ruling?
This case is, as I implied before, likely to be decided by ruling on the mass layoff. Whether or not there was intent to evade mass layoff laws isn’t clear, but one would assume that Yahoo! does the right thing and provides a severence package(? Maybe a naive assumption, mind you). Is the potential damage from a lawsuit worth the costs, maybe, saved by laying off without notice? Seems unlikely, but I don’t have numbers in front of me, or the conditions of termination, so, no idea.
What “at will” means is that the length of the contract is undefined. The employee and employer have the right to end the arrangement at any time. A contrast would be in pro sports or entertainment, where the length of the contract and the pay are defined upfront and there are substantial penalties if either side quits or moves to another team.
It doesn’t mean that the relationship can be ended for any reason, although in practice it puts the burden of proof on the employee. It’s also, for the individual, extraordinarily risky to sue because you’re going up against an adversary that will literally pay people to trash your performance on the witness stand and sometimes in the public– and, if they decline to lie about you, it will fire them and ruin their reputations with bad references. (I’ve actually seen this first-hand.) Legislating intent is nearly impossible, and litigating it is, unfortunately, likewise difficult.
That is exactly what it means, at least according to wikipedia.
There is also the possibility, (and increasingly so) that the contract stipulates mandatory arbitration, which gives the employee no right to sue. Of course, mandatory arbitration means that the employer picks the arbitrator, who likely has a business arrangement with the company, and, not surprisingly, more often than not sides with the company.
Read what I said. “At will” employment doesn’t mean that the relationship can be ended for any reason. It can be ended for any legal reason, the burden of proof being on the employee to prove that it was illegal (e.g. discrimination, retaliation). Of course, there are many cases where that’s extremely difficult to do.
In practice, employers get away with a lot of shit that they shouldn’t. I don’t think we disagree there. However, it’s not carte blanche. It gives employers quite a bit of flexibility, and then that flexibility is further abused (i.e. retaliatory firings are dressed up as “performance”) but it doesn’t, by the letter of the law, give total freedom.
You’re absolutely right about binding mandatory arbitration. It’s pure evil.
What I meant by saying that “at-will” is not meaningful is that a company, by declaring its employees to be “at-will,” is not actually changing anything about its legal relationship with its employees relative to a company that makes no such declaration. As mjn described above, in one sense all[1] US companies are at-will (since we do not require reasonable cause for termination like most countries), in another sense none are truly at-will (since certain causes of termination are prohibited), but in either case the company’s self-designation as “at-will” is irrelevant.
[1] The exception being those where a collective bargaining agreement is in place.