3 ms·

A long standing maneuver that companies have is the "your job is now in Houston" when you live in New York. This has an interesting side effect of basically rem

A long standing maneuver that companies have is the "your job is now in Houston" when you live in New York. This has an interesting side effect of basically removing anyone from your company who is old enough to have a family with kids in school, wife working etc. Basically it "legally" removes the older more expensive employees. RTO will remove people also like you said, but I wonder what demographic?

gamblor956 4y ago
Moving a person's office of employment outside of what would be considered a reasonable commute is treated as a constructive dismissal in the U.S. It is generally legal, because is treated as a normal termination by the employer (basically: the employee's "current" job is being terminated and the employer is offering them a "new" job in a new location). This means, among other things, that the employee qualifies for unemployment, the employer's unemployment insurance account will get dinged, etc.
- microtherion 4y ago
  My understanding (I am not a lawyer, talk to one if you think you're subject to a situation like this) is that constructive dismissal is NOT legal, and that the whole reason this is a legal term is that this is one of the categories of job separation that falls under "wrongful termination" in most states, even those that are otherwise under an "at-will" employment regime. In the particular case of Twitter, they announced in 2020 that they would allow "permanent" remote work, and reiterated this policy at least as late as March of this year [1]. If I'm correctly informed, the change in this policy was announced in an e-mail that was sent out on Wednesday, and was to be effective on Thursday, the following day. It would seem to me that this is about as straightforward and well-documented a constructive dismissal fact pattern as you could conceive. [1] https://thinkremote.com/twitter-to-open-offices-this-month-but-permanent-remote-work-is-an-option/ https://thinkremote.com/twitter-to-open-offices-this-month-b...
  - geoelectric 4y ago
    Here's CA's stance, and consider that CA is probably going to be the most protective state in the US when it comes to these things. Other states with decent labor protection mostly copied our laws. https://workplacerightslaw.com/library/retaliation/constructive-discharge-california-quitting-fired/ https://workplacerightslaw.com/library/retaliation/construct... My take: The TL;DR is that it's just equivalent to getting fired. If you can prove you got shuffled out the door via constructive dismissal for reasons it's illegal to fire people for, then it's illegal. If at-will would've applied anyway, it's just a jerk move. Mostly it means you still get unemployment and can still sue for wrongful termination, even though you technically resigned. What I suspect might be more of an issue, at least in CA, is that our at-will law has a "good faith" clause that basically implies you can't fire someone for a reason that would broadly be considered unethical in the context of an employer-employee business relationship. The classic example is canning someone just before they get their commissions purely to save yourself of the cost of paying them. My guess is that's one reason why Facebook, for example, is giving all their employees the mid-November vest even if they got fired first. Constructively dismissing someone out the door probably takes away a lot of argument that you were acting in good faith. If they promised these people that they could work remote and they invested in property then get forced to move, I actually wonder if it could open up the company to promissory estoppel (i.e., I had a financial loss based on a reasonable promise you broke, and now I want to recover). The times I've heard about that cause in the past were exactly for situations where you moved for a job, then the job was rescinded. At the very least, that angle probably wouldn't look great in court during a wrongful termination suit. (IANAL either, but since I work in CA I try to stay reasonably informed of the laws that affect me.)
    - kortilla 4y ago
      > Other states with decent labor protection mostly copied our laws. CA is not special protecting employees. It’s an at-will state. About the only useful thing it has is banning non-competes.
      - geoelectric 4y ago
jprd 4y ago
COUGH! IBM! COUGH! GE!

gamblor956 4y ago

Moving a person's office of employment outside of what would be considered a reasonable commute is treated as a constructive dismissal in the U.S. It is generally legal, because is treated as a normal termination by the employer (basically: the employee's "current" job is being terminated and the employer is offering them a "new" job in a new location). This means, among other things, that the employee qualifies for unemployment, the employer's unemployment insurance account will get dinged, etc.

microtherion 4y ago
My understanding (I am not a lawyer, talk to one if you think you're subject to a situation like this) is that constructive dismissal is NOT legal, and that the whole reason this is a legal term is that this is one of the categories of job separation that falls under "wrongful termination" in most states, even those that are otherwise under an "at-will" employment regime. In the particular case of Twitter, they announced in 2020 that they would allow "permanent" remote work, and reiterated this policy at least as late as March of this year [1]. If I'm correctly informed, the change in this policy was announced in an e-mail that was sent out on Wednesday, and was to be effective on Thursday, the following day. It would seem to me that this is about as straightforward and well-documented a constructive dismissal fact pattern as you could conceive. [1] https://thinkremote.com/twitter-to-open-offices-this-month-but-permanent-remote-work-is-an-option/ https://thinkremote.com/twitter-to-open-offices-this-month-b...
- geoelectric 4y ago
  Here's CA's stance, and consider that CA is probably going to be the most protective state in the US when it comes to these things. Other states with decent labor protection mostly copied our laws. https://workplacerightslaw.com/library/retaliation/constructive-discharge-california-quitting-fired/ https://workplacerightslaw.com/library/retaliation/construct... My take: The TL;DR is that it's just equivalent to getting fired. If you can prove you got shuffled out the door via constructive dismissal for reasons it's illegal to fire people for, then it's illegal. If at-will would've applied anyway, it's just a jerk move. Mostly it means you still get unemployment and can still sue for wrongful termination, even though you technically resigned. What I suspect might be more of an issue, at least in CA, is that our at-will law has a "good faith" clause that basically implies you can't fire someone for a reason that would broadly be considered unethical in the context of an employer-employee business relationship. The classic example is canning someone just before they get their commissions purely to save yourself of the cost of paying them. My guess is that's one reason why Facebook, for example, is giving all their employees the mid-November vest even if they got fired first. Constructively dismissing someone out the door probably takes away a lot of argument that you were acting in good faith. If they promised these people that they could work remote and they invested in property then get forced to move, I actually wonder if it could open up the company to promissory estoppel (i.e., I had a financial loss based on a reasonable promise you broke, and now I want to recover). The times I've heard about that cause in the past were exactly for situations where you moved for a job, then the job was rescinded. At the very least, that angle probably wouldn't look great in court during a wrongful termination suit. (IANAL either, but since I work in CA I try to stay reasonably informed of the laws that affect me.)
  - kortilla 4y ago
    > Other states with decent labor protection mostly copied our laws. CA is not special protecting employees. It’s an at-will state. About the only useful thing it has is banning non-competes.
    - geoelectric 4y ago

jprd 4y ago

COUGH! IBM! COUGH! GE!