Just a few things you should know
Songwriters, like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, wrote a lot of song fragments.
There was not enough material to put together a complete song, but the fragment
was quite good. A couple of times, the Beatles put these fragments together and
came up with a hit song.
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For this month, I decided to string some of those paragraphs into a single
column. If it sounds like one of those Beatle songs (A Day in the Life, for
example), please accept my apologies.
The termination interview
Employers are rightly concerned about the legal consequences of terminating an
employee. If a termination is not based on solid evidence of misconduct or poor
performance, the likelihood of being sued for discrimination increases.
Unfortunately, employers can build a solid case and completely ruin it at the
termination interview.
One of the most common mistakes is to attempt to soften the blow. Don’t.
Firing an employee is miserable, and there is no “nice” way to do it, only a civil way. Never tell the employee you feel bad, that it
wasn’t your idea (if you have a partner or boss who made the actual decision), or
that his termination is a less severe employment action like a layoff or
corporate reorganization.
If you do, you could find a plaintiff’s lawyer saying you “felt bad” because you were aware of your violation of the law, that you disagreed with
your partner or manager’s discriminatory decision, or you are a liar trying to disguise an unlawful
termination as a layoff.
The termination interview should be a recital of the facts. “You are being terminated today for poor work performance. You have cost the
company $500 in careless mistakes in the past week, and you have a history of
such careless mistakes.” If the reason for termination is misconduct, describe the misconduct. “You are being fired for hitting your supervisor with a baseball bat.”
Never tell an employee a vague, non-reason for the termination. For example, “you don’t fit in,” or “the company feels it needs to make a change” are not helpful.
Give the reasons for those conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable it is to do
so.
The termination interview is not a debate. If the employee wants to argue, tell
him that the time for argument is over. The decision is final.
If the employee offers new evidence, listen, and say that the termination still
stands, but you will investigate the new evidence.
Wage and hour reminders
The wage and hour laws are horribly complicated and horribly pro-employee. For
example, rules requiring overtime to be approved before it is paid are not
generally proper.
Employees who violate such rules should be paid, though they can be disciplined
for violating the approval rule. Employee agreements to take less than they are
entitled to receive under the wage and hour laws are not valid, even if the
employee suggested the terms of the agreement for selfish reasons.
The wage and hour policies of your business should be audited regularly to
insure that you are not sitting on a three-year back pay time bomb.
Political correctness
On my blog recently, I asked if humor in the workplace was dead. Jokes relating
to race, sex, age, national origin, disability, and the like are regularly used
as evidence to prove discrimination.
What used to be gentle kidding is now a weapon that can be used against the
employer. Further, comments between employees can come back to haunt an
employer in a discrimination suit in the context of testimony that the company “tolerated an atmosphere of hate” by allowing employees to comment about an employee’s age, hair, accent, or other characteristic.
The politics of big labor
The Wall Street Journal reports that if the Democrats capture the White House,
the labor laws of the country will change in a big way.
Big Labor, which supports the Democrats, is fighting for its life. Labor union
membership is down, except in the government sector, and the payback for union
support are laws to increase union membership. The drycleaning industry is a
ripe target for unionization.
We will know who the next president will be when I sit down to write my next
column. I wonder what I will be writing about then.
