Tagged: performance management

Employment

“At-Will” Employment in the U.S. – It’s a Trap!

Many Canadian employers expanding into the U.S. believe the U.S. legal presumption of at-will employment will provide them with additional protection against wrongful termination claims. Unfortunately for those employers, this belief is a trap. In Canada, employees who are terminated without cause often must be paid severance. In the U.S. however, an employer is generally not obligated to pay severance when an employee is fired without cause unless there is a contract requiring severance. The reality in the U.S. is that essentially every employee falls into an exception to the at-will employment doctrine. Wrongful termination claims in the U.S. are almost always discrimination or retaliation claims. In the former claim, the employee alleges...

Employment

Don’t Let a Tight Labor Market Get Your Guard Down

In wrongful termination cases in the U.S., the primary source of liability for employers is an employee’s alleged lost wages. Under U.S. law, an employee who is terminated for a discriminatory or a retaliatory reason is entitled to recover the amount of wages the employee would have earned had the employee not been wrongfully terminated. In a normal labor market, an employee might be able to argue that it will take him or her six months or even a year to find a new job, and the employer, therefore, should pay the employee six months’ to a year’s worth of lost wages. In a tight labor market, however, it is much harder for...