Employees Fired Without Cause
Digging deeper into the employment law issues of employees terminated without cause.
EMPLOYMENT LAW | FIRED WITHOUT CAUSE | FIRED FOR CAUSE | LAYOFF | FORCED OUT | QUIT / RESIGN | CLASS ACTIONS
Contact Neufeld Legal PC at 403-400-4092 or Chris@NeufeldLegal.com
When you are fired from your job, your initial reaction might well be that the employer's proposed termination pay and severance pay package is the best that you will ever see, and if you were to fight for more, your former boss would deploy the company's over-priced legal team to quash your efforts to get what you are rightly entitled to. However, you shouldn't be dissuaded from at least having your employer's termination and severance offer reviewed by a knowledgeable lawyer, which is your legal right and a stated expectation of your former employer (although their hope is that your lawyer doesn't dig too deep and discover the inadequacies of their proposed payout).
Employee terminations are largely driven by financial decisions, determined by corporate executives and financial experts, who are attempting to optimize the company's profits and limit its costs. And in these fiscal calculations, an ex-employee provides no further positive contribution towards the company's bottom line. As such, their termination and severance pay packages tend to be kept as low as possible, while seeking to avoid disincentivizing current and future employees or exposing the company to employment litigation that could prove harmful. Yet, even than, the dynamics of employment litigation make commencing with lowball offers an overall financial winner, given how many former employees will accept the initial offer or even a slightly improved offer, such that there is generally little concern for larger employers.
Given this reality, it is quite likely that you've been offered a wholly inadequate termination and severance pay package, such that you would be well served to have it reviewed by a knowledgeable lawyer and obtain an honest assessment as to what you might be able to obtain and how the lawyer would go about pursuing it. And even though your former employer will have sought to insulate itself against their terminated employees, through the initial investigation, it is often possible to identify legitimate legal avenues to more effectively pursue a significantly greater payout. For even though the largest employers have large payroll, human resource and legal departments, that does not prevent them from making mistakes and thereby providing ourselves with the legal leverage to effectively counter what tends to be highly inadequate offers to departing employees. What is essential is knowing where to look and what to look for, such that we might reverse the advantage that even the largest of employers believe they enjoy and thereby utilize their finanical power against them.
So if you're looking for a lawyer to provide a distinct approach to reviewing and pursuing an increased termination and severance pay-out, or your looking for a second opinion, do not hesitate to contact Christopher Neufeld at Chris@NeufeldLegal.com or 403-400-4092.
* If you've recently accepted a termination and severance pay package, and only now are you realizing that you may have taken considerably less than what you deserved, we may still be able to assist you. Even if its been years since you lost that particular job and you are now questioning whether or not you might owed money from your former boss, contact us to see what options might be available to yourself, given that the Alberta Employment Standards Code does provide some very significant employee pay protections that not only most Alberta employees, but apparently most Alberta employment lawyers, are unaware of.