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The Life Foundations Nexus

 

 

UNFAIR JOB TERMINATION

 

 

 

Copyright July 8, 2003 6:15 PM CST

By The Life Foundations Nexus

 

Updated September 11, 2004 7:51 PM CST

Copyright September 11, 2004 7:51 PM CST

By The Life Foundations Nexus

 

 

 

 

This year, a friend of mine was let go from his job.  His manager notified him that he would be let go at some time in the not too distant future.  He was told that the president of the company believed that they only needed one person to do the work he was doing.  This was untrue and was later proven untrue when immediately after my friend was let go an email was sent to all company employees, seeking to fill his position.  My friend was also told that someone said he was not making any contribution to the company.  This was disproved by over five thousand documents, detailing all that he had contributed to the company.  Finally, he was told that someone simply wanted him out of the company.

 

On the day he was let go, his manager ambushed him.  Instead of being told that the company only needed one person to do the work he was doing and/or that he had not made any contribution to the company, he was told that he had failed in certain, other ways; specifically, coming in late, not working late, and not learning his job quickly enough.  These supposed failings were disproved by the documents referred to above.  My friend asked if anything he could say would prevent his termination.  He was told no.

 

What do you do in such a case?  First, forgive those who have hurt you.  Second, do not let the injustice consume you.  Instead, develop a strategy.  A part of this strategy is to allot only so much time each day to address the injustice.  Next, contact your state’s Department of Labor if your termination was or possibly was due to discrimination.  If they cannot help you, contact your state’s Department of Human Rights.  If they cannot help you, contact a lawyer.  You always have the right to sue a former employer because of an unfair job termination.  If you lose your suit, you can do any or all of the following and more:

 

  1. Contact the media to tell your story.
  2. Start a movement to get laws passed to protect people like yourself.  This law might be retroactive so that you can sue your former employer a second time.
  3. We will be adding more to this list later.

 

In any case, you never have to resign yourself to the situation.  You can always fight back!

 

 

Prevention And Fighting Back

 

Some steps you can take to prevent or, at least, later find yourself better prepared to fight an unfair job termination are:

 

  1. Save daily emails that detail your work.  Make sure you save them to a floppy disk and take them home at the end of each day.  Make a copy of this floppy disk and never take this copy to work.
  2. When you arrive at home after work each day, enter a record in a daily work diary or journal, recording what you did at work that day.
  3. We will be adding more to this list later.

 

 

More later.