My employer has asked many of us to sign this form.. its it legal

[whatsaywhat]

delete pls

 

[OHRoadwarrior]

Yes, it is legal. That is because you don't have a union and CBA to protect your job.

 

[Willlyjo]

Hello i live in San Antonio TX, I don't want to say what company it is, but its a small business. This is what the form says...

I hereby acknowledge receipt of the (company name)Employee handbook, and i understand that is is my responsibility to read and comply with the polices contained in the hand book and any revisions made to it.

I acknowledge that i have no employment contract with (company name) and that i am employed for no specified length of employment. I understand that i can terminate my employment at will, with or without cause, at any time, and that (company) can terminate my employment at will at any time and with or without cause for lawful reason.


Is this legal?

Also if we don't sign it we will no longer have a job

Yes it is perfectly legal for your employer to make the employees sign such an agreement. It is their attempt to solidify chances that you wouldn't be able to come back at a future date and plead Wrongful Termination for breach of an implied contract. Most states allow "At Will" status for employees which means they can quit the job for any reason and their employer can terminate the employer/employee relationship for any reason.

The only way someone could be Wrongfully terminated as an "At Will" employee is if they were terminated in breach of Public Policy.

 

[cbg]

This is not only legal, it is common, and truthfully? It doesn't make a bit of difference whether you sign or not.

In every state but Montana, and sometimes in Montana, you are an at will employee unless you and your employer have both signed something that says you're not. What you have been asked to sign is an acknowledgement of what is already the case. Even if you don't sign it, you can quit at any time and your employer can fire you at any time. The letter isn't making it true; the letter is your acknowledgement of what is already true.

Yes, you can legally be fired for not signing it. You can legally be fired for not wearing green socks. Likewise, you can quit because your boss is a Patriots fan and you grew up next door to Peyton Manning.

So you may as well sign it and keep your job.

 

[commentator]

I have a suspicion about what is going on here. I don't know how long you have been employed here at this company, but if your employer has recently tried to fire someone, and that someone has been able to be approved for unemployment benefits, this may be what this new signing event is all about. They may have been told the person was approved, and it was because they did not have a clearly worded policy about the company's rules and regulations, and that the person did not have any idea they were about to be terminated if they did not change their behavior.

What they are trying to do is keep it to where if they want to fire someone, they can do so without the person being approved for unemployment insurance benefits. If the next person fired says they weren't aware of the company's policies about some issue for which they have been terminated, they will be able to pull out this form and show where the person has signed off that they do understand the policies. ("See, it WAS against the rules to wear green socks on Mondays!") This would keep the person from being approved for unemployment insurance when fired.

Employers can really be jerks sometimes. There are many that think it is important to be able to not only "Fire at will" but to have no financial penalties for doing so in terms of the person getting approved for unemployment benefits. It makes them feel powerful and God-like to be able to cut off an employee's earnings and ability to make a living because they were not instantly obeyed without question. It really chaps their act when the employee then files for and is approved for unemployment benefits after they've done that.

And everything in the paper you've been asked to sign is perfectly legal, and is very true. You are responsible for following all the rules in the handbook and you can be fired at will. But that doesn't mean, of course that if you are fired, you will not go at once and file for unemployment insurance and if you can show that you were terminated without the employer having a valid misconduct work related reason for firing you, you can still be approved.

Obey the rules. Do your best to do your job to the best of your abilities. Be polite, professional and good at what you do. If you don't like the working conditions and situations, be avidly looking for another job while you still have this one. Then let the chips fall. Do not quit the job if you are threatened or asked to do more than you can do. Let them actually fire you for performance issues, or because they want to, if you don't get out before you get that better new job. This is the professional way to defend yourself against icky employers

 

[Zigner]

I have a suspicion about what is going on here. I don't know how long you have been employed here at this company, but if your employer has recently tried to fire someone, and that someone has been able to be approved for unemployment benefits, this may be what this new signing event is all about. They may have been told the person was approved, and it was because they did not have a clearly worded policy about the company's rules and regulations, and that the person did not have any idea they were about to be terminated if they did not change their behavior.

What they are trying to do is keep it to where if they want to fire someone, they can do so without the person being approved for unemployment insurance benefits. If the next person fired says they weren't aware of the company's policies about some issue for which they have been terminated, they will be able to pull out this form and show where the person has signed off that they do understand the policies. ("See, it WAS against the rules to wear green socks on Mondays!") This would keep the person from being approved for unemployment insurance when fired.

Employers can really be jerks sometimes. There are many that think it is important to be able to not only "Fire at will" but to have no financial penalties for doing so in terms of the person getting approved for unemployment benefits. It makes them feel powerful and God-like to be able to cut off an employee's earnings and ability to make a living because they were not instantly obeyed without question. It really chaps their act when the employee then files for and is approved for unemployment benefits after they've done that.

And everything in the paper you've been asked to sign is perfectly legal, and is very true. You are responsible for following all the rules in the handbook and you can be fired at will. But that doesn't mean, of course that if you are fired, you will not go at once and file for unemployment insurance and if you can show that you were terminated without the employer having a valid misconduct work related reason for firing you, you can still be approved.

Obey the rules. Do your best to do your job to the best of your abilities. Be polite, professional and good at what you do. If you don't like the working conditions and situations, be avidly looking for another job while you still have this one. Then let the chips fall. Do not quit the job if you are threatened or asked to do more than you can do. Let them actually fire you for performance issues, or because they want to, if you don't get out before you get that better new job. This is the professional way to defend yourself against icky employers

Whoa - slow down there. An employer doesn't have to be evil incarnate just because they want this sort of form signed.

Perhaps this employer now realizes that they need to have clear-cut policies that everyone understands.

Perhaps this employer was required by their EPLI carrier to have these forms on file from their employees.

I'm sure there are other possibilities out there, but those two just jump out at me. I suppose it's because those are two reasons we've had to have our employees fill sign very similar forms.

 

[commentator]

Sorry Zigner, I guess I do tend to suspect the worst of employers who suddenly come in and change their behavior or suddenly require all the employees to sign something like this. Well, not really the worst, it's just very possible that they have been recently counseled by a loss in the unemployment hearings, and we were always very glad to tell them when they demanded, "Just what sort of evidence would I need to show this was misconduct?"

Many many times I've seen employers correct these lapses in their policy program after they'd lost that first appeals hearing. It's a learning process. AA good employer will have very clear policies, will verify that all employees are familiar with them, and use progressive discipline to move out employees who are troublesome. There's nothing bad at all about that.

But all the emphasis on the "at will" stuff sounds a great deal like it's meant to discourage employees from even considering filing from unemployment benefits, to remind their employees that they have the ability to fire at will. Which, of course does not preclude a fired worker from filing for unemployment benefits, but it does sort of give that impression.

 

[cbg]

Commentator, you know I love you, right?

But I don't see a single word in that form that even hints that an employee should not file for unemployment. I'm not even seeing anything in the idea of acknowledging that employment is at-will that suggests that an employee should not file for unemployment. I frankly don't see a connection between the two concepts. I've signed forms like this one, and I've had my employees sign forms like this one; I've collected unemployment and I've only contested unemployment for my employees when there was a valid claim for misconduct.

Are you okay, my friend? This isn't the first post when you've sounded unlike yourself.

 

[commentator]

Commentator, you know I love you, right?

But I don't see a single word in that form that even hints that an employee should not file for unemployment. I'm not even seeing anything in the idea of acknowledging that employment is at-will that suggests that an employee should not file for unemployment. I frankly don't see a connection between the two concepts. I've signed forms like this one, and I've had my employees sign forms like this one; I've collected unemployment and I've only contested unemployment for my employees when there was a valid claim for misconduct.

Are you okay, my friend? This isn't the first post when you've sounded unlike yourself.

Okay, so far, I think...I know you've done things very right, if the employer takes the trouble to get good HR advice they rarely ever lose an unemployment hearing. But even so, I am very hypersensitive to employers who find it necessary to review and re-emphasize the concept of "at will." Perhaps review of the rules and regs in the handbook may be periodically appropriate, but like I said, the reminders that they are able to terminate at will, coming after people have been employed there for a while sounds to me like the employer may be a little sore about something. Okay maybe it's not designed to discourage the people from thinking of filing for benefits. After all the posters informing people of the right to file must be on display in the workplace, just like the minimum wage posters.

 

[cbg]

Just as an example, once we handed out non-disclosure notices, as well as at-will notices, to all employees regardless of how long they'd been employed. Not because we were attempting to discourage anyone from doing anything, and we even made a point of telling employees who asked that, with limited exceptions, we did not propose to enforce the ND's. But we did require signatures on them anyway.

So why did we hand them out?

Because a very large and lucrative grant was dependent on our having them on file. No at will notices and ND's, no money.

 

[eerelations]

I specialize in start-up HR, i.e., starting an HR function where there hasn't been one before. So I'm always handing out never-before-seen forms for employees to sign. Not because I'm evil but because I'm trying to instill some good HR practices into the company, and I have to start somewhere.