Wrongfully Laid off?

[sissysweet]

I worked for a hospital in Utah for two years. One day I was called in for a one on one meeting and was told to bring my kids with me if I had to. Well my kids had to go and watch me being laid off from my job. I was told that the program was closing so I was not needed as of that day. 4 other people were also laid off. We were not given two weeks, but we were given severance if we would sign a waiver that we would not sue. 2 of us have not signed ours yet because we were told that if they post for jobs within 6 months and do not offer them to us we could take them to court. We just found out that they have posted for 5 new positions and we were laid off under false pretenses, I was wondering if we have a case or not. Please help!

 

[buddy2bear]

If you are a member of a Union, you would have recall rights. If you are not and are in an employment-at-will state, then your employer can do whatever it wants. The "agreement" they wanted you to sign was probably an age-related agreement if you were over 40 years old. Don't sign it and you don't get severance pay. Some states have said that even if you sign it, you could still sue because it was signed "under duress," so to speak, but this is very infrequent and basically used only in age discrimination cases.

Now, reapply for one of those positions, that is, if you really want to work for such an unethical employer. If you are not hired, then you just might have a cause of action and can go visit the EEOC. In either case, you need a job - put this behind you and find one -- or sit back and collect unemployment, which will help drive the employer's unemployment rate up.

On the other hand, maybe they operate on grant money and they didn't know that the money would be forthcoming when they laid you off. However, an ethical employer -- of which there doesn't seem to be many left -- would have told you this and recalled you when the money became available unless they are looking to hire lower-paid employees. It was nice of them though to "lay you off," however, because this allows you to collect unemployment and depending on the state, your "severance pay" would not be counted against you.