Severance Package

What is the name of your state? NY

Last year my supervisor created a hostile environment for me soon after she found out I was pregnant - she wrote me up for reasons like "people not liking me" and for receiving personal phone calls even though I'm a salaried employee. She also openly reprimanded me in front of employees that report to me and made comments about other pregnant women that were in my mind discriminitory ("She won't be coming back to work after she has the baby, I'm sure. And if she does, she'll be worthless because she'll always be calling out.").

Then I was the only person in the dept that didn't get a pay increase in January and she didn't give me my bonuses last spring because she said my performance wasn't good enough.

When I told her I thought she was being hostile toward me and that I wanted to talk to her about it she said I'd "better be careful."

I went out on maternity leave for 12 weeks and she made it very clear that she thought this was too long a time for me to be gone. Before I left she hired an "assistant" and had me train her in all of my responsibilities.

I returned to work a couple weeks ago and was told that all I'll be doing for a while is training new people (Before I was the department manager.). My title hasn't changed but now my "assistant" is doing all of the work I used to do and my employees are reporting to her.

Then came the last straw - I am pumping milk for my baby and planned to do so in my office with a piece of cloth over the window. One of my employees is also pumping and I offered to let her use my office as well so that she would be more comfortable. She had been pumping in the bathroom and wasn't happy about it.

The next day my supervisor called me into her office and said "It's been brought to my attention that you're putting something over your office window and you can't do that. It's not fair to the other employees that you use your office to pump so you'll have to do that in the bathroom."

I went to the president of the company the next morning and told him I thought she had created a hostile work environment for me and that I felt that she had discriminated against me. He had the VP do an investigation and she decided that I had not been discriminated against and that I had to try to work things out with my boss, just me and her. When I went and talked to her she told me that she really liked the way the department had been the past 3 months without me and that she was going to micromanage me because she didn't think I was a good performer anymore. She said if I didn't like it that was too bad.

I went to the VP and told her I didn't think my boss would work with me and she said that either the 3 of us could sit down and try to work things out or I could decide that "this was just too much for me right now" and I could leave and they would give me a severance. I just have to ask for what I want.

Sorry this is so long. This is the jist - I want to leave. I need a good severance, though, because the economy is so bad and I don't know how long it will take to get another job at my current level. What should I ask for? What is the standard for money vs. benefits such as health insurance? How do I get the most out of them?

Also, can I collect unemployment as well?

Could a lawyer help me with this or should I not bother?

No employer is obligated to offer severance but for those that do, one to two weeks of pay for every year of service seems to be the norm.

You're not being laid off though. It appears your boss has discrminated against you on the basis of both your pregnancy and taking FMLA, although it is not an exceptionally strong case. (You weren't fired, for example.)

Assuming your employer isn't ocmpletely stupid (although I'm not holding out much hope on that, given what you have described), you will be asked to sign a waiver in exchange for a severance package. That is, you will be asked to waive all rights to file any discrimination complaints or related lawsuits and release the employer for all liabilty for any real or imagined adverse action against you and/or violation of the law.

With that in mind and because I think you do have the makings of a claim, I suggest you see an employment law attorney asap to determine the strength of your claim should you elect to bring one and what you should ask for severance-wise in exchange for releasing the employer from liability.

The only thing I suggest is that you be reasonable. If you walk in there asking for $500,000, their response will be "see you in court." I'd guess six to nine months of severance with benefit continuation during that time would be reasonable but this depends upoh the size of the employer, what their resources are, and how hard ball you want to play this.

Thanks for your quick response Beth!

Do you think they'll be more likely to give me what I ask for if I tell them I've spoken to a lawyer or should I make my request and then see if they give it to me. Then if they don't I'll take it further.

Will I be able to collect unemployment as well? Also, what if I get another job? Will I continue to get severance or will that stop? Is that something I can negotiate?

My advice is not to tell your employer you've consulted with an attorney and see how it goes. Your hopefully prepared-to-be-reasonable employer could run scared or get their backs up if you open negotiations with "I've seen an attorney and he says..."

I think it's okay to suggest that you think there have been violations of the PDA and FMLA and that you think that should be factored into the severance they're prepared to offer. What you need to use an attorney for at this point is some behind-the-scenes consultation and strategizing. If the employer is unwilling to put a reasonable severance figure on the table, then it's time to let your attorney become involved.

Remember, this is a NEGOTIATION process. You want to ask for more than you think you'll get and are willing to settle for but not so much that they walk away from the table, shaking their heads saying "there's no dealing with her" and shut down the dialog. In the best negotiatons, everyone walks away feeling they're a winner, so just keep that in mind. So, for example, if you feel six months is acceptable, ask nicely for nine and then they can counter with six - you're happy and they feel like they made a great deal and saved a few bucks.

As far as collecting UC, that's entirely a matter of each State's UC reg's however in most States, you can't be receiving a full income via severance and still collect UC. The whole concept of UC is that you are no longer being paid by the employer.

Lastly, whether or not severance payments will continue if you start a new job is entirely dependent upon the terms of the agreement. If severance were being paid as a result of being laid-off, it is highly unlikely the employer would agree to continue it once you started new employment but your situation is different so you certainly should request that severance be paid for the full time period agreed to regardless of any other considerations.

Thanks Beth. I'm meeting with the VP on Tuesday to tell her what I want. I'll let you know what happens.

Well, I went in yesterday and told them that I wanted a year. I decided to ask for a year, because I really wanted 9 mos, 6 at the least. When I had met with the VP originally she told me to ask for the moon when it comes to a severance package because there was no set standard and I might just get it.

So I gave her a letter saying what I wanted and why I didn't think I could work there anymore and a few of the issues that I thought had been in violation of PDA and FMLA. I figured that I could communicate my feelings best in writing.

She read the letter and then told me to go to my office while she contacted the company HR consultant (it's a small company and they don't have an HR dept so they have him on retainer). I waited 1 1/2 hrs in my office and then she called me into the conference room and said that I could stay and move on and try further to work with my boss or they would fire me for insubordination. I said that I thought that I had been harrassed by her and that for that reason I didn't want to work with her anymore. So she fired me. They gave me no severance at all.

My husband and I have called 3 lawyers in the past week and spoken to them briefly. Each one has told us they'd call us back but hasn't. I think it's because the owner of the company is very well known in the community. The first lawyer we spoke to couldn't take us on because of conflict of interest.

I know NY is an employment at will state, but is this legal? It seems like they baited me by telling me they'd give me severance and then fired me for asking for it!

Her statement about giving you severance didn't constitute a verbal contract though - it was more along the lines of make a request and we'll consider it.

If you work for a small company, asking for a year's severance was probably way to much. In my first post I said that what's reasonable depends upon the size of the employer, their resources, etc. I can only guess they found your request so unreasonable that they opted to pay you nothing, not request a waiver, and take their chances.

Yes, it was legal to fire you because they rejected your severance request. You still have FMLA and PDA discrimination issues on the table though. You may need to be persistent with some of these attornies, plus you can always go directly to the EEOC and file a complaint - you don't need an attorney to do that.