Corporate Fraud?

[Cephus]

I have no idea if this is the proper forum for this so please bear with me. We live in California. My wife has worked for a company for 5 years, the company is "employee-owned", but the management of the company is running it into the ground. On the same day that the company announced 10 lay-offs and mandatory furloughs every other Friday, the CEO charged $18,000 for a "Corporate Retreat" for the management and their wives to "get to know each other". These are people who have been working together longer than my wife has worked for the company. She and many other people want to complain but they refuse to tell her who the board members of the company, the people who are supposed to represent the employees (the owners). She has been told that "board meetings" take place in Las Vegas and Boston, which is absurd because the company has no presence whatsoever in those cities. She and I both suspect that the whole "employee-owned" thing is a sham, done for tax purposes (they get a tax break for claiming such), and the management is going to run the company completely into the ground.

Is there something she and other employees can do? She doesn't want to quit, she loves her job, but she also doesn't want to see the company driven out of business by fraud and corporate dishonesty. Ideas please!

 

[Just Blue]

I have no idea if this is the proper forum for this so please bear with me. We live in California. My wife has worked for a company for 5 years, the company is "employee-owned", but the management of the company is running it into the ground. On the same day that the company announced 10 lay-offs and mandatory furloughs every other Friday, the CEO charged $18,000 for a "Corporate Retreat" for the management and their wives to "get to know each other". These are people who have been working together longer than my wife has worked for the company. She and many other people want to complain but they refuse to tell her who the board members of the company, the people who are supposed to represent the employees (the owners). She has been told that "board meetings" take place in Las Vegas and Boston, which is absurd because the company has no presence whatsoever in those cities. She and I both suspect that the whole "employee-owned" thing is a sham, done for tax purposes (they get a tax break for claiming such), and the management is going to run the company completely into the ground.

Is there something she and other employees can do? She doesn't want to quit, she loves her job, but she also doesn't want to see the company driven out of business by fraud and corporate dishonesty. Ideas please!

Why your wife doesn't ask these questions for herself is odd...

With that said she should take her "issues" to an attorney to review.

 

[commentator]

Unfortunately, I'd say no, your wife needs to just draw her pay and let the chips fall where they may. The liability here, if any, will be on the bozos who are doing all this shady stuff, not her. And believe me, there are a few of them out there. That they are not doing what, in her mind, consists of "good business practices" is not her affair. Her priority is that they stay in business long enough to make sure she gets paid. I would strongly suggest she begin to seek other employment, without one word to prospective employers of knocking her current employer. That way she won't have to worry with it anymore. Nothing sounds illegal, it just sounds par for the course, and she needs to separate herself from these people.

 

[Cephus]

Sorry, the board of directors and officers of the corporation have a fiduciary duty to the stockholders, in this case the employees, to make good business decisions and maintain the company as a going concern. That's the law. Shareholders have the right to remove directors and board members and approve fundamental changes to the structure of the company in the event these fiduciary duties are not being undertaken. But when a company is just faking it, when there is no board, when the company is just pretending for the sake of tax benefits, there has to be some legal recourse on the part of the stockholders.

If you don't know, just say so.

 

[Zigner]

Sorry, the board of directors and officers of the corporation have a fiduciary duty to the stockholders, in this case the employees, to make good business decisions and maintain the company as a going concern. That's the law. Shareholders have the right to remove directors and board members and approve fundamental changes to the structure of the company in the event these fiduciary duties are not being undertaken. But when a company is just faking it, when there is no board, when the company is just pretending for the sake of tax benefits, there has to be some legal recourse on the part of the stockholders.

If you don't know, just say so.

Alrighty then