Layoffs happen far more frequently than employees like to admit. For instance, it was recently announced that Verizon is going to lay off around 5,000 employees. Tech companies are well-known for having periods of aggressive hiring, followed by mass layoffs, just depending on how the business model is doing.
In most cases, these layoffs are legal. You may feel that it is unfair or unfortunate that you lost your job, knowing that you didn’t make any mistakes. But it’s not necessarily a wrongful termination case if your employer was forced to go through layoffs for financial reasons. At-will employees can be fired at any time.
Discriminatory practices
The key is to ensure that the layoffs are not discriminatory. You can tell that they are if they only affect one group of workers. Maybe the layoff was not even necessary, but it is just being used as an excuse.
For example, say that you work at a company where the majority of the employees are already male. During the layoffs, 90% of those who lose their jobs are female. It is not the layoff itself that is a problem, but the fact that it almost exclusively applies to female workers could be evidence of gender-based discrimination. Layoffs should equally impact all groups within the workforce.
What options do you have?
If you do think you’ve been discriminated against and it has cost you your job, then you do want to look into your legal options. There are steps you can take to seek justice, as no workers deserve to be discriminated against on the basis of gender, race, religion, national origin, age or other protected characteristics.