Can we hire another employee to do this job?

DARman · January 2003

We've had to let our manager go for financial reasons. He was doing a fine job, but we simply could not keep him on the payroll. We offered a portion of his responsbilities to the next employee in line, with a raise in her pay, and she accepted. Are there potential problems with this scenario?

Balloonman · January 2003

I don't see any. If it were truely for economic reasons this makes perfect sense. Let go an employee who lets say was making $35,000 in salary before benefits. Gave key responsibilities to another individual, and for the sake of arguement lets say you gave them a $5,000 increase. Other minor duties were dispersed or reconfigured.
This saves the company quite a bit of money. The issue that usually gets people is they use economics as the reason to fire someone, when that is not the case. Then they go out and refill the position with someone younger or whatever. That will get you in trouble.
My $0.02 worth.
DJ The Balloonman

Gillian · January 2003

I see some potential problems. Is the manager over 40 and is the female under 40? He could make an allegation that he was replaced by someone under 40. Same question regarding sex. The fact that only part of the duties were assumed by the other employee will be irrelevant if someone wants to file a charge of discrimination and then you have the hassle of fighting it. Your defense, of course, will be that you just merely distributed some of the work and you may well prevail. If a charge of discrimination were to occur, your financial standing would become an issue. Is the salary a large amount that really has an impact or is it a drop in a great big bucket, in which case it might look like a pretext. It's good that the employer is not in California, especially if the employee is over 40. A recent amendment to our Fair Employment and Housing Act states that the use of salary as a basis to make decisions about employees when termination decisions are made may be discrimination if there is an adverse impact on older workers.

Hopefully none of this applies and the decision was legitimate.

DARman · January 2003

Thanks for the insight. The man IS over 40, and that woman just under 40, so we'll keep an eye on the situation. Hopefully they both accept the decision and we can go forward. Thanks again.

Can we hire another employee to do this job?

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