"Fake Firing"
SacrosanctFiend
18 Posts
I never thought this would happen. In fact, when I saw it on The Office, I laughed and thought, "how could someone be so stupid?" But, it happened.
The Operations Division manager at our TN manufacturing facility was holding the daily close meeting yesterday. When everyone had sat down, he shut the door and started screaming that they were "all fired because their lousy performance has hurt us so bad financially." He doesn't have supervisory control over some of the people, but he does over about 40 of those in attenadance. Needless to say, they were all worried, shocked, and confused until someone started to walk out and the manager said "Don't leave, you're not really fired." No apology, no "I was joking," just, "You're not really fired."
What legal implications could arise from this "fake firing' of a bunch of people?
Comments
I never thought this would happen. In fact, when I saw it on The Office, I laughed and thought, "how could someone be so stupid?" But, it happened.
The Operations Division manager at our TN manufacturing facility was holding the daily close meeting yesterday. When everyone had sat down, he shut the door and started screaming that they were "all fired because their lousy performance has hurt us so bad financially." He doesn't have supervisory control over some of the people, but he does over about 40 of those in attenadance. Needless to say, they were all worried, shocked, and confused until someone started to walk out and the manager said "Don't leave, you're not really fired." No apology, no "I was joking," just, "You're not really fired."
What legal implications could arise from this "fake firing' of a bunch of people?
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Nothing comes to mind immediately from an employment law standpoint.
Intentional infliction of emotional harm comes to mind as a damages multiplier if anything does come up...
Do you have a discrimination policy? What does it say about discipline/termination for such action? I would say that this is a highly aggregious discriminatory act (it doesn't matter what the manager intended to do - i.e., be "funny"). I think you are in a situation now where a protected class of people have been harassed, you know about it, and now you need to take action. Maybe I just work in a kinder, gentler workplace, but I am stunned that a manager could do this. I would fire them, but obviously that is up to you.
[quote user="SacrosanctFiend"]That's why I'm worried. There were 12 people called out by name (all a part of a protected class) [...][/quote]
Every person is in a protected class. Every white person. Every black person. Every person of every other color. Every man is protected. Every woman is protected. Etc. The law says, specifically, that you may not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, etc. Despite existence of the unfortunate term "reverse discrimination", all discrimination on the basis of race is illegal. Where they all over 40? Were they the only people of race X in the room? What class or set of classes are picked out by this group such that their selection would shock the conscience?
That being said, I'd fire the sup/mgr for such terrible judgement no matter what the demographic distribution might have been. The false firing, in and of itself, would be a sufficient violation of any decently written code of conduct.