Do I have legal rights against a company that offered me a raise to not leave, and then promptly fired me after turning down the other offer? I was just informed of this situation that occurred somewhere by a co-worker, and was wondering what the legal ramifications are (U.S. Law). To be clear, the scenario is as follows: I tell my boss I've been offered a position at another company. My boss later comes to me with a counter offer of a raise, if I choose to stay with them I accept the counter offer, and inform the other company that I have chosen to stay with my current employer After a week, my boss then informs me that I'm being let go, and that this should serve as a lesson to not mess with him. For the above scenario, regarding U.S. law, do I hold any legal grounds against this? What options would I have to defend myself (and my family) from being blatantly told that I was fired because I was willing to accept another offer without some other counter-offer from my current employer? As for the chap this did happen to, I'm informed that he contacted the company who originally gave him the offer, and they were still willing to bring him on-board. So, yay (somewhat) happy ending to an otherwise terrifying situation. However, I'm specifically asking about the scenario in which he was forced to be unemployed for some period of time, while looking for another job (i.e., the other company no longer had the position open)
It depends to a large degree on local employment laws. Depending on how the counteroffer was worded, it might have constituted anything from a binding legal contract for employment for some reasonable minimum term, or a totally non-binding suggestion that was worth less than the air breathed while pronouncing it. Some things to consider would include: What are local employment laws like? Do they require that termination be for cause? If so, what are causes for termination? Does termination require any kind of remediation beforehand? Note that in an at-will, right-to-work state in the US, odds are that the employee can be fired for any time and for any reason, supposing the employer hasn't accidentally entered into a contract by extending the counteroffer. What did the counteroffer say? Did it stipulate that the offer was not for a definite term and that the company reserved the right to terminate the employee for any reason, or no reason at all? Odds are any sufficiently serious business in an at- will, right-to-work state would use standard legal language in any offer or counteroffer to ensure that they are on the right side of this, so odds are the counteroffer was accepted with no obligations at all on the company. Does the termination affect eligibility for unemployment benefits? I would say most likely not, as the termination would probably be recorded as being for no reason legally speaking (if they admitted to terminating the employee for seeking other employment, interested government officials could take a dim view of the company's actions). You'd probably have at least some unemployment compensation coming your way. Some professional - not legal - advice. Never accept a counteroffer. Only get another offer in the first place if you are committed to leaving your current employer no matter what. If your company really insists, you should insist on a minimum definite term of employment written into a legal contract which is signed by an executive and notarized. No company will agree to this (unless the term is shorter than you'd want as a full-time W-2 anyway) but if they do, hey, you have some security (if the company agrees to this, have your own lawyer - whom you pay with your own money - review the document). Even then, I would be very, very careful about staying at a company after getting a counteroffer. Don't do it. Ever. Never accept a counteroffer. One comment asks why I recommend never accepting a counteroffer. There are at least two reasons: The reason you are looking for a new job should be that there is something about your current job that isn't completely satisfactory and that you haven't been able to fix. Either you have grown out of the position, don't like the work, feel you're underpaid, don't get along with somebody, etc. If you were unable or unwilling to fix any of these issues without having another job on the table, having another job on the table shouldn't be what makes you willing and able to fix them. Why work somewhere that you'd constantly need to go job hunting to address workplace issues? Unless the company makes firm agreements about how long they're going to keep you around, you have no guarantee that they'll keep you. Presumably, you didn't have one before, and you don't have one at the new job, but the fact that you are currently employed might support the assumption that your employment would be continued at your current employer and the offer might support the assumption the new employer plans to employ you indefinitely. When you put in your notice, it makes the company more aware of the fact that you could leave at any time; while a perfectly rational actor would realize that this doesn't change the situation at all, companies are run by people and people often act irrationally. Perhaps your manager is vindictive, perhaps your manager is scared that you will still leave after accepting the counteroffer. Maybe your manager knows there are layoffs coming but needs you for the busy season. Hiring replacements can be time-consuming and expensive - and employees who are getting offers of employment elsewhere and putting in notice might be seen as risks. I'm not saying that accepting a counteroffer has always turned out badly. Falling coconuts kill 150 people every year. Still, I am not going to add a coconut rider to my insurance policy and I am not going to accept a counteroffer.
You are perfectly within your rights not to tip. Unless you start your dining experience with &quot;I'm not going to be tipping you tonight, just to let you know.&quot; you will get the same service as anyone else. Most businesses are within their rights to ask you to leave for any reason except those explicitly prohibited by law. So conceivably if you started off with the preceding sentence, the manager could ask you to leave. Not tipping wait staff at most restaurants is still an awful thing to do. No customers like tipping. Unfortunately, tipped staff can and usually are paid well below the conventional minimum wage. That they can be, is codified into law and would take a substantial amount of effort to change. Business owners are able to push the cost of paying their employees a livable wage onto their customers, and we are forced to accept it. It's a hideously flawed system that is ever so slowly changing, but it doesn't change the fact that if everyone decided not to tip, the wait staff in 95% of restaurants wouldn't be able to survive on their 'wages'. So you are within your rights not to tip, you probably won't suffer anything negative unless you are aggressively up front about the fact that you aren't going to tip, and you will be punishing the person with the least power in the equation for the fact that you don't like how the system works over here. Tipping a bartender is different and usually less necessary, and more likely to be drink is four bucks and a bit, here's a fiver keep the change. Tipping less or more than that may change the speed at which you get refills or attention.
This depends on your employment agreement, if any, with the organization, and on the company's contract with the organization. You can quit your job with the organization, giving whatever notice your contract provides. The company can end its contract on whatever terms that contract permits. Most service contracts specify a fixed term, with renewal possible or in some cases automatic if notice to end the contract is not given by some specified date before the renewal date. But many other arrangements are possible. If no term is specified in the contract, and there is no provision for how much notice is required, then the company should give "reasonable" notice, which will probably be in line with the norms and customs of the industry involved in the relevant country. The specific law of that country may or may not provide a required minimum notice period. The contract between the company and the organization might provide that they would not hire any employees or recent ex-employees of the organization without consent for some period, perhaps a year. If there is such a provision it must be complied with unless it is not enforceable under the law of the jurisdiction. Different jurisdictions have very different attitudes toward such contract provisions. If such a provision were violated, and it was enforceable in the jurisdiction, the company would be liable for damages if the organization choose to enforce its contract. The contract between you and the organization might include a provision that you not leave to become employed (within some time limit) by one of the organization's customers, or perhaps by one you had worked with. If there is such a provision, it might or might not be enforceable in your jurisdiction. If it is enforceable, you must comply or be liable for damages. Even if there are no contract provisions preventing such employment of you by the company, you must not without permission take with you and use for the company's benefit any confidential information that is the property of the organization and is not already known to the company through legitimate means. If you do, both you and the company might be liable for damages under trade secret law. In the absence of any enforceable contractual provisions, and if no confidential information is taken by you, there should be no legal problems. The moral issues I am in no position to offer an opinion on, and are off-topic here anyway. If you were to quit, and the company were to then seek to break its contract because, in your absence the organization could not provide proper service, and you were then to accept employment with they company, and if further the company had known of your plans, both you and the company might be liable for damages to the organization, depending non the details of the law in your jurisdiction. This could be a tort of "interference with a contractual relation" or something of the sort. You should be very careful in agreeing to any such procedure. If there is a question as to whether a provision of a contract between the organization and either you or the company in enforceable, or whether a provision prohibits you leaving the organization to be employed by the company, that would need to be addressed by a lawyer who knows this area of the law in your jurisdiction, and the specifics of the contract, or eventually by a court. It is out of scope for this forum. Nothing in this situation will be a problem if the organization agrees to whatever is done. All possible problems occur only if it does not agree, and claims to have a legal right to prevent it or seek damages.
In Texas, as in most of the US, the law is "Employment at Will". This means that an employer is free to fire people at any time, for any reason, or none, as long as it is not for one of the few reason forbidden by law, such as racial or age discrimination. Hourly employees are entitled to overtime pay in such cases, but "exempt" employees are not. Nor are they entitled to comp-time as a matter of law, that is at the option of the employer. (The question seems to imply that the employee in question was "exempt" but does not actually say so.) The only really effective recourse against that sort of "death march" is to quit and find a better job, or to threaten to do so while they still need you, unless the conditions return to acceptable ones. I have heard of people in such a situation who "get sick" every day at 5:30pm, because local law forbid requiring ill employees to work. But that is pretty much inviting an arduous and possibly expensive administrative and/or legal battle, and will depend on the specifics of the state/local law. In any case, it is too late for the person in question to try that. On the facts as stated, there might be a valid claim of age discrimination. But additional facts would be needed to establish this, and it would be in my view unwise to try it without consulting a good employment lawyer. Such a lawyer could advise exactly what must be proved and how, and what the probable chances of any recovery would be.
Yes, you can be fired for "not being a good fit": New York State is generally considered to be an "employment at will" state, which means that a private sector employer can pretty much hire and fire as he or she pleases and a discharged employee usually will have no legal recourse even when the discharge is unfair or unreasonable. Source: New York State Office of the Attorney General
A company generally cannot compel an employee to agree to a non-compete, but they have a wide variety of alternatives for inducing employees to do so. Most obviously, they may threaten to fire employees who refuse, whether immediately or at the end of their current term, as another answer observes. Indeed, if Big Company makes an NC a condition of employment then they are likely to insist on the same for employees they obtain from Original Employer. Firing employees for refusing to sign does, of course, put them in the job market as potential competitors, but the company may well find it acceptable to do that on their own terms. In particular, Big Company can ensure that those who won't sign go out the door with minimal knowledge of Big Company's clients, trade secrets, etc. other than those obtained from Original Employer. And that leads into other forms of inducement. Big Company can do some or all of the following things, depending on the particular employment situation: offer bonus compensation for signing promote those who sign and / or demote / reassign those who don't change job duties for those who refuse to sign do all manner of nastier things to be unfriendly to employees who refuse to sign Some of those fit directly into Big Company's perceived interest in avoiding employees using Big Company internal information to jump ship and compete with them, and others could fit into Big Company policy about which jobs require an NC. Some are just pressure tactics, but that does not necessarily make them unlawful (nor are all variations on the others necessarily lawful).
It's not clear exactly what you're asking, when you say "the company I work for" – i.e. are you asking "can they fire me?" (almost certainly they can, even if their TOS thinking is legally misguided – unless in your country there are laws that prevent firing employees). To be certain, you need to hire an attorney who is sufficiently savvy about web page technology that they can accurately judge what you are doing, and whether you can fruitfully resist their demands. You seem to be skeptical of their position because you are "not affecting their servers in any way". The TOS is not about affecting their servers, it is about affecting their intellectual property. It appears that your code does a number of the prohibited actions such as and perhaps most importantly "modify". If you have distributed a program that allows users to modify company content on their own computers, then the user might be in violation of the TOS, but not you (since you're not running a server that redistributes). However, I am betting that in order to create and test the program you had to violate the TOS. Additionally, you could be vicariously liable for the infringements of others, especially if this program can only be used to infringe on copyright, and you know this fact. That is pretty much the end of the legal part. As for how you should respond, your attorney, and not Law SE, deals in recommendations.
I'll assume you are salaried full time exempt in the U.S. in an at-will, right-to-work state and are covered by a standard "employee handbook". This has been developed by you, employee, to assist in doing your job, employment, for your company, employer, using time, materials and information belonging at least partially to your employer. Since creating it, you gave it to other employees and have accepted management directives to continue work on the software as part of your full-time job. This is the company's software now. Your best bet is to support it like crazy, make it a big deal and ride it as high as it will take you in the company. Ask for a raise, ask for a promotion, get references and put it as an accomplishment on your resume. But you can't sell it or take it away from your employer. That ship has sailed. You can still greatly benefit from your work (at your employer's discretion) and learn from it for next time.