What constitutes voluntary termination of employment? I have a clause in my contract that reads as follows: "If you voluntarily terminate your employment prior to 12 months following your hire date, your bonus will be due immediately" If I give my two weeks notice 5 days before my first 12 months at the company are up, and my company fires me the next day, could they make a realistic claim that I had voluntarily terminated my contract before the year was over? I doubt they could make me pay the bonus since this seems non-voluntary, but would appreciate another perspective. I am employed in California.
could they make a realistic claim that I had voluntarily terminated my contract before the year was over? The employer's act would forfeit its entitlement to reimbursement of bonus. The clause clearly indicates that the triggering event is termination, not the anticipatory notification thereof. Furthermore, the employer's act would be a breach of the [contract law] covenant of good faith and fair dealing. That would be in stark contrast with your compliance with, and/or kindness in, giving a two-week notice. The employer's termination of your employment seems improper in equity insofar as it was aware of your notice and thus took advantage thereof.
Contracts can say all sorts of unenforceable things, you provided an example of one of them. A person cannot be compelled to stay and work somewhere they no longer wish to work. At the risk of getting my wrist slapped for straying too far into the land of opinion, a clause like this is likely intended to take advantage of naive teenagers who will provide free employment referrals because they think they have to.
Quitting before the start date: is the non compete enforceable? The non-compete is unenforceable unless the employer has provided you with material information that you can use to the detriment of the employer. Even in that case, the non-compete as outlined in your description seemingly exceeds the legitimate interests of the employer (see art. 2089 of the Civil Code of Québec). This means that the non-compete clause would be curtailed in court because the employer cannot prove that his business (or market share) encompasses the area depicted in the clause. The reason of being of non-compete clauses is to protect the employer from a potential misuse of information the employee obtained pursuant to his employment, such as trade secrets and information about clients. The fact that you are a fresh graduate suggests that you are dealing with just some typical intermediary who really has no &quot;trade secrets&quot; and who is not providing you with key information, let alone for a job that is scheduled to start five months later. Non-compete clauses that are overly broad contravene public policy in that they would singlehandedly exclude civilians from the labor market and disproportionately impair free trade.
A contract is terminated by performance when all parties have completed their obligations. So, when you have delivered and they have paid and any other obligations incidental to that have been completed (such as the expiry of any warranty or guarantee) then the contract has ended. There are other ways of terminating a contract but they are (hopefully) not relevant here. What you have in your contract is not an end date but a date by which you were obliged to complete one of your obligations. Not delivering by that date is technically a breach of the contract which would entitle the other party to sue. However, there is a mechanism in the contract for varying the date for delivery which you have done and the client has agreed to. Note that there is an implicit term that you will exercise any powers you have under the contract (such as extending the delivery time at your "sole discretion") in good faith - if your client rejected your proposed revision and sued, you would have to demonstrate that the revised date was reasonable in the circumstances. You should not unilaterally materially amend a written document that records a contract - doing so entitles the other party to terminate the contract.
You probably would not be &quot;obligated&quot; to do anything. However your employer also would not be &quot;obligated&quot; to continue employment. If you agreed to something verbally, that is a contract. Verbal contracts can be difficult to enforce, but in this case the employer does not need to enforce it but rather take the easier solution of terminating your employment.
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
It is not illegal to treat the employees differently. As long as nobody is being paid for less than the time worked, this is legal. Treating employees differently because of protected characteristics is unlawful discrimination. However, the duration you have worked there is not a protected characteristic. It is perfectly legal for the employer not to mandate new employees clock in and out. It would even be legal (if not a great idea) to hire new employees for twice as much.
At Will Employment - In General An &quot;at will&quot; employee in the U.S. can be fired at any time for any reason without any prior notice or warning. Outside a union shop or a civil service employment situation, even an illegal reason for firing does not give you the right to be reinstated in your job - instead it gives you a right to sue for money damages. Unemployment Benefits and Employment References If you are fired for good cause (or you quit in a situation that is not a constructive termination), you are not entitled to unemployment benefits. If you are fired without cause particular to your conduct (e.g. you are laid off in the employer's reduction in the size of the employer's labor force), or your are fired for a reason that is not good cause (e.g. you are fire because the boss is annoyed because you are such a goody two shoes that you always show up to work on time), you may be entitled to unemployment benefits based upon your term of service and earnings (short time employees are often not entitled to unemployment benefits no matter what). If you apply for unemployment benefits because you assert that you were fired without good cause, and the employer believes you were fired for good cause, the employer can dispute that finding in a summary administrative hearing. Employers fight awards of unemployment benefits for employees who are fired rather than laid off, because it affects the employer's unemployment insurance rates (and because they care, for non-economic reasons, if the integrity of their stated reasons for firing someone are not believed, or if their reasons for firing someone are not considered to be legitimate grounds for termination by a government agency). Even if you are entitled to unemployment benefits, these benefits are much smaller than your regular pay, and generally last less long than the period for which you were employed. A formula or calculator should appear on the Texas Workforce Commission Website. I assume when you say that &quot;They put a few fake tags on me&quot; that this means that they stated reasons that would be valid &quot;for cause&quot; reasons for termination and you dispute those reasons apply to you, but please clarify if I am mistaken. If that is the case, it is likely that you would have to fight for any unemployment benefits you are otherwise entitled to in an administrative hearing as the company is likely to contest your claim that you were not fired for good cause. This also means that if you seek new employment that they will give you a bad reference to someone who inquires about your employment (although many HR departments are afraid to do that for fear of defamation liability and will only confirm the dates of your employment and your position). Wrongful Termination Lawsuits Separate and apart from unemployment benefits, if you are fired, not just without cause, but for an illegal reasons (e.g. race, sex, and select statutory prohibited reasons), you may bring a wrongful termination lawsuit. Some of those reasons (firings related to discrimination by a private sector employer) require you to file an EEOC complaint and have it investigated by them first, other of those reasons (mostly whistle blowing statutes and breaches of written employment contracts that don't allow for termination of employment without cause) allow you to immediately bring suit for wrongful termination. The legal status of firing someone because you complained about another employee's ethical violation depends upon the exact nature of the ethical violation. For example, a U.S. Supreme Court case decided this month (i.e. February/March 2018) held that whistle blower protections under U.S. securities laws apply to people who report securities fraud to the SEC, but not to people who report securities fraud to a supervisor in the company. &quot;My fellow employee was a lying asshole who acted unprofessionally (in non-technical sense of the word), and I complained about this conduct to my supervisor and the employer didn't care&quot; standing alone, would not normally constitute conduct that is covered by a whistle blowing statute that could allow you to bring a lawsuit for wrongful termination of employment, although it might constitute a constructive termination for bad cause by an employer (if you quit) or termination for bad cause by an employer (if you were fired) for unemployment insurance purposes. The legal theory behind the amount of damages that can be awarded in a wrongful termination lawsuit is a bit obscure. As a rule of thumb, six months wages is a pretty typical settlement amount in a wrongful termination case prior to a determination by a court of employer liability. At trial, there is wide variation in what juries award in wrongful termination lawsuits involving similar facts. Sometimes the award is minimal even when the jury finds that the employer wrongfully fired you, and sometimes the award is very substantial, amounting to many years of lost income in amount. Contractual Payment Obligations Generally speaking, unless a written contract provides otherwise, you have no obligation to return a hiring bonus and the employer has a contractual duty (and probably a statutory one as well) to pay you through the date of termination without deduction for a hiring bonus paid. This includes any amounts, including bonuses, that the employer was obligated to pay you, although proving an entitlement to a bonus can be difficult unless that standard for receiving one is clearly defined and you clearly met those standards as a factual matter. Sometimes, you can even win a breach of contract award for a bonus that was not yet fully earned if the only reason that the bonus was not awarded was the employer's bad faith conduct. You could sue to collect unpaid wages in a Justice Court (the limited jurisdiction court for small claims in Texas) if necessary, if the amount you are claiming is under $10,000. If you have a claim for unpaid wages in a larger amount or also have other damages, you would need to bring suit in the appropriate county court or district court, depending upon the amount claimed.