In the US, why are companies giving big &quot;let go&quot; package to people they want to let go? It is shown in movies and is probably true, such as in the movie Jobs about Steve Jobs, that when he came back to Apple as the CEO, he found out who was not productive or who were probably not inline with his operating style, and gave them a big envelope, with an offer to leave that they found hard to refuse. But the thing is, we often hear, the boss could let a person go because they don't like the color of their hair (or dyed hair), and it is &quot;employment at will&quot;. So the company can just tell you that you don't have to come back the next day. They may give the person some severance, but they don't have to, not to mention that they don't have to give the person a &quot;big package&quot; that they find hard to refuse. So what is the reason companies give them a big package to leave?
There are really about three tiers of employees for these purposes. Also, the reasons are a mix of legal and business considerations. At the bottom, severance payments can be made in lieu of unemployment insurance claims being made by the laid off employees. Severance payments for workers at the very bottom are often modest. At the top, &quot;golden parachutes&quot; are often written into the individually negotiated employment contracts of senior executives. Someone like a Steve Jobs will have negotiated a contract very favorable to him in the event of his termination with the board of directors when he is hired with attorneys on both sides heavily involved in its drafting. In between, one of the reasons is to get a waiver of claims, for example, due to allegations of employment discrimination, harassment, and past work place related injuries that weren't properly processed through the worker's compensation system, and to reaffirm the existence of non-competition, non-solicitation, non-disclosure, non-disparagement, and assignment of intellectual property rights of the terminated employees. Being able to &quot;dot i's and cross t's&quot; and definitively foreclose litigation from laid off employees also looks good to stockholders and prospective investors. If severance agreements cutting off liability and ruling out the possibility that sloppy paperwork could compromise the firm's intellectual property to be compromised by disgruntled former employees who no longer have a stake in the firm's well being were entered into, a larger layoff would often be followed by a stock price lag reflecting unknown contingent liabilities and intellectual property risks from former employees. Closing off residual liability is particularly important in firms with stock or stock option compensation for a large group of employees and for firms with defined benefit pension plans. But, it goes beyond that. There is also just a sense of moral obligation on the part of senior managers establishing the severance terms to good, loyal employees who are losing their jobs of often many years through no fault of their own. Most of those senior managers were once in the same position, worked with the employees who were laid off personally, and can related to their plight. In a publicly held firm, even for insider members of the board of directors, the shareholders are an impersonal abstraction, while the laid off employees are genuine people whom the executives implementing the plan know a sample of personally. Of course, institutionally, this economy wide practice of big businesses also helps to fend off pressures from governments to impose bigger severance payment requirements as a matter of law. Substantial severance payments also discourage unionization by the employees who aren't laid off since it makes the employer look trustworthy despite not having its feet held to the fire by the law or a union. Finally, it is a given that many of the laid off employees will land on their feet finding mid- to senior level jobs in the same industry or a related industry, or starting their own firms that may do business with the firm that laid them off, either as consultants providing institutional knowledge that was lost in the layoff to due carelessness, or as vendors or joint venture partners. A stingy severance package could sow ill will towards the former employer that could come back to bite that firm later, while a generous package will rarely leave significant ill will from the former employees who find new positions whom the firm will end up dealing with later on.
A special case is not paying the income tax that the company is supposed to be paying on behalf of its employees. If an employee makes £4,000 a month, and the employer is supposed to pay £1,000 tax and doesn't, that's not the employer's money, that's the employee's money. Not paying the employee's money is a much more serious matter than not paying your own taxes. A google search found this article http://www.gaebler.com/Not-Paying-Payroll-Taxes.htm which says that a person not paying taxes for employees is personally liable, that this liability does not go away with bankruptcy, and that jail is possible. So their advice is: Whatever other debt you have, paying taxes for your employees' payroll is the absolutely highest priority (higher priority than paying wages, paying the rent, paying company taxes and so on).
These offer letters typically state explicitly that the offer is contingent on approval by the relevant governing board. This is sufficient to thwart promissory estoppel. Such highest-level overturning are frequent enough in the US that a reasonable person would know that the principal (for instance) does not have final authority to make a contract. There is no requirement that the board justify their decision to you. If you file a lawsuit alleging racial or religious discrimination, and if you can make a prima facie case for discrimination,you might survive the motion for dismissal, and the board might be required to say why they didn't hire you.
You need to be very clear with B that you intend to continue to operate A. You need to be clear whether you are to be an actual employee of B, or a hired contractor for B. If an employee, you need to agree with B how much time you can devote to A while employed by B, or to put it another way, how much time (per day, week or whatever) you are expected to devote to B before doing stuff for A. Are there to be restrictions, such as a ban on your doing things for A while at B's worksite? Above all, you need to agree on who owns what rights to both the existing A code, and any new code will be held by you, and what rights will be held by B. All the above should be in a written agreement, and you would be wise to have a lawyer draft or at least review the language. If B will not agree to this, you will have a choice to make: put A on hold while working for B, or not accept B's offer. Do not lie to B about what you are doing with A. Oh, and if you had any sort of non-compete agreement at the job you quit four months ago (let's call them C) be sure that you comply with it, or are prepared to fight it. If there is any question, this is another area where you would do well to consult a lawyer. Many non-compete agreements claim more than local law allows, and are not enforceable. Many others are very much enforceable. It depends on the wording of the agreement, and the provisions of the law where you are located. Also, do not use any confidential data from C without C's written permission.
Washington State is an "At Will" employment state meaning that, with exception to some protected classes and bargaining, the employer may terminate the employee for any reason the employer can cite, or no reason at all. If the firm used it as a benefit of the job but it wasn't agreed upon on the contract, its not a deception as if you can hold the job to the down season, you have less work to do. If a promise was made for employment into the down season during the negotiating of the job, and this was documented, it could be. It could be that he did all the work required of him, but another higher went above and beyond and he got the ax because he was the newest and the lesser performer. Either way, the employer is well within their right to fire an employee for any reason they choose absent discrimination based on protected class status.
I'm not going to comment on what your manager is doing specifically, since I don't know all the facts. But in general: As a general rule, businesses have freedom of contract. This means they can choose to do business with, or not do business with, anyone they want. There are specific laws that create exceptions to this freedom of contract. The most important are federal and state civil rights laws, which prohibit many businesses from discriminating on the basis of certain protected classes, such as race, sex, religion, etc. In general, "locals vs. out-of-towners" is not a protected class, and therefore no law explicitly prohibits this type of discrimination. However, it's possible a court could find that "locals" is a proxy for some actual protected class--for example, if the hotel is in a city and the "locals" are predominantly Black.
You asked about other jurisdictions. As you'll probably be aware (from cases like EU vs Microsoft and EU vs Google) European countries and culture tend to have much stronger protection laws for consumer and employee rights than the US does. In the UK you could make a strong case, although such cases are not often undertaken. The current legislation is Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, but the unfair contract terms clause goes back to at least the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. Basically the law protects a person in a situation where disparity of size and bargaining power have led to unfair terms in a contract (typically a large company offering "take it or leave it" standard terms) - and specifically if they create a significant disparity in the parties rights and obligations. In such a situation the company which drafted the terms alleged to be unfair must show they are reasonable. A list of common terms likely to be seen as unfair is provided. (Employment terms are covered by other laws but also aim to prevent abuses due to inequality of contracting power) A company which sold a product like Windows 7/8/8.1 and then later said "we are changing our terms of support and forcing you to upgrade" (especially to a different product the user may not want, or a product that is maintained in a different way),would almost certainly be at substantial risk of falling foul of this. It wouldn't matter if it was done by not providing the support/patches as originally implied (by custom or normal expectation) or as agreed in an explicit statement of support life cycle, or by saying "we have the right under the contract to do this", or by forcing what is essentially a change of product to get the updates. It also wouldnt matter how big they are, nor whether or not the user had already agreed "because I felt I had no choice". The law is there specifically to protect against abuses like this, so it is drafted to catch companies who try to find "wriggle room".
In general, in the US, Bob may do this. If the second company is a competitor of the first and Bob has access to confidential information from his first employer, then there could be an issue. Some employers require their employees, or some of them, to agree to &quot;exclusive employment&quot;, that is to agree not to accept any other employment while employed by the company. If Bob has agreed to such a contract, he would be in breach of it if he took a second job and could be fired if his main employer learns of this. This is not a problem if Bob gets permission for the vacation work from his usual employer. In any case, Bob is not committing a crime, even if he is violating his contract.