"We do the right thing" is not a useless employee handbook value that is only applicable when it is convenient. As senior leadership has not been transparent around layoffs at all, the organization may very well be in violation of the WARN Act. If more than 500 employees are laid off within 30 days (or multiple groups of individuals are let go over a 90 day rolling window), the organization is required to provide 60 day notice and submit a public WARN filing. If USB is found to be in violation of the WARN Act, you may be due back pay and benefits that you would have earned during that 60 days as if the layoff had not occurred. USB may have certainly attempted to keep layoffs under certain thresholds to skirt this requirement across regions. However, it is important to demand transparency around these layoff numbers and be vigilant in contacting local media outlets to highlight this potentially illegal misconduct.
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Agreed! This post needs more traction. USB needs to learn that their unethical methods will be laid bare for the public to see!
USB still has deep enough pockets to have consulted the finest employment attorneys months ago to ensure there wouldn’t be any problems with WARN. Not to mention their cronies at JP Morgan Chase, Wells Faro, Bank of America and Citi have all done what USB has done without repercussions. I am sure our people contacted their people to go over the fine tuning. If you truly believe they have violated WARN, by all means report them. One never knows.
Everyone here should begin to report for potential WARN Act violations, and suggest your peers do the same (outside of banking systems). If anything it might bring attention from the gov and force USB to back off on these shady layoff tactics, or might even reveal they are breaking certain laws.
They will never be transparent. There is a reason why everyone had to RTO - I believe the law has a clause based on ‘ department size’ - if you return to office in MI or NV ( for example) and then get laid off, those individual states are the numbers they are managing to in waves. Some are classified as remote, hybrid, onsite - each classification in sep in reporting as in each state. Shady AF!
They are covering their A** to ensure they can get away with this cr-p. Code of Ethics does not apply to the people that wrote them and uphold them
What they said. Publicize it any way you possibly can.
Report them to your individual states, just Google it. It would be pretty easy to class action for this kind of violation.
From another thread.
Federal and state department of labor may investigate if enough people report them.
Re: Hoover v. Drivetrain LLC, the Court concluded that the text of the "outstationed" employees regulation undoubtedly covers remote employees.
Wells Fargo got busted for not paying exempt salary employees overtime., multiple times. I got a nice $70k settlement check from a class action lawsuit from Wells Fargo lawsuit.
I didn’t even know if your a salaried exempt employee, you are entitled to Overtime, if your manager ask you to work overtime.
Publicizing the layoffs they are so desperately trying to keep under wraps is probably the best bet to get ahead of any more of this nonsense in the future.