Employee Survival Guide® - December 2022 Layoffs, Recession and Severance Tips

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, it's Mark here, and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide, where I tell you, as always, what your employer does definitely not want you to know about, and a lot more. Hey, it's Mark, and our episode today is December 22 Layoffs, Recession, and Severance Tips. If you got recently Scrooged in December, you are not alone. Companies engage in more terminations in December and January than in any other time during the year, according to a Wall Street Journal article entitled, Why Companies Do Layoffs Around Christmas. Many companies have been gut-punching employees such as PepsiCo, Amazon, Salesforce, Meta,

Starting point is 00:00:50 Ford Motor, Twitter, Protocol, HP, Cisco, Microsoft, and recently Goldman Sachs just announced plans to lay off thousands and cut bonuses. Ouch. Ouch. According to the website layoffs.fyi, 979 tech companies have laid off roughly 151,000 employees in 2022 alone, and 89 companies laid off employees in December alone. If you want to get real-time data, go to layoff.com or thelayoff.com for discussion boards about every company. I found it pretty interesting myself when I went there. Are we there yet? I mean the recession. It sure feels like it, but the Federal Reserve disagrees for now. Chairman Powell said this week, I don't think we would qualify as a recession because you've got positive growth, end quote. In October 2022, the conference board predicted a 96% likelihood of a recession in the U.S. within the next 12 months,

Starting point is 00:01:56 and a recession starting before the end of 2022. Well, we're there. It's December 2022, and I'm calling it a recession. From the onslaught of layoffs and the number of calls to our offices, it appears they were correct. For comparison purposes, the conference board predicted the 2020 recession with the same 96% likelihood. That's scary. I've been practicing employment law my entire career since 1997, and I can smell an economic downturn on the horizon. Layoffs can be an economic lead indicator, and that is what our firm is seeing right now. I have represented employees through the dot-com bust of 2001, the 2008 Great Recession,

Starting point is 00:02:43 and now we are handling clients given severance packages from the major firms I just mentioned, but also small to mid-sized companies. That's throughout the country. Let's call this the Scrooged Recession because no one else wants to. If you have unfortunately been laid off in this new recession, as I predicted back in July of 2022 with an article captioned, what's in your severance negotiation plan when the recession hits? And how do you handle the severance agreements when you have been given? As I previously stated, you're not required to tell the employer you have an employment lawyer. I actually suggest you don't and keep the company wondering if you do, while at the same

Starting point is 00:03:25 time you continue to negotiate directly with the company. You can hint you have an employment attorney in the background, whatever creative way you can. There's no law basically saying you have to tell your employee you have an attorney. As a holiday gift to the recently departed, severed, I've done all the homework for you and placed all the information you need in our blog posts and the show notes and this podcast. Enjoy the freemium. I mean it when I say you can do your own severance negotiation without an employment attorney bluffing your way, faking until you make it, as an attorney colleague of mine used to say. Recently, I was at the store and bumped into an old client. He announced that he was recently laid off, and I suggested he bluff his employer by intimating that he had an employment attorney like myself in the background.

Starting point is 00:04:21 The former client was familiar with the notarized EEOC affidavit format he had used before, which set forth a caption of him versus the employer or Davey versus Goliath. You can use your imagination. The affidavit laid out age discrimination facts as my friend was familiar with this type of claim, having been fired for age discrimination previously. He was 52 at the time. Recently, I got an email out of the blue and my friend said the tactic worked and he received 10 times of what the employer originally offered, which was just only a few weeks of severance pay. So it is an important tactic to use and you don't want to leave money on the table. So I suggest you make the attempt.

Starting point is 00:05:09 Dig into the information I've given you on the various blog articles and podcasts. Either it's going to be a goodwill negotiation where you're going to list all of the top 10 things you've done to make the company money. And by the way, when you do that, you're going to get an answer of this is all we are going to offer you and nothing more. Typically, employers don't really give you an offer or increase the demand or the amount of severance unless you have something of leverage to give them, which is really the second part of the type of negotiation you want to try. It's simply, you know, what are the facts? You can read the facts just like anybody else. You don't need to be a lawyer to do that. And you can look at whether there's a possibility of inference of discrimination of some sort, whether it be sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, complaining about people who have been discriminated, including yourself, which is a retaliation claim. And try to lay out the facts as I've – in all the information I've given you to paint the picture in an affidavit that you have a claim. So merely the use of the caption of the affidavit, you know, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,

Starting point is 00:06:15 and then you versus your employer with a date and put the EOC number and you leave it blank because you haven't filed it yet. And you put the caption of, you know, Bob Jones, he says, do solemnly swear and tells the truth under penalty of perjury. And you just identify all the facts in chronological order. And then you put a notarization at the very bottom of it, you know, signed before a notary and submit it to your employer. They're going to have the impression that you have an attorney in the background. And you're going to say, well, I don't have to tell you that. And your employer is going to say, well, we're not going to make a counteroffer unless you tell us. Well, it's fine. I'll just go file my affidavit. What do you want me to do?

Starting point is 00:06:56 I'm just giving an opportunity right now. So you can literally do the negotiation yourself. And why am I saying all this? I mean, I'm an employment lawyer. I make money doing this. But my point actually is a much larger, grander picture of what I want to have happen is I'm trying to give you information to equal the negotiation position with your employer. And if you do this, and many more people do this, employers can begin to feel that they don't have the upper hand on you, which is the point I've been trying to make in all these three seasons of this podcast and all the articles I ever write. We need to really change the dynamic of the employer's position. Yes, they can fire you. But if you have facts to support a claim, well, then give it a shot. And you don't need to hire a high-priced lawyer

Starting point is 00:07:45 and pay a lot of money to do it. I'm trying to show you you can actually do it. And you may be able to get a higher amount of money from your employer, which really just goes to pay for your expenses until you land somewhere else. The scary part of all this is that the recession we're about to – well, I think we're in right now. But what they think, the doomsayers say that the recession is going to actually be pretty dire and going to last for a very long time. So that immediately you think about, well, I need a lot of money to survive that. I may not get a job right away. And the other hand of this, you may say, well, people are getting jobs all the time. We had the great resignation, quiet quitting, and all these things that have happened.

Starting point is 00:08:31 People believe that they still can get jobs very quickly. But I think that we all now know that with all the layoffs have happened, especially in the tech sector, things have shifted backwards in favor of the employers. So are we going back to the same old, same old with employers, allowing them just to tell us what they want to do with us? We just follow what they say? Well, no. I've been trying to rattle your cage here for years and say, no, you can do something. I'm trying to give you an opportunity here, at least in the severance negotiation point to actually do something, you know, make a change for yourself and let the employer know it does work. People do this all the time. It's just that you don't

Starting point is 00:09:14 hear about it because when they sign the agreement, there's a confidentiality and they're not going to really want to tell you about what they did because they're going to risk breaching the agreement and giving the money back. So I'm just laying it quietly out there and saying, you really need to give it a shot, challenge your employer, learn about it. All the information is there. All the freemium you want is right on my website. Just spend the time, look at it, and I'll continue to produce more of it.

Starting point is 00:09:44 So if you're unfortunately laid off during this holiday season, I really do feel bad for you. But there's a bright horizon here. You can possibly negotiate your increased severance package and what they offered you. So give it a shot and then we'll plan for the new year and I'll continue to do these episodes for you and continue to put other freemium to give you a shot to take a shot at your employer. Anyway, have a great holiday. I'll talk to you soon. If you like the Employee Survival Guide, I'd really encourage you to leave a review. Travel Guide, I'd really encourage you to leave a review. We try really hard to produce information to you that's informative, that's timely, that you can actually use and solve problems on your

Starting point is 00:10:31 own and at your employment. So if you'd like to leave a review anywhere you listen to our podcast, please do so. And leave five stars because anything less than five is really not as good, right? I'll keep it up. I'll keep the standards up. I'll keep the information flowing at you. If you'd like to send me an email and ask me a question, I'll actually review it and post it on there. You can send it to mcaryu at capclaw.com. That's capclaw.com.

Employee Survival Guide® - December 2022 Layoffs, Recession and Severance Tips

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