Illinois laid off law.?
Asked by Dragon2323
My boyfriend is a warehouse supervisor at this small company own by a Chinese family that he knew for 10+ years. The owner of the company decided to lay off some workers without any warning to those unlucky people or to my boyfriend. Now the warehouse is falling behind and they're blaming my bf for not doing a good job at supervising people. My bf argued that they're falling behind because they don't have enough people and he have almost no time to supervise anymore because he have to do a lot of the labor work himself to help keeping his team from drowning. They told him that if he can't supervise then they'll find someone else to do it. They want to fire his whole team because they feel that they paying "white folks" too much and that they can "hire Mexicans for $9/hr" They want to pay $8/h for heavy labor work (moving rolls of 200lb fabric all day... non stop) So to my first question: Can they lay people off without any warning? I thought there is a law that you have to give 30 or 60 days warning. (My uncle was laid off recently and he got 90 days notice.) #2: One of the day requested a 4 weeks vacation (1/2 pay, 1/2 no-pay). They approved then a week before her vacation they told her that she can only leave for 2 weeks because they needed her here. So she paid $300 to change her flight. She came back to work on monday and was told that she's being laid off starting tomorrow. Does she have a case against them?

Best Answer:
Federal WARN law requires 60 day advance notice if an employer has more than 100 employees and either a facility will be shut down with loss of more than 50 jobs, or a mass layoff of 500 or more people, or 50 or more people if that's over 33% of the workforce, without a facility shutdown. There is no requirement for any notice for smaller layoffs. The person laid off after her cut-short vacation was certainly unlucky, but has no legal case against them.

1 You are speaking about the WARN law. See their website at http://www.doleta.gov/programs/factsht/warn.htm In general the employer must have over 100 employees and there are other requirements as to the percentage of employees being laid off, the type of lay off and the duration. #2 Employees who are not working under a union contract or a written employment contract (independent contractors) are considered 'at will' employees. At will employees can be terminated, laid off, have hours reduced with any or no reason, and no notice. The only protection an 'at will' employee has is discrimination. The EEOC and the Illinois Dept of Human Rights accepts discrimination complaint on the bases of: age(over 40), sex, race, color, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, disability, military or marital status. See www.eeoc.gov. What that means is that if an employee can prove he/she was discriminated against under one of those bases, the employee can file a discrimination complaint. Complaints can take a long time to resolve and end up in an expensive court fight. The employer refusing to allow the female you mentioned to take vacation 1/2 with no pay is legal as long as she is an at will employee. Check the WARN info to see if the employer needs to warn employees of a potential lay off. If your bf or any employee is terminated due to the discrimination of the employer not wanting to hire "white folks" then the person who was discriminated against can file a discrimination complaint with the EEOC and IDHR. They need to be able to show some evidence of discrimination and only the person who suffered the discrimination can file. As for the employer riding your bf about not enough work going on, it is happening all over the country. Most employers even the white-collar group are having this same thing happen. The employer fired the majority of the employees and then demands the remaining employees to do 3 or 4 person's jobs. It is not illegal for the at will employee. What many employers are trying to do is to get more employees to quit, again to save money, but the employee who quits does not get unemployment benefits. Right now there is no legal action against this.
Answered by CatLaw