Often time’s employees will engage in behaviors that employers feel needs to result in immediate termination. These are typically agreed to acts which have subjected other co workers or employees to dangerous situations. It could include some kind of fraud, it could include some kind of misconduct that damaged the relationship with a long standing client and therefore hurt the company’s bottom line in terms of future income. An employer can terminate an employee without giving them notice, without giving them any reason even for the termination and it doesn’t have to be that the employee acted in this way before. There are often times situations where an employer will want to engage in progressive discipline where, for example you will want to correct the behavior by giving a verbal warning and then a written warning and then ultimately the act of termination but a lot of times it doesn’t have to go in that pattern and a lot of times the specific act of the employee doesn’t actually fit into that pattern because actually the employer needs to sever the relationship immediately as a result of that employees conduct. A lot of things need to be looked at, however, on the opposite end as to whether the employee has any rights to the position or whether that employee has any rights to notice or whether that employee has any rights to charges of misconduct or incompetence. Depending on the employer and depending on whether the employee and employer have any kind of contractual relationship, whether there is a union involved, whether there is civil service status, all those things need to be looked at to determine what the employer has to do in order to not violate the law in taking the action of immediate termination.
This informational blog post was brought to you by Kim Berg, an experienced White Plains, New York Employment Lawyer.
