If you believe you have wrongly been separated from your job for whatever reason, you can benefit from hiring wrongful termination lawyers. Wrongful termination is a problem in today’s work world, whether it is an unintentional act driven by ignorance of the law or the intentional targeting of an employee or group of employees.
Many wrongful termination cases involve are person losing his or her job or because of sex, race or religion. This is the bulk of wrongful termination cases. For example, almost three of every 10 cases the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission deals with are sex discrimination cases, and in 2014 alone, there were more than 10,000 sex discrimination lawsuits. At the same time, the EEOC deals out more than $100 million in fines each year for acts of racial discrimination.
There are many other cases of discrimination that might lead to the need to hire wrongful termination lawyers. For example, some companies very subtly encourage their older employees to quit or retire. There are a number of ways they can do this. They may do a mass layoff and target the older and higher paid employees. In that case it is fairly blatant. But in other cases it may not be so. Changing an older employee’s duties and/or hours without some sort of stated business purpose for the change can be one way to target older employees, for example. Even if you voluntarily leave, it can still be wrongful termination if you resigned because you were treated in an illegal way. Overall, nearly two-thirds of older workers say they have experienced some form of age discrimination.
Another way in which employers can wrongfully terminate someone is by firing someone in retaliation for reporting wrongdoing. Even if a company does not terminate you outright in retaliation for something, it can still perform a wrongful termination by making conditions untenable for you to continue working.
Other forms of wrongful termination can be due to discrimination over disabilities that are permanent or temporary. Companies cannot fire you for incurring a disability, including things like pregnancy.
If you feel you have been the target of discrimination that has forced you to leave a job or if you have been outright terminated for a reason that doesn’t seem to be legal, it is worth it for you to talk to a lawyer that specializes in wrongful termination cases.