Wouldn't there be a pretty direct correlation between an attempted punishment and the pregnancy announcement? Like if there were no previous problems, isn't this pretty clear discrimination?
This is why the PIP exists - it's "documentation" and "proof" the the employee is an underperformer. PIPs provide legal cover for firings that would otherwise not pass cursory examination.
[edit] The PIP may have started out as a good faith effort to improve underperformers, but at this point I see them used more frequently as political and legal tools than honest attempts at "salvaging" poor employees.
Totally, but couldn't you point back to telling your boss that you're pregnant and be like "I literally told you a few weeks ago that I'm pregnant and now you're putting me on a PIP, this is not a coincidence"
Yeah, they're not going to have a leg to stand on if this ever made it to a lawsuit - a PIP on someone after they announced their pregnancy is pretty lulzy.
But it's an intimidation tactic like any other - your options here are either leave quietly (like the author of the original post), or be fired unceremoniously as a documented poor-performer and have that hanging over your career, and maybe sue the company for wrongful termination.
99% of the time, even when the situation is patently unfair and insanely unjust, people will choose Option A.
Even if you choose Option B and sue the employer, Amazon has a warchest the size of the moon and lawyers on staff best measured in boatloads - so more likely than not you'd be forced to settle for a modest sum and still have the firing on record, and no admission of fault on Amazon's part.
>>or be fired unceremoniously as a documented poor-performer and have that hanging over your career
How would something like a PIP affect one's career? Companies don't share that information, or they expose themselves to serious litigation risk. That's why most places have a policy to only verify an ex-employee's dates of employment and job title if someone calls to ask.
Consider this, though, Amazon has a large need to fill vacancies and the media (even in Seattle) is happy to run stories about worker mistreatment.
I never worry about pointing out the evils of Amazon (despite them making me sign a contract meant to intimidate me into shutting up) because I know if they take me to court I'll have the opportunity to have my say publicly. And that's the last thing they want.
At Amazon, if you get your PIP and you refuse to sign it, I think they will fire you, and then you will be offered a check in order to sign an agreement not to sue them.
So, if you get the PIP it may be more profitable to just refuse to sign it and start looking for another job (with a bigger severance) than waste a couple months at Amazon while looking for another job.
BTW- the reason I got my PIP was that I had a job at AWS and an offer in hand and went to try and transfer.
My first lawyer taught me a very valuable lesson: the important question isn't whether you'll win the suit eventually, it's whether you can afford to go the distance. Doing the PIP after doesn't increase the distance as much as doing it before, but it definitely makes it harder to sue than if they just fired you the day after a positive performance review.
Is it fantasy that the payday would be significant enough that a decent lawyer would take the case on commission? Seems to me that a lawyer who had the resources to go the distance could totally make this an easy and profitable win for a client who's getting on with her life in the meantime.
Amazon's lawyers are probably expensive right? They also have to risk setting precedents and future cases not being so easily intimidated. Seems like they would have a lot to lose letting this go to court, even if they intend to drag it out.
> Amazon's lawyers are probably expensive right? They also have to risk setting precedents and future cases not being so easily intimidated. Seems like they would have a lot to lose letting this go to court, even if they intend to drag it out.
But that's the thing: they don't need to let it go to court, they just have to drag out the pre-trial proceedings for a few years until you've either moved on with your life or forgotten enough of the details. Most cases settle out of court, but before that happens there is due process that a good HR defense attorney can absolutely stretch out for years.
As far as their lawyers, it costs a big company like Amazon very little, since the lawyers are likely on salary. They would probably hire an outside attorney to represent them in person at a trial, but since the vast majority (>95%) of cases settle before they make it that far, their internal HR lawyers would probably handle most of the grunt work of filing paperwork until someone actually needs to show up at the court house.
Also it's probably not as much money as you think; unless it can be proven that the company's actions were malicious and intentional against a protected class, you probably won't see much more than 6 months salary. The problem is in gathering the evidence to prove this and keeping track of it over the course of a few years.
So it is a fantasy then I guess... Seems like there might be an opportunity for a large firm to handle the other side of it in a similar manner by using efficiencies of scale. Becoming the defacto law firm for these cases and managing a large volume for a smaller margin.
But then I guess it's just more lawyers keeping other lawyers employed.
That's pretty much how it works today; though there's not one single massive law firm because employment laws vary by state and city. But lawyers do specialize in this type of case at the city/state level, and it wouldn't surprise me if there is a "standard settlement" scale that says what % of annual salary the employer is willing to pay to make the case go away (I know this exists for auto insurance cases because I used to have a client who was a stereotypical ambulance chaser).
But generally you're right -- when you sue someone, only the lawyers win. At a minimum, a cursory background check would turn up the lawsuit and potentially damage your chances at getting another job. It's the same as with whistleblower cases: you have to ask yourself if the injustice you're trying to correct is so big that it's worth potentially destroying your career (whistleblower laws promise huge rewards for exposing behavior but they can be very difficult to collect on and generally make you unhireable).
That said, if a specific company (like Amazon/Google are rumored to do) routinely does things like this, they could face a class action suit. Class action suits are a company's worst nightmare because they are run by the lawyers -- who have every incentive to be as public as possible about the proceedings. Dragging a company's name though the mud in the media is a good way to get them to settle on your terms, and the former employees aren't at the forefront of the case so there's little downside to it. It actually wouldn't surprise me if we see a class action suit come out of this; this kind of treatment is common enough in the tech industry and there's a lot of money on the table if a law firm can put together a case. But again, in a class action suit the lawyers keep most of the money, so ultimately they're the biggest winners.
Yeah. It increases the cost to sue but I suspect pregnancy -> PIP -> cancer -> terminated insurance -> effective demotion on return should be winnable in a perfect world. They just know no one is going to fight it and they can make it expensive enough its not worth it.
Performance improvement plan. It's the first step in letting an employee know - supposedly - that their performance is lacking and needs to be improved else they be terminated. But as mentioned, PIPs can be misused for other means.
My partner was discriminated against in a similar way. An employment lawyer told her several things:
(1) it's difficult to prove, and often juries really want bright line discrimination (eg an email saying fire that bitch for getting pregnant); a pattern of discrimination without a smoking gun is a harder sell to a jury
(2) be ready to never work in that industry again, and maybe to never work again
(3) do you really want this to be what you do with the next 2-3 years of your life
She declined to pursue it. Or as the saying goes, "in its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." One law for the rich, another for the rest of us.
You'd need to prove it though. The official position of Google is probably "it is a performance / restructuring thing and pregnancy is purely accidental coincidence". (Wink-wink). Of course the winks only happen in person they are not written down.
So now someone who has a baby on the way has to pay for a lawyer and fight an uphill and expensive case.
Also, suing your previous employer ends your career. Prospective employers will see you as a troublemaker and no one will hire you after that, even in a different field.
But we're not talking about the Ellen Pao's of the world, we're talking about average workers. I've seen firsthand that some employers won't want to touch someone who sued a former employer - for any reason.
Unless you have a recording of your manager coming out and saying, "I'm putting you on the PIP because you got pregnant," you can't do anything, because there's no proof that's why it happened.
Which is fucking bullshit, because everyone with a modicum of logical thinking could see that's exactly why it's happening. But instead of them having to prove that the PIP was justified, you get people having to prove that they're not being fucked over by a bully.
