[nobody3141592]

But it's pretty difficult to prove unless you are a protected minority and the boss shows up in a white robe and says "we are firing all the N.....s" or you fire a secretary after he/she refused to sleep with you AND you got the refusal in writing!

Usually the employee only wins because the company messed up the paperwork.

[einhverfr]

The point is, it's not about the firing.

It's about an employment contract which involved compensation while an employee was working, where the employer backed out of that later and terminated the employee to keep from paying what are effectively back wages.

I am against suing to get one's job back, esp. here. However, suing to keep the unvested stock they took when dismissing you is a bigger deal.

Here's the thing:

1) Employee is promised stock for efforts

2) Company doesn't want to pay as promised

3) Employee is fired

4) Stock not paid as promised.

I don't think the fact that this occurs in an at will state has any major impact on the analysis.

[nobody3141592]

Stock options vest in the future if you are still working there. The idea is that it keeps you committed - otherwise everybody cashes in on the day after an IPO and walks, and it rewards people who were the reason for the success.

You can't leave and then expect to get unvested options = otherwise people would simply sign up for every startup, stay a month and move on - then come back years later when the company is a success and ask for their million dollars.

It's abused when companies deliberately fire people before the options vest - this is relatively rare, since any sane company knows that getting rid of all your talent is a rather short term option.

This is what Oracle did when they took over Sun - they fired almost all of the VPs before the deal so they would have no share. In their case it was more justified, these people hadn't contributed to Suns future (it didn't have one) and weren't the reason for the Oracle takeover - there was no reason why they should gain from Oracle being in charge when the music stopped.

[einhverfr]

Here you aren't choosing to leave though. The company is paying you less and offering stock options, and then firing you solely so they can take those back as a deliberate policy.

With Sun and Oracle, at least the case could be made that the VP's would have been redundant during the reorganization process. But it's different from saying "Hey, give up the stock options or you are fired."

I think it's that point where you have arguable contract claims.