[saltybytes]

This is cruel and heartbraking. Didn't expect this to happen in any European countries the least in Poland where they have strong unions.

Retaliation is pretty common in the US - I announced to HR that my wife is expecting (Tue) and was fired on Friday.

[SoftTalker]

Sounds like an FMLA violation. Did you specifically say you would be taking leave? Not already on a "performance improvement" plan of any sort? Was anyone else let go on Friday?

I don't know how hard this sort of thing is to litigate, "at will" employment covers a lot of abuses, and honestly why would you want to stay at an employer who treats you like this? Probably best to spend your energy finding a new job.

Edit to add: You could report this to the Department of Labor. Not sure you'd personally get any restitution but if your employer was willing to do this kind of thing, you are probably not the only one they have screwed over. If an employer has a record of complaints they might get audited which could cost them a lot in penalties if they are violating the law.

[maire]

FMLA only covers companies with 50 or more employees.

A friend was fired in the US when she told her boss she was pregnant and discovered this limitation. Her previous work experience was in France so she did not realize this could happen.

[borski]

In CA, it’s any employer with 5 employees, thanks to the CFRA.

https://www.rigginslaw.com/cfra-vs-fmla-difference-between-c....

CA really is by far one of the most employee-friendly states, on nearly every issue.

[berniedurfee]

And thank you! Many companies follow CA regulations by default if they do significant business in the state or have even a small footprint there.

[tnmom]

Except taxes.

[borski]

Dno. The roads here are way better than other places with lower taxes, it’s beautiful, the air and water are clean, and so on.

Everywhere has plenty of things to complain about. I’d like to spend less in taxes, always.

But at least it does feel, objectively, like we live in a mostly lovely place that actually does protect employees, have access to great healthcare, great roads, great charging infrastructure (relative to the rest of the US) and so on.

[ensignavenger]

Anecdotal, but I have driven across a majority of US states, from Florida to Alaska (and also, on both the East and West sides of Canada) and haven't noticed any strong correlation between the quality of the roads and how high a states taxes are.

[SoftTalker]

It's because they don't have winter. Winter, freezing/thawing, and salt is what destroys roads.

[vondur]

Roads in California are good? We must live in different states.

[wolverine876]

Don't forget the world-class higher education system, with the two of the top universities in the world.

[nullc]

My experience is that the Florida roads are significantly better than the roads in the bay area. And Florida has no income tax and lower sales taxes than California.

[borkt]

What part of the state are you in with good roads? Sonoma county here, miserable roads

[kelnos]

> The roads here are way better than other places with lower taxes

I live in San Francisco and absolutely disagree with this. The roads are garbage. And lest we think that's just a city thing, whenever I leave the city and drive out on local and state roads they range from garbage to ok-ish.

My family moved to Maryland when I was a teenager, and the roads there were pristine (90s, not sure about nowadays). It felt like some section of some road or highway near me was always being resurfaced.

[jon_richards]

> Though Texas has no state-level personal income tax, it does levy relatively high consumption and property taxes on residents to make up the difference. Ultimately, it has a higher effective state and local tax rate for a median U.S. household at 12.73% than California's 8.97%, according to a new report from WalletHub.

Obviously there are more than two states, but it’s not so simple.

Plus, someone’s got to pay for everything:

> [California] receives $0.99 in federal expenditures per dollar of taxes paid, which is below the national average return for states of $1.22 per dollar paid, according to its review of a 2015 New York Comptroller study.

[wolverine876]

> Plus, someone’s got to pay for everything:

Bizarrely, even experts miss this obvious fact. If not income taxes, then how does government pay the bills? Income taxes are usually the most progressive tax, so no income tax usually means less wealthy people pay more. If government spends less, what services are cut?

No income tax != free lunch. Someone has to pay.

[pandaman]

Texas levies property taxes now?

[dmitrygr]

> for a median U.S. household

Please, not more of this nonsense

Show me a SWE who makes median ($40,480 in 2023) money or less. That quote does not apply. For people making SWE money, Texas is a LOT better tax-wise

[aeturnum]

Arguably, it's better to pay higher taxes on a job that's protected than lower taxes on a job that you can't count on.

[chefandy]

Yeah. I totally get why people conceptually hate the idea of paying taxes, even if my values lead me to a very different conclusion. That said, most of the arguments I've encountered about places with higher taxes being worse places to live strike me as either glib and uninformed, or in bad faith. That's not a partisan-specific folly by any measure, but it's a folly nonetheless.

[johnnyanmac]

It is an honest argument. No point in a secure job that can't even pay rent. But people with families can't exactly engage in multi job hustles and expect to remain a healthy unit.

[xyzzyz]

It depends on how high the taxes are and what protection is offered exactly. The extra protections I would get in California are not worth nearly enough for it to be worth for me.

[jjallen]

Totally agree. When taxes are the highest in the country and take almost 40% of your income and the only people who own houses are the ones that bought them 20-50 years ago that is very employee unfriendly.

[acdha]

Exaggerating like that doesn’t help your argument. California’s top tax rate is 12.3% and you’re only paying just on income over $680k:

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2023/2023-540-tax-rate-schedule...

This means that in practice, California isn’t even in the top 10:

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/30/1166970506/tax-burden-by-stat...

Now, the housing market is not great but again, greatly overstating your case is not an effective strategy, and it isn’t a uniquely California problem even though prop 13 makes it worse there than many other places.

[borski]

I have many friends who have bought homes. Some in Gilroy, some in Mountain View, me in Cupertino, and so on.

None of us were born with money, and none of us bought them 20-50 years ago. None of us were even alive 40 years ago.

It’s doable, and while a number of people bounced during the pandemic, a lot of people took advantage of lower home prices. It’s about priorities.

[asadotzler]

We bought a home 11 miles from the Googleplex in 2009 and paid it off in 15 years and did it on a single salary working in non-profit tech. Your assumptions here are deeply flawed or your reasoning is broken.

[SoftTalker]

Yes this is one of the risks of working for a very small employer. A lot of the normal rules don't apply. But if a company is big enough to have "HR" I'm guessing they likely are bigger than 50 employees.

[euroderf]

I perceive yet another motivation for companies to aggressively classify employees as contractors.

[fn-mote]

> why would you want to stay at an employer who treats you like this? Probably best to spend your engergy finding a new job.

While this is all true, doing that also allows / encourages the employer to continue their abusive actions toward others.

It's a big decision to fight something like this in the legal system. It might affect your future employement prospects, depending on details.

Grim.

[sumeno]

> I don't know how hard this sort of thing is to litigate, "at will" employment covers a lot of abuses, and honestly why would you want to stay at an employer who treats you like this? Probably best to spend your energy finding a new job.

It's not very hard to imagine why someone who is expecting a new child would want to continue to receive a paycheck and health insurance.

[Symbiote]

At least it has gone to court, and she has won at this point. It's not clear to me whether Magda gets paid for the time between her dismissal and her job being reinstated.

I'll continue to boycott Amazon. Earlier in the week I spent about an hour sleuthing the web to find an obscure item that wasn't from Amazon or China, finally found it at a local supplier.

> I announced to HR that my wife is expecting (Tue) and was fired on Friday.

Did you expect this might happen, maybe the baby is due very soon?

It's awful in any case :-(

[ajb]

I discovered recently that some ebay sellers dropship via amazon. Unfortunately I don't think you can tell until you get tracking info, when it's too late to cancel - they are tracked via 'aquiline' which just seem to operate some server api that wraps amazon tracking numbers into ebay tracking numbers, and the delivery is from Amazon. But the actual product page just says 'other 24-hour courier'

[buo]

> I'll continue to boycott Amazon.

You're not the only one. I haven't bought anything from Amazon in the past five years or so.

[elicash]

I can’t speak to this case, but generally low wage workers are paycheck to paycheck and so get jobs while they wait for the system to do their thing. They only get paid for loss of income, so it actually subtracts what they earned in that time and so by working in the meantime the damages paid are much smaller. There are no punitive damages or anything.

[Symbiote]

Is that for Poland, or somewhere else?

In Britain you're compensated up to £643/week by default (up to your weekly pay amount), plus compensation similar to what you describe.

I don't speak Polish, so I doubt I could find the situation there.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/employment-tribunals/...

[elicash]

United States, sorry that's what I meant about not speaking to this case. I was very unclear!

My apologies for the confusion.

[saltybytes]

Just to clarify: was "fired without cause" (worked "at will" which most of full-time employments are in the US). By asking why they were getting rid of me I heard the pharse "for no good reason, really" like a broken record. This was enough indication that it was clearly in regards to my talk with HR a few days prior.

Also, during my announcement to HR about my wife's circumstances, I remarked I wanted to take some time off to be there for wifey & baby.

The company was 90% lawyers so just in case I wanted to proceed legal action against them, their Armada of lawyers made a possible follow-up rather unsavory.

[spopejoy]

> their Armada of lawyers made a possible follow-up rather unsavory

Understood, but you should also know that EPLI deductibles are often in the mid-to-high five figures usually, which is an incentive for the employer to settle for anything less than that deductible.

Point being, if you get a lawyer, threaten to make a stink etc and are generally showing you're serious about fighting this abuse, settlement to the tune of 20-70k is a reasonable expectation. IANAL etc

[turquoisevar]

Sadly, and I say this with all the love for my Polish brethren and sisters, Poland and many Eastern European countries still have some catching up to do.

The silver lining, however, is that these countries make significant headway at a steady pace.

Especially the countries that are part of the EU are constantly improving, partly because they have to adhere to the EU-wide minimum baseline.

So I've got faith they'll get there.

But this lagging behind, for lack of a better world, is also, in part, why many US companies that want to expand into the EU set up bases in countries like Poland. It's generally cheaper and is the “least bad” from the corporations’ perspective regarding labor rights.

[mandeepj]

> Retaliation is pretty common in the US

I agree! And, they say this bluntly and while chest thumping: ‘we have strong laws against retaliation’ :-)

You disagree with your manager and that as*hole will put you on a pip the very next day

[dudul]

Do you have a source describing how common retaliation is in the US? I always thought it was actually pretty rare.

Sorry you lost your job, but I find it difficult to believe that it is solely due to you announcing the arrival of your child. Paternity leave is rarely more than 2 weeks in the US, I can't imagine a company preferring to deal with potential law suit instead of just living 2 weeks without an employee.

[fbdab103]

I expect most retaliation goes unreported, so going to be difficult to get any numbers that are not full of assumptions. Even if you know someone fired you for X, going to be hard to prove it: time, money, conflicting accounts, potential reputational damage for suing employer.

[jacquesm]

> I announced to HR that my wife is expecting (Tue) and was fired on Friday

That's so low. Really, your former employer is despicable.

[ricardobayes]

This is so stupid. In Spain even fathers get "paternity" leave. You even get a week off if you get married...

[solardev]

In the USA, everyone gets leave all the time! You just don't get paid.

[lowbloodsugar]

And your job probably isn’t there when you come back!

[dudul]

In the US too you get paternity leave, it's very fishy to see someone claim they got fired for announcing that their partner is expecting. This is a massive liability.

[alistairSH]

What parallel universe are you in? There is no guaranteed paternity leave in the US. Some states may have it, and a few employers offer it, but it’s in no way a right.

[solardev]

It really depends on your state and company size: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/state-paid-family-lea...

In general, it is better for US employees to plan as though they had no rights (especially if they can't afford a good lawyer or wait months/years for the NLRB to process a claim, and even then only during a Democratic administration). Of course they actually have a few rights, but much fewer than in European and many Asian countries, and the enforcement/protection is pretty minimal and delayed. Most employees will just get trampled on with no real avenue for recourse, especially if they have bills due in a week or two.

[faeyanpiraat]

Why did you announce it?

[tw04]

Presumably because he wanted to take paternaty leave after his child was born. Also why wouldn’t you tell coworkers you’re having a baby? It’d be really weird to keep that a secret.

[saalweachter]

So back when my team was smaller, we used to do birthdays. Lure the coworker into a conference room on some pretense or another, then bring out a cake.

Of course, once it became routine, it's rather hard to surprise someone -- any irregular meetings on your birthday are extremely suspect.

So for one coworker's birthday, a week after we'd just done another's, I scheduled JACK'S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT on his birthday. He, of course, was extremely suspicious, and assumed it was a front for his birthday.

I made my announcement, brought out the champagne (well, sparkling Catawba), went out into the hallway to get a corkscrew, and came back in with the birthday cake.

So he had the whiplash of, wait, is this not for my birthday after all, wait, if it is, then are you not having a baby? And I declined to clarify until after I started my paternity leave, and half my coworkers didn't believe it until after I brought the kiddo in to show off.

It was glorious.

[caymanjim]

I can't parse what you wrote to figure out what you were celebrating, but whatever it is, this is my idea of a workplace nightmare. It's bad enough being forced to celebrate someone else's birthday, but it sounds like you're also forcing people to celebrate their own birthdays without their permission, and possibly forcing people to celebrate pregnancies and other personal events without their permission?

I would hate you if I worked with you.

[toast0]

> but it sounds like you're also forcing people to celebrate their own birthdays without their permission

I've taken to telling people I don't have a birthday when asked, unless it's clearly for necessary record keeping; especially in a work context. I get a funny look, but whatever.

If I learn someone else has appropriated my birthday, I do let them know, and we can share private birthday greetings.

[wolverine876]

That is a lot of emotion and politics. How is it important to you? Is it really about birthdays? Relative to most things, IMHO they are pretty innocuous; YMMV of course.

[bentcorner]

Kind of harsh without context? I worked for a team that did this - putting your birthday on the spreadsheet was entirely optional, as well as attending any celebratory hallway things. Nobody was forcing anybody to do anything. If you had a conflict or was busy working, or just plain didn't want to participate, everybody understood and wouldn't mind.

FWIW I usually didn't participate nor did I let anybody know my birthday and I never felt excluded.

[caymanjim]

It's one thing to say "we're celebrating Bob's birthday so there's cake in the kitchen", or "we're going out to lunch for Jill's birthday". You should get Bob and Jill's permission before you do that, but if they're cool with it, then by all means. I can decide for myself if I want to participate, or make a polite excuse not to.

Throwing me a surprise birthday? I hate you. Inviting me to a meeting that I feel obligated to attend, only for it to be a surprise birthday? If it's for someone else, I'll just smile and pretend to enjoy it for the minimum socially-acceptable time and then bow out. If you did that for my birthday I would be pissed off. I'd still smile and pretend to enjoy it, but it would be excruciating torture for me.

And if you ever threw a party for me for anything more personal I wouldn't even smile and pretend, I'd make it publicly known how inappropriate it was.

[mulmen]

This is the stuff of nightmares. I would take whatever amount of PTO necessary to avoid this abuse around my birthday. Did you at least ask before advertising personal information to coworkers? Surprise party suggests no consent was obtained.

[johnnyanmac]

Comparing an impromptu gratitude to abuse is exactly why tech has such a negative stereotype in terms of social dynamics.

[mulmen]

Your gratitude is someone else’s abuse. I doubt you meant to cause harm but unsolicited celebrations hurt people. Please stop acting without consent. It’s never ok. You’re hurting people. Stop.

[otteromkram]

This seems like a very good anecdote in favor of continuing remote work.

[CoastalCoder]

Definitely an illustration of how different persons want different workplace experiences.

[johnnyanmac]

Replies are an illustration of how people can't respect others preferences as well.

[lukan]

"Also why wouldn’t you tell coworkers you’re having a baby?"

It was HR, not some coworker. But yes, it is messed up.

[gsich]

Toxic workplace then. HR are people too.

[Muromec]

HR are employer's cops and every cop-related advice applies, starting with "don't volunteer information". At least with managers in a big tech corp you have the same goal to pursue and failures to share. With HR it's either a script or a cop.

[lukan]

"every cop-related advice applies, starting with "don't volunteer information"."

I strongly disagree to that, but that is a different debate. (if you want my take: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34447138)

And with HR it can be the same. If the HR have the guidelines of making the employes happy - then you absolutely can share information with them, making planning easier - with the result of a better outcome for everyone. Like when the wife will give birth. "So hey, concratulations, good to know, so we can plan around it" - if it is a good company. If it is a company who don't give a damn and see every person as replacable in an instant, then this is a different scenario and the rule of not giving them anything does apply.

[gsich]

Like I said. If it comes to that it's a toxic workplace.

[lb1lf]

Cynically speaking, HR is an abstraction layer between management and employees, sorry, 'resources'.

When I worked for a huge engineering multinational years ago, it showed time and time again that people went into HR with the best of intentions, but most were as time ground on disillusioned upon finding they were not, after all, employed to help other employees.

The good ones mostly left, the poor ones thrived. Sigh.

(That being said, I do believe HR has a purpose, ensuring (at least in theory) professional, correct and consistent treatment of employees.

Just don't make the mistake of believing they are on your side; they are not.

[lukan]

"When I worked for a huge engineering multinational years ago"

I never was in a huge company, but in a small company, I found they can be nice and on the human side.

[Scarblac]

The company gets the best bang for their buck if employees are reasonably happy, healthy and productive. So most of the time your interests and the company's should be aligned.

[jjulius]

Why wouldn't you communicate ahead of time that you're going to be taking a chunk of time off in the near future, specifically for something so important?

[camdenreslink]

Letting HR know your wife is expecting is that communication.

Is he supposed to let HR know when they are trying to conceive? That seems unreasonable and TMI…

[Dakizhu]

I'm not clear on when exactly he let HR know, but the original post makes it seem like he let them know a week before. I think at least a couple months notice makes more sense depending on the duration of leave.

[kelnos]

I read that as he told HR on Tuesday, and then was fired three days later, on Friday. Not that the wife was due the following Tuesday. We don't know how far out the due date was based on what OP said.

I agree that employees should give sufficient notice for something like that. But even if they don't, that's not grounds for firing. It might be grounds for disallowing the leave until the required notice period has passed, assuming that's documented and legally allowed.

[IlikeMadison]

Wait. You were fired because you said to HR that you are going to be a father next week? How is this even legal?

[jjulius]

I think they're saying that they notified them on Tuesday, and were canned Friday.

[Cheer2171]

To earthwalker99: You got downvoted to death because you called out downvotes against you, but to explain more issues with your argument: Capitalism is a system of organizing society based on private ownership of the means of economic production. You're saying capitalism is about prioritizing the rights to capital accumulation by the current holders of capital, which is one specific form of capitalism, often called crony capitalism.

Private ownership of the means of production is more orthogonal to workers rights. There are capitalist economics in countries with very strong workers rights and unions, but where the means of production are still privately owned. Capitalism is fully compatible with strong family and medical leave protections, even though those who own the means of production are disincentived in the short term from giving workers rights. The fact that the US is worse on workers rights isn't a problem unique to capitalism.

[Cheer2171]

So called "right to work" laws that actually give employers the right to fire for no cause. As long as an employer doesn't say what the cause was, employers in those states can fire you for "no cause" even if the hidden reason would be an illegal cause if they stated it. It's only illegal if someone gets caught specifically saying the firing was because the employee is having a kid. Coincidences are not considered admissable evidence in those courts.

[alistairSH]

I think you’re conflating “at will employment” with “right to work”.

The first allows no-reason, no-notice termination of employment by both parties (which doesn’t really work - the employee usually needs income more than the employer needs a single employer).

The second is related to the ability to unionize.

[dantheman]

Right to work is about being forced to be a member of a union.

[johnnyanmac]

>reason would be an illegal cause if they stated it.

That's true but it's also exactly what you go to court for. Then the court audits and determines if this was a coincidence or malice.

That's why employers don't often make it this obvious. Like firing an employee 3 days after announcing they are a protected employee.

[otteromkram]

Retaliation is not common in the US. Stop spreading misinformation.

Why would an HR department from any reputable organization fire you if your wife is expecting?

[Arn_Thor]

Retaliation is abundant in the US. What are you smoking?

If a company thinks it can get away with it, it will. Saving money is more important than a hypothetical, minuscule and temporary hit to their reputation. There will always be consumers looking for a bargain at any real cost, workers desperate for a pay check, and shareholders worshipping the bottom line.

That’s why we need unions

[markstos]

Your counterpoint that it's not common has the same level of evidence in it as the original assertion: none.

[dantheman]

An absence of evidence for the argument against something being common is evidence.

[kelnos]

Evidence for what, though? An absence of evidence is perhaps evidence that someone who is asserting something is happening didn't do their homework. But an absence of evidence is certainly not evidence that something is not happening. It might be persuasive enough to allow people to reasonably believe that something is not happening. But it's not evidence of such.

[metabagel]

How would one go about finding evidence that retaliation is common in the U.S.?

Sometimes, absence of evidence is because the evidence isn’t readily available.

[gorbachev]

This is the tech bubble talking. Most big tech companies do treat their tech workers well...warehouse workers, not so much.

But for every big tech company there are thousands of smaller non-tech companies, where they do not treat employees well. Also common != majority.

Just read up on how Walmart treats their employees, for example. I just read an article earlier this week about Walmart systematically under-reporting OHSA violations, and retaliating against employees reporting workplace accidents to OHSA.

[SoftTalker]

IDK if it's very common but it happens, especially at smaller companies who either don't know the rules or those who have gotten away with it in the past and think they are too small to get noticed.

Just recently here a restaurant was fined for not paying overtime by employing dishwashers and kitchen staff as "salaried" exempt employees.

At large companies with in-house legal and HR teams? It probably doesn't happen much, but even there they will know what they can get away with.

[rr808]

Its not "retaliation" as such, just that for many unskilled jobs having someone show up everyday is the main part of the job. If you want time off they can swap you for someone who'll be there.

[kelnos]

I feel somewhat safe in believing that retaliation isn't common in tech companies (though it does happen sometimes). But I don't think I would feel safe assuming that generalizes to all jobs in the US.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if there was quite a lot of exploitation and retaliation at lower-skilled, lower-income jobs in the US.