I'm going to assume that the incoming reductions in force through PIPs and whatnot will be used to get rid of some of the better paid employees as well. Will it be possible for those affected (since severance will not be involved) to sue XOM for wrongful termination? And if they do, what are their chances of winning such a lawsuit?
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What do you consider wrongful termination? I do not know where you live,but a large amount of jobs are At Will no matter if they are salary or not .
As an individual you would never win . PIPs, Layoffs, and firing are planned months in advance and company attorneys have looked everything over and know exactly what to do to get someone out the door.
They put a time limit, IMHO, to sign so they know to tell the lawyers, get ready.
Has anyone negotiated for 4 months?
Exxon is a process oriented company.
Have a hard time believing that the same company that blamed every individual for the work conditions around them (why did you step in the oil?) would actually exercise real thought and say, "yeah, we'll do 4 months."
Good golly guys. Why are the options either take the pathetic PIL or get a lawyer and sue? Instead, inquire to negotiate better PIL terms in exchange for your John Hancock and cooperation. Save the lawyer fees.
I'm telling yall :: wink wink :: agreeing to completely sever ties(including the pension obligations) is worth more to the company than a measly 4 month PIL.
"Engineer Your Layoff" and all that....
look it up, it works
Assuming -
- You refuse to sign the waiver where you won't sue
- You actually performed well
Consider
- You need to convince a jury that Exxon was in the wrong
- Exxon will reclassify your termination and dig through your work finding every mistake (nobody is perfect)
- That Jury will hear a list of every wrong you ever did at Exxon.
- You will contend that you were a good employee.
- Nobody on that Jury will have worked for Exxon and understand the culture.
- You will find that all those near loss observations that you performed and others performed will have root cause factors that point at you. (All actions are behavior based)
And that's assuming that Exxon's lawyers fail to get the judge to disallow the juro from hearing 'prejudicial' IE accurate information.
It's like climbing a mountain, and you will need to support your family during the lawsuit, and your new employer will not look favorably on the amount of time you will need to sue Exxon nor the fact that you sued a former employer.
The only mitigating factor is that if you have a long paper trail where you went to HR with issues, and most of us are too nice and have a philosophical bent against doing that, then you might be able to sue, but if that's the case, something tells me they won't try to PIP you. I'm confident that they consider risk...
At the end of it, most competent people make the choice: I'll take the 3 months and I'll find a new job. Pretty sure there's some study Exxon is probably relying on that most people can find a job in 3 months.
New paperwork reported on this board is that new PIP will stop paying if you find a job before the 3 months... Just don't report being employed.
I'd recommend most people take the severance pay.
If
Can't speak to this year's PIL/PIP, but last year, no NDA.
If you have a bird in the hand at the time of your NSI then take the PIL moneh and leave. If not, then stay on, take your paycheck and use the time to get the bird. Then don't sign anything on the way out.
The PiL waiver letter you are asked to sign indicates if you DO take any action of this kind, it must be filed in TX court. (This is stupid bunkum according to my lawyer acquaintances - but that is what it says.)
Last year's PiL letter also had a note - buried in there - that you could waive your waiver of Age-based Litigation (a specific legal code).
But this waiver of the waiver can only be done AFTER signing the full waiver.
Then must contact a specified the XOM attorney (probably contractor) directly during a pretty short window. I think by postal mail is required.
Once again - this is a pretty weak protection of the liability of mass age-based PiPs.
Final note: It is possible that with XOM weakened and scandalized as it is now, a reputable labor lawyer could start a pass at a Class Action.
Maybe start in New Jersey for example, just to crumple it a little more and get attention.
I'd gladly fight Conor McGregor this coming week. For the right money.
Conventional Wisdom IS: whatever (i)legal move XOM makes, it has highly-qualified, stone-faced lawyers watching over it, and they will never let the company down.
Conventional Wisdom WAS: whatever lobbying move XOM makes, it has highly-qualified, stone-faced lobbyists watching over it, and they will never let the company down.
And then Kevin McCarthy came along.
Conclusion: welcome to the new XOM, who likes to play with fire, but where sh!t happens, with increasing frequency.
Very low probability of success. Take the PIL and move on.
An individual would go broke fighting an entity with deep pockets.
@qos+1bTLMmr2
“ I'd suggest getting a lawyer to take a class action lawsuit to be very difficult.”
All what it takes for a lawyer is the possibility of a nice, fat, out-of-court settlement, which would come with an ironclad NDA, so we ordinary people would hear no more than a rumor about it - and we already do hear such rumors.
Many oil companies have invented performance-related reasons to get rid of some of their older employees, but EM is the only one doing it on an industrial scale. This is bound to result in legal issues, just as it did for old pre-merger Mobil, who had to lower its retirement eligibility to 50, after a series of lawsuits.
I'll add . .
Don't sign anything. talk with a lawyer. A Chevron employee did this and was treated, as he would say, extremely equitably.
I disagree with the larger % of older population. The PIP is a key step to let someone go. If an employee does not fulfil EVERY goal, that is legal enough reason to be let go. how many employees do not achieve all of their goals is not relevant. make sure you agree with each word on the PIP.
I'd suggest getting a lawyer to take a class action lawsuit to be very difficult.
Do these PIL agreements yall sign come with an NDA? I think it would be silly for them not to include one, especially with all the craziness the guys in the field witness, particularly the international guys. But 4 months of PIL is weak....
Our collective focus should be on leveraging to get the PIL increased from 3-4 months to 9-12 months. How much is a signature really worth to them?
@yxn+1bTLMmr2
If there’s nothing illegal about PIPs, why is the company vehemently denying that it uses performance assessment to effect personnel reductions? The just did that when the Reuters article came out a few weeks ago.
My thoughts:
1 - you’d be suing a company with an army of lawyers
2 - there nothing illegal about pips , Amazon used to have a standing 10% pip (fell to about 6% then Bezos ratcheted it back up)
3 - likelihood is you’d lose and Incur big legal fees, unless you find a lawyer willing to work for free on the assumption they’d take home a larger % of monetary award
4 - let’s say you succeed (I’m not a lawyer) what is the recourse? They have to re-hire you? Wow that sounds like a great position to be in, working for a company you sued. Maybe there’s some monetary award, which will be wiped out by the attorneys cut.
5 - nobody working at ExxonMobil has the guts to sue them, ExxonMobil workers are some of the most risk adverse group of people on the planet. The sales pitch for ExxonMobil has always been “career for life” , and now having to find a new job is the apparently the scariest thing for you guys. So I’ll place my bet firmly in the “not suing “ column.
A word of caution every time you read on this thread an answer like “Nope. Take it and leave”. Remember that of all topics discussed on this site, this is the one and only that can really affect the company - venting is venting, lawsuits are something else. This is where you’re going to find serious company propaganda.
Any individual case will be almost impossible to win, as others have commented. However, the weakness in the EM system comes from the fact that there is a change, a pattern that can be proven if enough data is available. In the past 30 years (or more) the PIP was affecting a much smaller percentage of employees and almost none of them were in mid or late career - the PIP was a tool used to get rid of relatively new hires who “did not fit in”. Now the company is using this tool for a completely different purpose - to target late career, mostly REs who can’t be laid off (which is age discrimination and therefore clearly illegal). In each oversized PIP the company tries to balance REs with younger people, but what they can’t hide is that the proportion of REs in the last two years is suddenly way higher than historical levels. That’s the opening, and it will become more obvious as the series of oversized MLRPs continues. This new line of evidence is ignored by the naysayers, because it did not exist until last year. Getting the records will probably require a big class action, but I’m sure that some resourceful lawyers are already planning it.
Nope. Take and leave
From what I heard, you cannot sign the letter they issue to you. If you signed the letter it means you accepted /agreed you are pip level. They can only you if you prove you are on an absolute poor performer basis - in a sense can’t deliver base work and not meeting KPIs, they can’t terminate you base on relative performance. Cause it might just be your team has all the high performers.
Seems like EM has already determined that the legal costs against employees who sued will be cheaper than paying retrenchment package.
0% chance. You have to sign a waiver and release form if you take the PIP or PIL. Even if you did have a case, they company would just drag it out in court and would bleed you dry of any cash you had left.
In Texas, most likely Zero. They vet everything carefully by Law and HR before doing anything. Take your losses and don’t look back.
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