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this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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Employment laws are state-by-state, but I don't know a single one where it's illegal to fire someone for not coming into the office.
If you employ someone for a remote position you don't get to fire them for being in a remote position
They can, though the employees would be able to claim unemployment if the job was remote and then changed to on-site but if the job was on-site with a temporary remote policy the employee wouldn't have a leg to stand on there and could be dismissed for cause.
In the US, what you can and cannot fire someone for is complicated and counter intuitive.
A low performer that is part of a protected class is hard to fire because you need to have copious documentation that they were dismissed due to poor performance and were not targeted for their protected class status. This is a good thing and prevents unscrupulous bosses from firing a woman for getting pregnant, targeting people of a particular race, religion, or gender, or any number of other awful things. Those things will only come up if the former employee sues, and many will not, so some bad bosses or companies get away with this while others end up in court because someone that needed to be fired is crying discrimination.
On the flip side, if it falls outside of those protected classes, you can fire someone for any other reason or no reason at all. "I woke up in a bad mood and picked a name out of a hat to fire" is legal. You may get a fight if the person you picked claims discrimination on one of the protected classes and you have to explain to a judge that you're actually just a bad human and not discriminating, but it's allowed.
I've been in and out of these types of contracts for the last 20 years. If a position is remote then it is marked as remote in the contract. Even with the United States' horrible worker protection laws, they still can't unilaterally change a contract.
This is true for contract workers, but I believe we're talking about W2 employees, who rarely have a contract if they're not part of a union.
My perspective might be skewed because I always have a contract, even when I am an internal FTE. But my circumstance is not necessarily 'normal' since I live in Canada but work in the US/EU far more often than at home.
The laws are pretty different for contract workers vs W2 employees. W2 employees can have contracts, but it's really rare outside of unions. Conditions of employment can in most cases be changed at the employers discretion.
I feel a little bit like I'm defending Amazon here, but I'm really trying to highlight that our worker protections are crap in the US. Unions are really the way to go if employees want security. Tech industry has way too few unions.
I'm not in the US but I was hired at my current job during the pandemic and all of IT except for senior managers and up are 100% remote right now. But the contract I signed said they reserved the right to make me go back to the office at their discretion
That sucks. I would not have signed it as-is and asked for a revision.
I know that speaks to my privilege as much as anything else. But I am at the stage of my life where going back to an office is a non-starter for me, and I am confident that I would find another offer quickly after declining the contract with that kind of wording.
Yeah it wasn't my first job in IT but it was my first well paying job in IT so I just took it as is
Here is the jist. They can fire you for not going to the office, but they have to fire everybody else who doesn't go, else there they (the employee) can argue discrimination. And if we are taking a few hundreds of lawsuits, plus all the union movement they are having...
So it's better to "gently" let the people know they are not welcomed and motivate them to go.
Tl;Dr: Apes, together, strong.
Do you have experience with employment law?
An employee could argue discrimination, but they'd have to have evidence that it was due to a protected class to have any success, and those cases are notoriously hard to prove. In every state that I'm aware of, they can fire people selectively for not coming into the office, while keeping others employed.
It will be up to the judge on each case to decide, I'm sure that we could see different rulings for very similar cases.
Ultimately wether they win or lose they don't want to stir the flames, else they would have already done what you said. If it was so black and white, the penalty wouldn't be "blocking promotions".
Sure, Amazon doesn't want hundreds of extra lawsuits, but the staff also don't want to waste their money on legal fees for a suit that's a guaranteed loss. Case law is very well-established.
What's with the assumption that it's the law that is keeping Amazon from mass-firing staff who won't come in?
The approach they're taking is just a smart business decision. It allows them to spread the disruptions out so they're more manageable, to keep employees who's skills justify flexibility in the WFH rules, and prevents the PR impact of a mass termination.