Investigating Layoffs: Legal & Financial Review for Terminated Employees

As an employee lawyer, I find it interesting to investigate corporate layoffs and scrutinize the financial and legal dynamics at play, given that most terminated employees who lose their job in a major layoff will rarely do any investigation. And if they speak with a lawyer, they tend to be presented with a traditional response to employee terminations, as opposed to investigatory analysis, which should be a central component of any discussion of employee layoffs in my professional estimation.

When one investigates employee layoffs, it is amazing how much one learns about the corporate employer’s employment practices and the financial and legal exposure of the terminated employees. There is an incredible wealth of information that is readily available in the Internet era, which make these investigations particularly intriguing, especially as to what it reveals from a terminated employee’s perspective.

I see this when I look at the decision by Suncor Energy to layoff 1,500 employees, as the company seeks to cut costs by $400 Million by year's end. And it would be very easy to limit one’s assessment of the Suncor layoffs to the well-crafted words put forth by Suncor’s CEO:

“Staffing reductions will occur at all levels of the organization and will be based on both performance and business need. As we do this, we will eliminate work, critically looking at what we do, why we do it, how we do it and the value it adds.” …

“I assure you that decisions like these, that affect people and their lives, are not easy to make or taken lightly. However, at this time, they are necessary to ensure the ongoing competitiveness of our company.”

However, I prefer to dig deeper, especially after one reads other stories about the current success and growth of Suncor Energy, in the midst of undertaking major employee layoffs, including “Suncor Energy Inc. stock rises Friday, outperforms market”; “Is the Options Market Predicting a Spike in Suncor Energy (SU) Stock?”; and “Suncor Energy to acquire TotalEnergies' Canadian oil sands stake for C$1.47 bln.”

Given this positivity on the financial front, I was naturally intrigued by the employee actions at Suncor and what such an investigation might discern that would be advantageous to a Suncor employee who is laid off or otherwise departs their job at Suncor Energy.

And sure enough, when I undertook my investigation, the information that I was able to uncover from Suncor’s own publicly available materials, when subjected to my own particular financial and legal analysis, produced results that would shock most employees.

The challenge is knowing what to look for, where to find it, how to interpret it and how it applies to an employee that is being laid off or otherwise leaving the company.

If you know what you are doing, and understand how to decipher the financial and legal complexities, the results speak for themselves.

However, without such an investigation, most employees will sell themselves short when it comes to dealing with being laid off, fired, terminated or otherwise departing their job.

And as with almost everything that is highly technical and financially and legally complex, the most important facts can be in plain sight, however, if you cannot identify it and decipher it, you can review thousands upon thousands of pages and never see it.

And that is where our understanding of these legal and financial complexities can prove invaluable to an employee who has been laid off, fired, terminated or quit their job, as we can identify and litigate crucial legal aspects to an employee’s financial advantage.

If you take your job loss seriously, and wish to engage a law firm committed to fighting for what you are legally entitled to, contact our law firm for a free confidential consultation and learn what we can do for you. Contact our law firm for a confidential initial consultation at Chris@NeufeldLegal.com or 403-400-4092 / 905-616-8864.