There are some legal loopholes but in general terms its not difficult to terminate anyone, with or without a paper trail. Look at the big companies currently doing mass layoffs. Navistar and Cummins Engine are two big ones I am very familiar with. They simply call it a "workforce reduction" and its done.
Originally Posted by Chica Chaser
It isn't quite that cut-and-dried.
I got caught in like the fifth round layoff at Nortel Networks, in 2001. One of the documents they gave me was a list of EVERYONE (not by name) who'd been laid off in that round, broken out by age and ethnicity. The purpose of this was to demonstrate that neither age nor race was the reason for any one particular person being laid off.
There's a reason. If the person being laid off can establish ANY kind of credible claim, as in good enough that his attorney can keep a straight face in court while laying the claim in front of the judge, it will cost the company a HUGE amount of money to defend themselves. If the claim is legit, if it WAS age or race discrimination, the company is TOAST. The penalties they'll get hit with, and the legal costs they'll incur, for laying off that one oldster, or that one protected minority, will eat ALL of the savings they hoped to get from the ENTIRE layoff.
That's for a mass layoff. For a single layoff, the burden is a lot higher. In some industries, in some states, it is literally cheaper to transfer the guy to a holding bin somewhere, and pay his salary and bennies until he retires, and his pension after that, than it is to can him, EVEN IF HE IS BEING TERMINATED FOR CAUSE. (The teacher's unions in California are a particularly nasty example of this. They've got guys marking time in warehouses with SEXUAL ASSAULT OF STUDENTS charges pending against them. The due process requirements are such that many of them will retire, and draw their pension, before the district has jumped through all the hoops required to fire them.)
In the case at hand, if the dentist had been smart about it, BEFORE he'd laid the girl off, he'd've called every other dentist in town, QUIETLY, explained the situation, and set up interviews for her. IDEALLY, he'd have had three potential job offers for her in his hand before he ever called her into his office.