BlackBerry Sued By Over 300 Former Employees (mobilesyrup.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: BlackBerry is facing a class-action lawsuit from more than 300 former employees across Canada, according to a news release from law firm Nelligan O'Brien Payne LLP. The Waterloo, Ontario-based tech company is accused of denying employees their termination entitlements by transferring them to a partner company and, once they had accepted employment there, handed them resignation letters. The former employees were then allegedly given their final date of work. "BlackBerry's actions amount to a termination of the employees' employment," the law firm said. "This entitles these employees to statutory, common law, and/or contractual entitlements on termination."

Comments

Re:Whatever happened to at-will employment?

[Curunir_wolf]

Termination being acceptable by either party for any legal reason... why do these special snowflakes think they are better than the rest of us?

The practice is completely illegal in the United States because of labor laws. You can certainly get rid of people, but you can't transfer them to a subsidiary to do it, that's considered Unemployment Insurance fraud. Companies pay UI tax based on their history of employment and layoffs, and benefits are based on the amount of time people worked at the company. When you transfer people to another company before getting rid of them, it hides your real employment figures and that of the employees, fraudulently providing yourself a tax benefit.

I don't know what the system is like in Canada, but in the US they would be civilly AND criminally liable based on Federal law and state statutes.