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CNN Sunday Morning
Fired? You, Too, Have Legal Rights
Aired July 22, 2001 - 08:40 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PHILLIPS: So, you're worried about your job? Afraid you're about to be let go? What can you do about it? What are your legal rights?
Our next guest can help; he's John Rapoport, an attorney and author of the book, "The Employee Strikes Back." We welcome him from New York for some good inside tips.
Hi, John.
JOHN RAPOPORT, AUTHOR: Good morning, Kyra. How are you?
PHILLIPS: I'm doing all right and I hope that I'm not a target, but let's talk about that. Can we figure that out for ourselves, if we are the next person to be fired?
RAPOPORT: I think you can in a lot of ways. There are often subtle signs, and sometimes not-too-subtle signs that you'll see.
In "The Employee Strikes Back," we try to give you some information as to what to look for, including there are a lot of situations where all of the sudden the temperature in your office changes. Maybe your boss isn't talking you as much as he used to or maybe your boss isn't giving you the assignments that she used to give you, and you begin to feel the sudden shift.
You add that to the fact that the company isn't making as much money as it used to be making, and you start to provide yourself with a little information that maybe something is going to happen, some people are going to get laid off.
PHILLIPS: So, let's say you do get fired. How do you know if you've been a victim of a wrongful firing?
RAPOPORT: Well, what we've tried to do at EmployeeStrikesBack.com is to give an evaluation form that people can use. You take the evaluation form and you have to honestly appraise yourself and your situation. You've got to look and compare yourself to others in the exact same job category.
And you begin to see that if there were 17 people laid off out of 150, and of those 17, 14 were over the age of 40, you start to provide yourself with a profile that can indicate that maybe that layoff wasn't entirely objective. PHILLIPS: OK. You talk about this personal survey, but what about these performance appraisals, these reviews. Can those ever be faulty or flawed?
RAPOPORT: Oh, sure, because often times companies use the performance appraisal to get to the end result they want to get to.
If you have been with a company for 15 or 20 years, doing exceedingly well, it is no problem for an employer to start writing up a performance appraisal that says you're not doing well, because they can write anything they want to.
So, you've got to take the performance appraisal and look at it, and begin to realize whether that's really an objective evaluation of your performance and whether or not there is something in that that is giving you a hint as to your future as well.
PHILLIPS: All right. Also, in your book you hit on sex and pay or promotion discrimination. Very common topics. Is this where we should read up on the Equal Pay Act?
RAPOPORT: Yes. And basically, though, when you start to look at who -- in "The Employee Strikes Back" you start to review your own situations, you find that whether it is sex or whether it is race or whether it is age, there are a lot of common threads. And it is simply a question of whether you are being treated appropriately in the context of the business. Whether you're being treated the same as everyone else in the business. And if you're not being treated the same, then you have to start to look for what it is in your own makeup and your own background that is the difference between you and the people who are treated probably a little bit better.
PHILLIPS: Religion and retaliation. Another chapter I was noticing in your book. This definitely is a serious situation, religion, religious discrimination. But there is kind of a strange side to this as well, right?
RAPOPORT: Well, there is. But, in modern times, you know, we like to think of ourselves now in the 21st century, it is almost amazing to believe that sometimes people would discriminate against you because of that. But religion is the same as any other factor. If I don't like people who are of one religion, that enters into my decisions in the workplace.
PHILLIPS: John Rapoport, "The Employee Strikes Back." Very interesting book. Also has a Web site. Check it out.
Thanks so much for being with us this morning, John.
RAPOPORT: Thank you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right.
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