Hey he does not have a problem with it so I don;t but I got news you if that came out on me and my termination slip sttated "Laid Off" someone would have a serious problem on there hands. You can only check one.
Just thought I would drop in and shed some light on the issue of being fired or laid off. I think you missed a category. I beleive the PC term is "Permanant Layoff"
Here's the definitions as I understand them to be...
Fired...removed from job for not doing a job as it is required or removed for reason other than job perfomance.
Laid Off.....a temporary reduction in work force based on lack of work available for employee, can expect to be called back as work picks up
Permanant Lay Off....would indicate the person has been removed from their job due to coperate reasons other than job perfomance but due to company decisions, cannot be expected to be called back. (this would take the negative feeling away from being removed from a job, that the word "fired" would imply. Current buzz words.....cutting jobs, reduction in work force, employee restructuring......
Another thing.....at least in the state of Pennsylvania, an employee that has been laid off, Permanantly Laid off, or Fired can collect unemployment. Loss of ones job by any of those three means indicates that the employeed was willing to work but the employer no longer wanted or needed their services. I belive the one situation in the case of being fired, that an employee would be denied unemployment benifits, is when the employer has formally filed crimimal charges against the employee. Even if someone has been fired for "theft" the will still receive unemployment benifits, if action is not leagally taken against them. (I know this cause it happened in our company...we fired the guy, who admitted stealing from us. We fired him but did not press charges. He collected unemployment benifits from us.)
Unemployment companstion is not available to the employee that "quits" his job, indicating their unwillingness to work.
Below I have linked an article from the Washington Post about Amazon's cutting of it's work force. Take note, these people were LAID OFF....but they are not going back to work at Amazon.
Amazon.com Cutting 1,300 Jobs Retailer Cites Goal Of Making a Profit
By David Streitfeld and Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, January 31, 2001; Page E01
Amazon.com, the Internet site that defines e-commerce to millions of Americans, announced yesterday that it was cutting its workforce by 15 percent, or 1,300 employees.
"This was painful but very necessary for us to reach our goal of profitability in the fourth quarter," Warren Jenson, Amazon's chief financial officer, said in a conference call with reporters. That profitability, if achieved, would be on a "pro forma" operating basis, which doesn't take into account interest that must be paid on the company's $2 billion in debt.
Most of the staff cuts stem from the company's decision to shutter a distribution center in Georgia as well as its original customer-service center at its home base in Seattle. That center has been the focus of a unionization drive.
Amazon, which started as a bookstore but now sells a broad range of products including wireless telephones and paper towels, also reduced its revenue estimates for 2001 to no more than $3.5 billion from $4 billion. Jenson cited the weak economy as the prime culprit.
Some evidence of a slowdown showed up in the fourth quarter. Amazon said today that its revenue for the period was $972 million. Before the retailer "pre-announced" some results earlier this month, analysts had been predicting revenue of more than $1 billion.
Jenson and Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos stressed yesterday in a separate conference call, this time with analysts, that the company was making progress in proving the viability of its business.
"We have now validated that people will buy non-media products from Amazon.com," Bezos said. The question has become "How much of the worldwide market is addressable?" The answer, he indicated, was just about all of it, as Amazon becomes "the earth's first truly worldwide retailer."
Employees who were laid off were naturally less ebullient. "Any illusions I might have had about the nobility of Amazon.com have been shattered," said Alan Barclay, a customer-service representative who was involved in a well-publicized but so far unsuccessful unionization effort.
Many customer-service representatives in Seattle had long worried that they could be the target of layoffs, in part because their city-based unit was among the most expensive to operate. The company also has customer-service centers in India, Grand Forks, N.D., and Huntington, W.Va.
Marcus Courtney, a representative for WashTech, a division of the Communications Workers of America, said "the number one issue workers were organizing on is job security."
Courtney, who was helping to organize the customer-service representatives, said he will ask the National Labor Relations Board to investigate. "Some serious red flags have been raised" by the fact that the only customer-service unit to be dismantled was the focus of union efforts, he said.
CFO Jenson said the unionization activities "had absolutely nothing to do" with decisions to close the center.
While layoffs and shutdowns have quickly become a staple of the slumping dot-com economy, Amazon has mostly escaped unscathed. Last year at this time, 150 workers -- 2 percent of its staff -- were let go.
Bezos said yesterday that a trust fund was set up with $2.5 million in Amazon stock. It would be distributed to the laid-off employees in 2003. "If we do well, they will benefit alongside us," Bezos said.
******note remainder of article is accesssible from the link********
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