Welcome back to the Employee Survival Guide. I'm Mark Caring. Today we are dismantling one of the scariest terms in corporate dictionary, determination for cause. It sounds final, doesn't it? It sounds like you did something terrible. You stole money, you punched a coworker, or you burned the building down. When an employer uses those words, they want you to feel ashamed. They want you to feel lucky that you aren't suing that they aren't suing you. And most importantly, they want you to walk quietly away without asking for a goddamn dime. But here's the reality check. In my practice, I see employers use the for cause label as a weapon, not a not a description. It's often a financial strategy designed to block you from getting unemployment benefits and deny you a severance package that you deserve. If you've been fired for cause or if you're being treated or threatened with it, do not panic. The game isn't over. It's in fact just beginning. First, we need to clear up what the ca the term cause means legally. Most employees are at will, meaning you can be fired for any reason. But for for cause is a specific legal standard, it usually requires willful misconduct. This is a distinction employers try to blur. Here's scenario number one. You missed your sales quota for two quarters in a row. That is a performance issue. That's not a cause basis. Situation number two, you embezzled client funds or sexually harassed a subordinate. That's for cause basis. Here's the trap. Employers love to stress or dress up the scenario number one to look like scenario number two, they will claim that your failure to follow a specific protocol was insubordinate insubordination or a violation of company policy. Why do they do this? Money. It's always about money. If they fire you for performance, they have to uh pay out accrued benefits or stick to the severance policy in your contract. If they fire you for cause, they don't owe you shit. So you're sitting in that cold conference room or looking at a Zoom screen and HR tells you you're being terminated for cause, you feel like you have zero leverage. But here's the secret the burden of proof for cause is on your employer. If they want to deny you benefits based on misconduct, they have to prove that misconduct happened. And surprisingly often, they can't. Believe me, they can't. Did they follow their own investigation procedures? Did they apply the rules equally? For example, if they fired you, your female, for being late, but Dave in accounting is late every day and still has a job. That's not cause. That's discrimination or pretext. Is the policy violation actually just a minor error that they are blowing out of proportion? I recently had a client fired for cause for sending a personal email from a work account. Technically a policy violation, maybe, but grounds to deny a tenure employee their severance? Absolutely not. We fought for it and we won. Now let's answer the big question. Can you still get a severance package? The answer is yes. We get severance in poor cause cases all the time. How? By attacking the validity of the cause determination. We go to the employer and say, this wasn't willful misconduct. This was a performance issue or a misunderstanding or a lack of training. We show them that their definition of cause won't hold up, hold up in court or before the Department of Labor. Suddenly the employer has a choice. They can spend$50,000 to$100,000 fighting my office to prove that you were bad, or they can pay you a severance package to go away quietly and sign a release. Nine times out of ten, they choose option two. They don't want the headache of dealing with my office. I'm not joking. They don't want to risk a wrongful termination suit, and there's public notoriety of that, bad PR. They just want the problem solved. We essentially trade the cause label for cash. We can often get them to change the termination status to resignation or job elimination in your file, which protects your reputation and secures the payout you need to bridge the gap on your next job. So if you're facing a trap right now, and here's your survival checklist. Number one, don't sign anything immediately. If they slide a separation agreement across the table that says you admit to wrongdoing, don't sign it. Take it home, give it to me, the employment attorney. Number two, demand the file. Ask for your personnel files. You have a right to see the evidence they have against you. In most states you can get the file, in some states you can't. In Connecticut, you can, in New York, you can't. That's called a personnel file. Number three, document the inconsistencies. Write down every instance where an employee other employees did the same thing and weren't fired. Usually that starts to demonstrate a pretext for some basis of discrimination that you can bring against the employer. Number four, call an employment lawyer. Me. We can look at the facts and tell you very quickly if there is a c if their cause, the company's you know, rationale for cause is legit or it's a bluff. Bottom line is this the forecast label is a label. It's not a verdict, is is often just an opening negotiation tactic by a company trying to save a buck. And member employers are cheap. Don't let them bully you out of a compensation you're earned. And as always, have a great week, and thank you for allowing me to be a service.