The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Fired? Afraid You Might Be?: Use Legal Leverage to fight back against your employer and win on your terms (Fired Book) by J Thomas Spiggle

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

Fired? Afraid You Might Be?: Use Legal Leverage to fight back against your employer and win on your terms (Fired Book) by J Thomas Spiggle https://amzn.to/4d984bJ Spigglelaw.com Are you seeking clarity and empowerment when it comes to workplace rights and legal recourse? Being wrongfully treated at work is extraordinarily painful and figuring how to respond is confusing. And that before we get into the work of employment law. Employees who are fired, or are afraid that they might be, need help. That’s what this book is for, to give people a plain English understanding of the legal tools that they can use to get control of their career. Through the story of Matt and Lynn - two fictional characters in the book who are consulting with an Employment lawyer - the reader can begin to demystify the legal process and understand how employment lawyers think. With that knowledge, the reader can chart a path with or without hiring an attorney. And if the reader decides to talk to a lawyer, that meeting will be even more productive with the real-world perspective provided by this book. Navigating the turbulent waters of workplace injustice can be an agonizing ordeal and leaving individuals grappling with confusion and emotional turmoil. In such challenging times, the need for guidance is paramount, and that’s precisely what this book aims to provide. In this book, you will learn: That she is not powerless. That there are many steps you can take to protect your rights that do not involve filing a lawsuit. How to determine what your case is worth. The parts of your case that might be more valuable to you than money that sometimes even judges and attorneys forget. How to turn a temporary career set back into a launching pad for your career. Empowering Your Employment is your comprehensive way to regain control of your career and find clarity amidst workplace injustices. It’s a must-read for anyone seeking justice and empowerment in the complex world of employment law. Get a copy now!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

The Chris Voss Show. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. For 14 years, I had to sing that line, and now the Iron Lady does it, and I'm never so happy every time she does it. She does it so much better than I do. Welcome to the Big Show, my family and friends. As always, we bring you two to three great shows a day. Weekday, I should say.

I'm not working on weekends for you people. Give me a break. So check out the 5 to 10, 15 podcasts we're putting out every week. We call ourselves the Netflix of podcasts because you can binge watch anything. If you want to binge watch political authors, you can do that. If you want to binge watch romance novels, you can do that. Everything is on the Chris Voss show, almost everything. I think the OnlyFans content isn't on here yet, but there's still time.

If we get bored, we'll see what happens. But there's a site for that, so we're not going to bother with it. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing authors, minds, thought leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs on the show, sharing with you all their greatest insights, their stories, and everything else to make you smarter. And today, we'll be talking to an amazing attorney for his newest and latest book called Fired, Afraid You Might Be. Use legal leverage to fight back against your employer and win on your terms. This is book two of two of his Fired book series. March 27th, 2024 came out, and we have J. Thomas Spiegel on the show with us today,

attorney we should also mention, and he's going to be talking to us about his book. So if you've ever been fired, damn it, this show's for you, eh? I think we all, has everybody been fired? Is there anybody who's not been fired? I've been fired by the Chris Voss Show about 15 times, but I just keep myself locked inside this room and barricade myself, and they haven't cut off my power yet, so I don't know if it's still working. Great pro tip. There you right great pro tip there you go

pro tip tom spiegel is a former federal prosecutor he's highly accomplished attorney who's dedicated his career to protecting your rights he worked in as assistant united states attorney in washington dc prosecuting serious criminal cases in 2009 he founded the spiegel law firm the firm's core mission is to help people navigate through difficult employment circumstances towards a Phoenix moment. He is a highly regarded expert and advocate in the field of employment law, known for his extensive work in combating workplace discrimination. He's a senior contributor for Forbes and the author of the groundbreaking book, You're

Pregnant, You're Fired. That's the one I'm reading now, just in case. Welcome to the show, Tom. How are you? Thanks, Chris. Thrilled to be here. Thrilled to have you as well. Give us your dot coms, wherever you want people to follow you on the interwebs.

Yeah. Our website is spigolaw.com and on X, it's just T Spigol is where you can find me and you can also find me at LinkedIn, the same name. There you go. Give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book? Yeah. So this book is to give people a realistic view of what an employment lawsuit might look like or taking action against your employer might look like to give them kind of the real nuts and bolts of how an attorney would look at your case so that you can begin to understand,

you know, what do I have here? How far do I need to push? How do I realize, you know, my objectives? And so, is a lot of, what's the right word? Undue firing? Wrongful termination. Wrongful termination going on these days? Yes. There's a lot of wrongful termination. And, you know, one of the reasons I put, you know, afraid you might be in the title is because we also represent people who are still at work and having problems, right? They need an accommodation, they're being harassed. Being fired is certainly a good

tripwire for calling a lawyer, but you can also use one if you're still at work and not experiencing some problems. Do you talk about like sexual harassment in the book or other sort of bullying? Yes, yes. So we talk about sexual harassment. We have a whole chapter on how to tell whether or not the law has been violated and how you might be covered. So, yeah, we do talk about that in the book. There you go. There's a lot of stuff that goes on in offices. And I remember when I was younger and worked for other people, sometimes you just come across people.

They just don't like you, and they just have it out for you. And there's, sometimes there doesn't seem to be a reason for it other than they just, I don't know, bullying or whatever. They just don't like you. That's why I started my own company so I could do my own bullying. Absolutely. Yeah. That's all about.

And throw people out the second story window is the call to action on the show. But then they're going to call you. It's a guide to help people go into there. And then, as we mentioned, you have the other book, You're Pregnant, You're Fired. And I guess that's happening a lot too, huh? Yeah, you'd be surprised. You know, that really does sometimes seem like we're still in the 1950s. And you'd be surprised what some employers will put in writing about why they're letting a woman go.

So, it does happen. Wow. And I think, don't some employers ask if they can catch on? Or are they allowed to ask? Is it legal to ask if you're pregnant? If you're pregnant? No, not in the interview process. It's not necessarily illegal to ask somebody in the workplace. For obvious reasons, I suggest you not do that,

because you could be wrong. Then that's embarrassing. People ask me if I'm pregnant all the time. I'm like, I'm not that fat. And they're like, yeah, about nine months, 10 months. Could be any day now. Any day now that's coming out. We just thought you were one of them. So whatever that means. Yeah. Yeah. We do see that quite a bit. And one of the reasons I wrote that book is because the law is regulating, you know, kind of pregnancy in the workplace and just caregiver issue generally. If you've got young kids, whether you're a male or a female, it's very complicated. And I wanted folks to be able to, you know, kind of get a sense of what's legal and what's not.

Because it's a lot to unpack, a lot to follow. It used to be in the old days, you just figured, oh, if you get fired, you're fired. You just got to deal with it and go get a new job. And so it sounds like if you can get early on, you know, there's these guys on TikTok that talk about how once AR starts putting you in different, I guess they have like programs or something where they review every week. Yeah. week. And it's basically, as soon as you get notified of it, you know that they have you on some sort of fast track to get you pushed out. Once you're on that roller coaster ride, they're going to get you out. And I guess reading your book and some of the advice that you give to clients, they can maybe jackknife that sort of thing or fight to get you out.

Yeah, they could or just know that it's coming, right? I think you're exactly right. Most organizations call it a performance improvement plan. And once you're on one of those, nine times out of 10 in the private sector, government is a little different, but the private sector, you're done. And so in the book, I talk about ways you might negotiate a severance, you know, you might negotiate a more favorable exit. You can't necessarily stop the firing, but you can put yourself in a better place going forward. And one of the points I want to make to folks in the book is to get a realistic understanding of where you are and what your possibilities are for getting, let's forget justice, like some extra monies, waive a non-compete, whatever it may be, but

when to know if you don't have much of a case and if what you should do is try to negotiate a slightly better severance and then take the money that you have. And I list a number of other career professionals in the book. Maybe what you need is just a smoking resume and some more contacts and going to get a better job rather than saddling up and running off to federal court and spending tens of thousands of dollars and a bunch of time, which can be, sometimes that's called for, but you need to give that some real thought because it's you know as you know it can be it can be draining in many ways yeah i was fired it's in my book because leadership plug i was fired when i was 18 for long hair and where it was just

basically for long hair and i was putting my hair in a bun just the other women would do but i had a religious guy who just had out for me in my my satanic van halen that's right we all know van halen worships the satan and yeah diver down that's right to hell but but the benefit was i went and started my first company and three months later I came back and shook his hand and thanked him and said I'd make now probably three to four times more than you and have a life. That was

the benefit of that. But that's an interesting idea, a concept asking for, you know, hey, if you're going to flush me out, let's just work on something now and buy me out, pay me off. A lot of people seem to be willing to do that these days, I guess. Yeah, look, the employer, I mean, certainly if there's been a legal activity, then you can negotiate a pretty decent sentence. But even if there hasn't been or if it's kind of borderline, like you mentioned before,

just having a boss that's an asshole is not something you can sue for. Unfortunately, otherwise, that'd be a lot busier. Yeah, I would be out of it. I would be out of it soon, endlessly. You'd be done for. In my company. But nevertheless, even if you have a situation where you don't have a slam dunk, something illegal happen in the workplace, the employer still wants that severance agreement because they want the release.

They want the waiver of any, because they don't have to worry about getting sued. That's their opportunity to control what you're going to say about them. Because if you just get fired without the severance, you within reason can say whatever you want about the company, as long as it's true or you believe it to be true. But in a severance agreement, then they can lock you down with a non-disparagement agreement. They may be able to get a non-compete.

So even if you don't have like a smoking gun, you're not without leverage, which is kind of the point of the book is what is your leverage? Is it just that they want your signature and want you out the door, which is some leverage. It's not going to win you lottery kind of money, but it's some leverage for you to ask for some things. Whereas if you've got email from the company boss demonstrating that he's a harasser and you got it in black and white, then you've got a bigger bargaining chip. It's knowing where you are on that spectrum. Yeah. I've got the boss's dick pics, but they're in color, not black and white. Oh, yeah.

Call me later, Chris. We'll talk. I will. I'll call you. I'm looking for that severance. So there's a lot that goes on in workplaces. One of the things that I remember we were negotiating for a health insurance policy for a company. And we were going to do the thing where we paid half and the employee paid half and all that stuff.

And the insurance company came in and they had to look at everybody's medical records or whatever. And so they were bidding on the thing. And they came to me privately and they said, hey, look, you have two employees that they are pretty broken and messed up. And they are going to raise everyone's prices by probably $10, $15, $20 on average across you know hundreds of employees and if you got rid of these two people you could really save yourself and a lot of a lot of people money and i sat there just going are we really have this fucking conversation and two of those employees were some of my best employees were my best employees the one yeah she was great she had some health issues but she was the one who was there at an hour before work and two hours after

sometimes i'd be like you know you really should go home i think we'll be i think we'll be okay but you know her son had a lot of problems with he had she had shingles and then he had schizophrenia so there's a lot of problems there but she was my best employee and to me just unethically it was like creep show yeah and they really leaned on me hard and i said f you just write the policy and i'm not i'm not gonna lay off anybody but it made me just wonder because they were so open about doing with me how many other people they were doing it to oh i'm sure i'm sure a ton i'm sure that happens i'm sure that happens all the time yeah and i was just like you're so cavalier about this is this this is standard operating procedure fire people and then

you know i mean how you would fire them so i think i guess what how do people know when there's a tip off to either you, someone's kind of in the wrong. I mean, how do I know when to call an attorney? You know, clearly you buy your book and read your book. But how do I know when maybe it's time to consult with an attorney? Are there any signs or tip-offs or tips? Yeah. I mean, I think you really go with your gut, right?

If something has happened to you like that, like you had just talked about, and you're like, you know what? Like, I don't, you know, I haven't gone to law school, but this doesn't sound like it's right. You know, I'm a, certainly you can do your own research, right? Like you can, you know, gotta be a little careful when you go to chat GPT,

you'll go to a search engine and say, kind of type in what happened to you and say, is this illegal? And, you know, I wouldn't take it to the bank what you get back, but it's going to give you some kind of feedback to go from there. And then I'm a big fan of just call a lawyer. You don't have to hire him or her for full tilt litigation. Some people most won't, but some people do a free consultation. But even if you have to pay 500 bucks or whatever,

could be less, for an hour to talk to a knowledgeable attorney, they can get to the bottom of it pretty quickly. If you came to me with pretty much any scenario, within probably 15 minutes, I can say, here's where you are in terms of the legal landscape. And then there's a great site called avo, A-V-V-O dot com, where you can go and you can post legal questions, I believe for free, and you'll get responses back from attorneys. Now, little buyers beware. Sometimes you get what you pay for, but it's a good place to start.

There you go. I like the subtitle of the book, Use Legal Leverage to Fight Back Against Your Employer and Win on Your Terms. And so your terms may not be always keeping that job because who wants to work there if they're paying the ass or the hate? But like you said, severance payance pay working negotiating some sort of settlement if there's been some illegal stuff that's gone on you know there's there's all sorts of crap that goes on now and especially these big corporations sure you know and so there's always there's always

something it's been interesting how what do you think about yeah i know amazon or that was i don't think it was amazon i think google did a thing where they were trying to neuter sexual harassment lawsuits in a way that would force them to go through i think mediation first yeah arbitration yeah arbitration that's it and then there was a big uprising strike people are poured out into the street and and threw a fit i think over it and so they they were like oh okay we'll just have to sneak that in on you later what they all do what are your thoughts on stuff like that yeah arbitration is a big issue it's actually at least for sexual harassment claims now illegal to force people into arbitration

everybody else you guys can go to you guys can enforce to arbitration. You guys can enforce an arbitration. And it's a boon for the companies because it's not public, right? If you're in arbitration, like if I file a lawsuit in any court, it's public record. Anybody can see it. The press can see it. If I go to arbitration, those are kind of like a secret tribunal. That doesn't mean you can't win. You can, but it's not as merely, speaking of leverage, you lose that kind of public embarrassment leverage that you would have against a company in a regular lawsuit.

So it's a big deal. And that's one of the threshold issues that we look at is do you have an arbitration clause? Because except for sexual harassment, the court's usually going to uphold them. Again, it doesn't mean you don't have any leverage you don't have rights but it does tend to be better for the companies which is why they do it oh yeah i mean it's it's crazy i was kind of i think that was the biden law that biden put in where yeah i was i i like biden but i was pretty

upset about that because i'm like how come sexual harassment gets his own lane it should be for everything yeah that's bullshit but i'm not a lobbyist for the sexual harassment attorney yeah i think it's the whole me too movement was what kind of lit the fire under that one but yeah so that's what you know because all those all those women had either arbitration or they had non-disparagement clauses and so there was a lot of legislative activity after that but you're right for the rest of us who are fortunately not experiencing sexual harassment, but may have other problems, whether it's with your credit card or with your employer, a lot of them now use arbitration agreements. And it's barring you from the

courthouse door does take a few of your arrows out of your quiver. And correct me if I'm wrong, because you're an attorney, it does take away some of your rights out of your quiver. And correct me if I'm wrong, because you're an attorney. It does take away some of your rights, right? Because the right of your constitutional right to defend yourself in a court of law is kind of constitutional, I guess. Yeah. I mean, you do waive. I mean, that's how they get you, right? I mean, like you're signing the arbitration.

So they can't force you into arbitration. You have to sign the agreement. But as what happens with a lot of us, I mean, me too, I mean, I should know better. I'm a lawyer, but you know, you get the, you know, whatever the software update, you get the credit card statement, it's 18 pages long. Like I'm not reading this thing. I'm just signing it. It's got an arbitration provision. So you've waived, you know, those, those constitutional rights that you would ordinarily have. Yeah. That's, you know, and you're just, you just want a job,

man. You want to pay the bill and provide for your family and stuff. And you just want a job. So you're like, oh, okay, well, I'll sign this.

The other thing is the non-compete agreements. Those are really damaging. I never really thought anybody really enforced them until we hired some people in time that are non-compete agreements and got sued. The, we ended up winning, but man, it was, I was like like i guess this is a really

big deal for people i know it's a big deal for big companies because usually there's some tech knowledge that goes and ip knowledge that can be very valuable like when the waymo guy i think there was a guy who left waymo yeah yeah he went to waymo yeah he took a bunch of the trade secrets and yeah that's gonna be secrets you know that becomes a big deal yeah but yeah negotiating out He went to Waymo and he took a bunch of the trade secrets and technology secrets. That becomes a big deal. But yeah, negotiating out of those things is really important, especially if you're just a little tradesman sort of person where you're like, hey, we need to get me out of this non-compete agreement because I guess people enforce them. Yeah. Yeah.

Non-compete can be a big deal. And that's one of the things I raise in the book when I talk about knowing what your objectives are, right? Because if you take it to an attorney, you know, attorney is going to, most of them are going to try to do right by you and do what you want to do. But the attorney is looking at it, I cannot win this in court, you know, give a boy a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. But so maybe your objective is you're like, I don't want to run off to court. I don't even really care about a severance. I just want to have this non-compete because that may be the most valuable piece to you. And it can be an easy give for the company because they're not having to write a check. And a lot of times, just as with arbitration provisions, they use these things. They overuse them. I mean, there are some cases where like fast food industry uses them with their people who work there. Like who needs a non-compete for somebody who's flipping burgers, but they do, they have these non-competes.

And so a lot of people have them, they don't realize they have them. And that's an important thing to know when you're, you know, when you're, when you're headed out and, and if you have leverage to use it to say, Hey, I'll sign this, I'll go, I'll waive my rights because I've talked to an attorney and I don't, I know I don't have a great case anyway, but I want this non-compete out. And that can be the most valuable piece of it. There you go. And if they've done some things that violate their thing, I mean, you know, you have to, in business, when it comes to bringing in attorneys or suing someone or their CU, you know, you have to do the math. What is this going to cost once we bring in the attorneys? And so it makes sense to negotiate a settlement i mean i don't i don't think we ever did one thing to avoid costs of

settlement but i mean we've we paid people off look here's some here's some walking money hit the bricks be happy sign this form and go just to get rid of them because they were shit employees sure and we didn't want to go through the three warning phase. We're just like, hey man, we'll just call it a day. Yeah. We'll give you some money and, and buy. And you know, that works sometimes. Yeah. I think for the employee, right. I mean, that's one of the issues that I raise is how much is your time worth? You know, if I, if you can, if you come to me and I'm like, okay, I could take this to a lawsuit and I think I could get you six figures. I could get you $100,000, but it's going to take me 15 months. You're going to have to be deposed. You're going to have to go through all the discovery. It's going to be expensive. Or I

can get you 20,000 right now and you're done. And that's another point that I make. I mean, you just really have to be as the employee or somebody thinking about what your rights are. It's like, what is your objective here? You know, is that, and some people they do, they're like, this is really important to me. I want to see justice done. There could be any number of reasons, what I call, you know, non-monetary. It's just important for you to take action that it's worth filing in court and going that route. But for a lot of people, it's not. They're like, yeah, all things being equal, I'd prefer $100,000 rather than $20,000, but I also don't want to spend the next 15 months of my life tied up and dealing with this issue. Yeah.

And in discovery, they'll run you through the train where they'll check your, I don't know, they'll want your health records. They'll want all your previous employers. They're going to find out what medications you're on probably and go through all that sort of character destruction sort of stuff but this is really important so in the book you use the story of matt and lynn two fictional characters and do you run them through several scenarios i guess with an employment lawyer yeah so it's sort of a narrative throughout the book and they have slightly different issues. You know, one of them who was fired wrongfully, one of them who had problems while she was still at work.

And I kind of walk those fictional characters through, like I would if you were in my office, you know, walking them through the stages of analyzing their case, analyzing, you know, one of the big things I talk about in the book is what are your damages, right? Like, what is, is the juice going to be worth the squeeze here? Because you could have a great case that's, you know, slam dunk. I can show that the employer

did something illegal, but you don't have any damages there. You're not going to win anything because let's say you left and you got an even better job. Okay. Maybe you can get some emotional distress damages, but it's not going to be a bunch.

You know, starting there, like what is, if we took this all the way and rung the bell, what's the best that you can get some emotional distress damages, but it's not going to be a bunch. You know, starting there, like what is, if we took this all the way and rung the bell, what's the best that you could get? And then work your way backwards from there using these factors like, you know, what is important to you? Is this an emotional issue where it's important for you to pursue it? Is it just a matter of trying to get onto that next better job and getting a better severance? And so it's Matt and Lynn going through the entire process. One of them settles early, one of them goes into litigation and how I would be advising them or talking to them, you know, about this process. Yeah. And you know, I mean, you don't want to stay working in a

company. I mean, maybe you do, or some people might want to, I don't want to stay here. I've had companies where there's just one bully in the group and I like everybody else there. And, but the one bully is just decides to make you his whipping post or her whipping post I suppose and there had that but you know I mean I've had a lot of girlfriends that come home and tell me all the stories of them not getting along with so-and-so at work and and ruining the thing and you know some sometimes it's outrageous there's sexual harassment I've seen you know and i've done the write-ups for sexual harassment our companies for people you know that's a big big deal you can't screw around with that stuff but yeah it's it's interesting

but i like the fact that you give people empowerment on what they can do because if you can negotiate a good exit that gives you some some money to pay the bills for a few months. You know, you're probably not going to get an ugly recommendation from that employer. They're probably going to just be like, hey, just forget that person existed. And you can move on from them and get yourself a better job with maybe some people you're happy with. No, absolutely. I think the government's a little bit different. We represent a number of federal sector employees. Yeah. And there you could get on a PIP and it's much harder to fire somebody in the federal government. You have more protections and there's more opportunity to transfer. But if you're not

in the federal or state government, you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, so even when we're advising people who are having problems at work, it's just a question of when they're leaving. It's not a question of if they're leaving, because you're right. I mean, it's not, it just doesn't end well for anybody because you don't, as the employee, you don't want to be there. They don't want you there anymore. You know, it's just a matter of how you kind of unwind that, which is, you know, another point I think that's important for people who to understand who are still at work is that, you know, this is a card you can play that does not available after you've been fired. If something illegal has happened to you, let's say you've been subject to sexual discrimination or you know someone else who has been and you go to HR, always better do it in writing,

and report it, and then they fire you or do something to you afterwards, you have two claims. You have not only the underlying harassment claim or whatever it may be, but then you have a retaliation claim, which is a completely separate. And in fact, you could lose, you could lose the discrimination piece and still recover on retaliation because as long as you have a good faith belief, that's what is happening to you as a legal, you know, you can recover on that. So that's an example of if you're still at work, you both sides have different cards that they can play. But if you're still at work, there's some things that you can do that will put yourself in a really much better situation. And when that happens, you definitely want to get out. Right. I mean, it's very rare. Right.

You go report some to HR. You know, they may they may bide their time, but nine times out of 10, you know, you're a goner. So you might as well use that to your advantage. Because look, if I'm a defense side lawyer on one of those cases, and I get one of those, like it gets run up the chain to me, I'm telling the company, hands off this guy. Do not mess with him because you're going to get, you're going to get a retaliation suit.

And what often happens is they don't get to their lawyer or they don't get the advice. And it's understandable. Managers get mad. They get angry. They've been accused of somebody. And so like, okay, you're fired. Now you've got a great lawsuit.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember, I don't know if this is applicable to something. The first question I had for you was, are retaliation lawsuits and stuff like that, or retaliation protection laws on the books in most states, or is it federal? State and federal.

Depends on your state. some are better than others but yeah and almost in most federal anti-discrimination laws and even wage your fair labor standards act the big wage law they have retaliation protection so again you can be wrong you could go to the company and you could say i think i'm being you know i am being paid unequally to this person it has to be be based on sex, to this guy or this gal. And you could be wrong, right? Because the numbers actually show that you were not paid unequally. But I believed it. I have a good faith belief.

Then I'm protected, even though there was no actual... You have to have a good faith belief. You can't make stuff up. But most federal laws have that provision. And a lot of state laws do as well. Interesting. There's a lot of people I've seen on social media and TikTok that I think are HR advisors or people who used to work in HR. And one of the main themes that I hear from all of them is never think HR is your friend. Yes. That is good advice.

Do you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. And I feel just a little bad because there are a lot of good people in HR. I mean, they go into it because they want to help people and they will. I mean, they all, you know, like the health insurance issue, like they're helping you through those sorts of situations. But look, at the end of the day, who's paying their salary? It's the employer. So you have one of two things happen. Either, you know, HR circles the wagon on behalf of, you know, those that pay them, or HR doesn't have any power. You know, they don't have anybody in the C-suite. So HR is like, hey, I don't think you should fire this person. And C-suite says, I don't care what you think,

you know, we're going to fire them anyway. But the underlying point is true. You've got to treat HR like they are just an arm of the company, which they are. So that's another reason why I'm always a fan of having an attorney who can even just advise you behind the scenes. You don't have to have them get on their trusty steed and ride through the front doors, but just somebody that you can call and say, hey, I've got HR just called, and they want me to come down for this interview. What do I do? It's going to be really tricky things to deal with, and they want me to come down for this interview. What do I do? It's going to be really, you know, tricky, you know, tricky things to deal with. And it's good to have somebody in your corner.

Definitely. Definitely. And you have a working knowledge where you can stand up for yourself. And I like the yearly payout process where you can say, hey, look, you know, I see you're trying to put me on this fast track to get me out with this program. Look, clearly, you know, we know where this is headed. We're all grownups. Tell you what, let's work out some sort of settlement. And then if you've got some leverage with some advice from attorney where you can say, Hey, you know, you guys haven't

performed in good faith in these certain areas, then you can, then you can have some negotiation and, and then get out of there with, you know, where you can get some payments and stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. What do you think of a lot of these lawsuits now that tech's world's going through? There's a lot of tech world where they just basically overhire and they're just laying people off like it's going crazy. I remember one of the things that Elon Musk was doing when he fired people from X, did you see any abuse in some of the stuff?

Because it was pretty prevalent. Yeah. I mean, there were a number of lawsuits against him, not only by individuals, but the National Labor Relations Board has gone after Tesla and SpaceX. And there were some allegations that in those mass layoffs, they were targeting people. Again, allegations. I don't know this to be true, but allegations where they were targeting people who were pregnant, getting back to your pregnant, you're fired or had disabilities and that they were letting those folks go. And then there were some mostly from the higher ups, but you know, where they had some, most of us don't have these, but some kind of the, in the C-suite level, you have kind of a package,

like you're going to get X amount of dollars if, unless you're fired for cause. And the allegations were that he fired a bunch of people and then didn't live up to those agreements and now they're suing him. So he's keeping a lot of lawyers busy. Yeah. I think he's got a class action from these employees. Yes. I think, and here's a good question for you, and this plays into that Elon Musk thing. You know, he made a demand to people that you're going to come in the office and if you don't show up tomorrow, you're fired. Yeah. Which is kind of an interesting way to play it.

And a lot of employers are trying to do this clawback and they've either failed or I think most of they're failing anytime they do it. What are some of the rights or do you have any tips for people that are getting the clawback to try and force back in the office? Yeah. Find another job. I mean, you know, they've got the right to force you back in the office. There are rare circumstances in which they don't. Again, if you have a disability, let's say you're, you know, one of your accommodations is that you having a work from home, you know, prior to the pandemic, you know, even courts are like work from home. Nobody does that, you know, but, but now everybody knows it's a thing. So you, if you have a legitimate disability and working from home is a

reasonable accommodation, that can be a protection. But if you're not in that bucket and they're saying you got to return to work, then, then you got to return to work. You got to find another job. I have a disability where I have to work in my underwear. And that's... That's an interesting accommodation. I have a note from a doctor on that. Yeah, companies have something called they can get out of these accommodation requests

if it's an undue burden. Chris, I think that might be an undue burden to allow you to work in your underwear. Damn it. I thought that was going to work. I'm going to have work in your underwear. Damn it. I thought that was going to work. I'm going to have to read your book. I know, right? Another reason to sue.

I'm going to sue the Chris Voss show. You should, right. My producer says I own it. This isn't going to work out at all. So there you go. Final thoughts as we go out that we haven't maybe touched on in the book you want to tease out to people so they pick it up.

Yeah. So I think that one of the big pieces of it is to sit down. I mean, of course, you got to know what your rights are. You got to know the legal nuts and bolts. But like, what is important to you about this? I mean, for me, it's all about feeling empowered and standing up for yourself. But that can mean different things to different people. So maybe that is just getting a better severance.

Maybe it's taking any action at all. Maybe it's filing a lawsuit. But really taking some time to unpack that. Like maybe, for instance, it's a harassment case and you've got a daughter at home who's kind of watching you and you want to show her like, hey, this is not, we don't put up with this. You know, that's different than somebody who's, hey, I just want an extra 10% on my severance. Both are legitimate goals, but to give that some thought before you start. There you go. So give, now with your website, do you, can you advise people nationally? Are you required to, can you only do it by in certain states? How does that work and how do people reach out to you and onboard with you? Yeah. So we represent folks mostly in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area. We do accept some clients in North Carolina, Texas,

and New York. For everybody else, like you can still call us and we have a, you know, we're happy to make referrals. You know, we know people in most states who do our work, and we've got just a ton of information, YouTube, website, that we're happy to point people to just to be a sounding board. And for federal workers, we can handle them nationwide. So I would say give us a call. If we can't help you, we'll let you know, but we'll get you on to somebody who can. There you go. Definitely, I wish I would have known you back when I worked for other people. I was always getting fired. Turned out okay for you there right it did and you know but i mean i'm sure there's people that you know i didn't have a wife or kids or i wasn't a single mom with

a bunch of kids i was able to kind of hang in there but you know there's i think there's sometimes i was eating top ramen for a while but yeah in my youth, but you know, you, you can have a job, those paychecks stop coming. You, you, and you know, I think nowadays it's, I hear a lot of people complaining about how long it takes to find a new job. I think the employment market shifting now where it's gone from all the power, what kind of went to the employees there with COVID. I think it's falling back now. It's kind of interesting.

Do you, do you give any advice on, I suppose there's nothing you do about it. If an employer puts something before you that, you know, they're hiring you and they're giving that job offer, is there any sort of parlay in where you could read the small notes and you could be like, I really don't like this moderation arbitration clause that you have. Is there any way we can negotiate taking that out or is that just probably not a good idea yeah i mean it doesn't hurt to ask right particularly if you're far enough along in the process it depends on what level you're coming in at how big the company is i mean if you're again you're signing on to be a fry cook at mcdonald's you've

got zero leverage you sign those papers or papers or you don't get the job. If you're coming in, let's say you're kind of more middle management and you're coming into a company that's not a national company. A lot of times what I see happen is these companies, you know, they may not even want what's in there. They just went to a lawyer or worse. They went to the internet and said, give me an employee agreement. And there's all this gobbledygook in here. And if you could point it out to them and be like, hey, I don't like this paragraph. They're like, we don't either. We'll take it out. It depends on how big the company is, what your leverage is. But generally, I wouldn't ask it maybe in the first interview. But if you're far enough along and they want you, there's no harm in asking. Maybe when they make you an offer and then they slide that contract in front of you and you're like, what is this about my first child and split on here? That's what we put in our contract. Oh, you might as well, right?

Speaking of leverage. Yeah, we don't want your first child. You just have to name it after me. Then we're all good. Then we're all good. I think that's fair. Yeah, well, that and I get, and then any children after that have to be named. I don't know.

I'm just making sure. Evil contracts. Yeah, make sure to just give my card to all your employees. I just forget. They're never going to see this podcast. We're going to bury this one in the back. They're going to be like, what happened to that 11 o'clock? I don't know.

Those guys aren't reliable. So there you go. Give us your final pitch out and thoughts as we go out, where people can buy the book, where people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, so they can. The best place is our website, spiglelaw.com. You can find me on LinkedIn at T Spigle.

Also, X, formerly known as Twitter. Find the book on our website. You can also find both books on Amazon. There you go. It was fun to have you on, Thomas. Take and let us know, is there any other books you're working on? You've got one for being pregnant, one for being fired. Is there any other?

Yeah, we've got one in the works just for people who are federal government employees, because I said they have different rights. And then also for, I'm sure you're not in this category, but for people like me who are over 40 and can be subject you know, subject to age discrimination. So that's, that's going to be the two books we got in the works. So you're old, you're fired.

It's going to be, going to be next. Oh yeah. You know, it's a big thing I'm seeing is age discrimination, the hiring process. Oh sure. Ageism.

And I have a lot of friends that are 40 and 50 and, you know, they've been working for companies. I have no resume. I've been on my own since 18, so no one's hiring me. I don't think McDonald's would pick me up. They'd be like, you don't work with people, do you? You're an entrepreneur.

I'm like, yeah. You're right what you called. You're like me. You're unemployable. I just wanted the job for the free fries. Come on. A lot of people right, are seeing ageism. There was a gal who was a friend of mine, and the employer said, you know, you're kind of overqualified for this job, and you're up there in years or something.

You know, there's a kind of implication of her age, and they're really struggling. So I don't know how you can sue for discrimination from that angle if they haven't hired yet. Yeah, you can sue for failure to hire. Yeah. And especially if they say something dumb like that, you know, you're getting a little long in the tooth. You know, again, you'll be surprised what some people will say in an interview, but if that's clear evidence of age discrimination and failure to hire as an actionable claim, and you're right. I mean, it's in tech and in sales, we'd see it a ton, right? You get hit your 50s

and all of a sudden, you know, you've got 20 years with them and they can get somebody at 30 or 28 who they can pay half your salary and work twice as hard. So it's a big thing. And in fact, another big thing recently is

I know New York State put this in where you have to advertise what you're paying people. Yeah, yeah, your transparency laws, yeah. And that's a real big deal. And I was shocked when I heard that they weren't doing that. And people would go through six stages of an interview process, find out there's $15 an hour for a high-end job. And you're like, that's really evil.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, New York, D.C., I think California. There are a couple of states that have this pay transparency that say you know you've got to put it in the you've got to put in the job at it we we have seen some companies try to in run that like the range is 50 000 to 500 000 you know but but it is it is a big help and that's a that's a new thing on the scene that i think helps employees imagine if you find out somebody's getting somebody's at your equal thing

you're both doing equal work and you're getting paid on a differential. I don't know. Maybe is that a thing sometimes? Yeah, that's an equal pay act. Those are great cases from an attorney standpoint. That's why I pay everybody $15 an hour and no more. No one complains. Exactly.

Just keep a cap on it. I don't care how good you are. This is all you're getting. You're a salesman on commission? $15 an hour $15 that's right the commission is $15 now yeah in fact it's kind of interesting evidently the doj you know you've you've dealt with them evidently the doj is leaning on the nar settlement for the national association realtors and one of their implications is they're they're suggesting that realtors should just go pay be paid minimum wage an hourly and i used to be a realtor and yeah it's gonna be for 20 years and i'm just like it's a real interesting game you're playing there yeah i can't imagine how

that helps anybody but i don't know but i know a lot of realtors who are severely overpaid that that i mean you're gonna you're gonna put a lot of people out of business if you do that. Yeah, it'd be huge in a bad way. The structure of that game is built a certain way of commissions. But, I mean, I don't know how you get away from the grift because, I mean, that business has got so much problems with people not holding up there. That was where I learned the term, what was it? Fiduciary duty, where you have a duty to your client to uphold. I think lawyers do too. You have a duty to your client to represent them as best you can and not betray their

trust or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And boy, there's a lot that crossed the line in that business. Who understands that business except realtors and the mortgage people? Last time I bought a house, I was signing all kinds of stuff. I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. That's what this means.

That's the thing about my first child. Thank you very much, Thomas, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks for being here. Order up the book, folks, wherever fine books are sold. Fired. Afraid you might be. Use legal leverage to fight back against your employer

and win on your terms book two of two of the fire book series you might want to pick up the pregnant one the pregnant book i'm reading that now just in case march 27 2024 thanks so much for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortress chris foss linkedin.com fortress chris foss chris foss one of the tiktokity all those crazy places on the internet thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe we'll see you guys next time