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Comment by actionablefiber | Hacker News Reader

This is a layoff disguised as RTO. Part of the giveaway is that there are some exemptions being made to keep some employees on full WFH.

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Ianal but pretty sure you can’t just move the work site halfway across the country and then fire everybody who doesn’t show up for cause.

You don't have to fire them. Some will quit because fuck that, and others will cave under the pressure and acquiesce or quit later. And maybe you can fire them, I don't know.

"For cause" isn't relevant here. The point is that whoever doesn't want to move will be terminated, which is perfectly legal.

Walmart is betting that a big chunk of its employees in places like Portland OR aren't going to move to Bentonville, AR, and then it can terminate them and have an effective layoff that doesn't look like a layoff. Pretty safe bet.

If that were the plan, would Oregon officials (for example) pressure to treat it as a layoff?

On what basic would/could they make this argument?

Constructive Dismissal is a thing.

I mean, as someone who just made almost that exact move... (and not even into the relatively blue by comparison Bentonville area) I think more people might be willing to make the move than you'd think. I mean, it's probably still under 50%. But that area of AR isn't too bad.

Leaning on the stereotypes - I regularly saw more confederate flags and 'lets go brandon' type stuff in the Portland metro area than I have in AR (and I've spent a fair bit of time here) and I've been met with minimal grief here in spite of being the weird dude in the area with an electric car and shoulder length purple hair. Yes, Harrison still has their billboards that are pro white pride radio but there's other places in the state.

I'm a full time remote person but my move here was prompted by a combination of finding a place here that met our criteria and being nearer to my other half's family.

Where did you end up? I’m west of Centerton, out in the country. For non locals, I’m like 5 miles from Bentonville.

About 40 minutes outside Little Rock.

Same thing happened to a buddy of mine when the software company he worked for was purchased. The first thing the new owners did was move HQ from California to Texas; they told all the employees, "Move to Texas or you're losing your job." My friend moved. The company rewarded him by cutting his salary in half. He moved back to California in less than a year.

That's why you never move in this sort of situation.

Also, remote work eliminates all the risk and power games companies like to play around employee (re)location.

The advice "never go to a second location" applies in multiple situations!

Never is a strong word. I've been involved in a relocation that worked out amazingly well.

It can work well for example if the relocation is to somewhere you would have wanted to move to anyway, and now you get the company to pay for it. It works less well if you're going somewhere you have no other interest in.

Such as a white van, or an unfinished basement.

Or San Francisco.

And, these days, Austin

Right. New company basically advertises their character by making the ultimatim in the first place. You already know you won't be treated like a human, since you're already not.

What company

Actually you can. Legally it’s considered eliminating the office, and then extending an offer to the old workers at the new office.

Anyway fire for cause is meaningless with at-will employment.

> Anyway fire for cause is meaningless with at-will employment

For cause prevents the employee from collecting unemployment; and also saves the company money on what they need to pay into unemployment (iiuc).

You absolutely can, especially with at will employment laws. There are very few things that actually stop a layoff or firing... a strong union is one thing that can though.

That's exactly what AT&T was doing right before the pandemic, different groups were being assigned to specific offices and if you weren't willing to relocate to where your group was being moved to you would (if you were lucky) get laid off but many were simply let go for refusing to relocate without any kind of package. They ended up outsourcing about 1/4 of their IT dept to IBM in 2019 after they had done about 7 rounds of layoffs due to geographic consolidation.

Ultimately, was the move prudent?

If the goal was to get rid of mostly older (40+) year old employees who had families and didn't want to move, sure. Since the pandemic they have allowed most people to work remote, some are on a hybrid 1-3 days in the office schedule and they are supposedly planning on trying to tell everyone to start coming to the office full time in April. They lost a lot of elderly employees at the end of 2022 due to retirement plan changes that encouraged many to retire early and they're probably about to do another big layoff in March. They still haven't returned to a geo-centralized skill strategy. AT&T has been unloading real-estate since before the pandemic, they are consolidating into 6 data centers down the dozens they currently have. If they get a bunch of stealth layoffs out of the deal, they're quite happy with that.

They are not planning to fire people for cause. Their own statement said anyone who doesn't want to move will get severance.

I am not a lawyer either, but we can deduce logically that Walmart's lawyers approved it, so it's cool.

If companies are "allowed" to lay people off, then why not this? I'm pretty sure this is within the boundaries of "at will employment". You'd have to show some kind of civil rights violation.

Companies don't have to show cause to fire anyone. That's a cover your ass situation. This ass-covering makes sense with more than half of the US population now falling into some kind of protected class.

Ironically, here in the United States, they have everyone distracted with race wars and gender ID while workers' rights are still nonexistent.

That's why corporations love Corporate Black History Month and Corporate LGBTQ Month so much. They get to virtue signal that they don't discriminate while continuing to rob everyone blind.

Ding ding ding. The employees Walmart actually wants will continue full remote work, those that it doesn't really want to keep will be told to move to Bentonville, AR, they will refuse and get terminated or leave.

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