Fired vs Layoff, any laws on this? Texas

[shiggity80]

Hello, just found this forum and figured I'd ask a few questions here.

I was terminated on 1/28/09 (aka fired) from my job and their reasons were "performance issues". The reasons they gave me for terminating me were in my opinion partially true and partially BS.

There was one mistake that I did which I got a formal warning on and I am not disagreeing with that one. The rest of the reasons were about me not working fast enough on projects or taking initiative, etc. Some of those are BS as my boss's reason were that I waited till the last minute to finish some projects, yet in reality, I still finished them, BEFORE the due date.

Anyway, I realize that a company is at an "at will" state and can fire me for pretty much any reason that's not discriminatory (correct me if I'm wrong on that one), but something that's setting off a red-flag for me is that the beginning of this week, the company was doing some major "reorganization" to the company and many many high level workers were laid off, and a total of somewhere around 20% could be laid off soon.

I'm thinking that the company wanted to lay me off but decided to find some excuse to fire me instead so they wouldn't have to give severance and stuff.

My question is whether or not I have any possible way of getting my termination status changed to a laid of status legally? I have already called HR and gave them my reasons and ask that they change the status, but they said it can't be changed on their end. I didn't do anything illegal at work, I didn't have any misconduct issues, I was a genuinely working hard at my core responsibilities, so that's why I'm kind of peeved that I'm terminated rather than laid off (well i'm peeved I was let go at all...). Is there some kind of labor law on something like this?

Thanks for reading. I can add more information if needed.

[Pattymd]

It doesn't make any difference for UI purposes what they call it, as long as it was not for a reason that would disqualify you for benefits. Poor performance (even if it is only the company's opinion) is not a disqualifying reason unless the employer can show that the employee could have performed satisfactorily but intentionally chose not to. Without any reviews or warnings regarding your performance, they aren't going to be able to do that.


But the short answer is no, there is no legal recourse you can take to get your termination (any separation from employment is a termination) recorded as a reduction-in-force rather than a discharge.