Sunday, October 18, 2009

Severance pay poll

From this article:

A study by Barry Fisher, a prominent employment law mediator, found that courts have awarded an average of 2.6 months' notice per year of service to employees who have been with a company for just two years. This means that on average, an employee with two years' service receives over five months of notice on termination.


Then later:

A written contract could limit the entitlement for a two-year employee to as little as two weeks, for example.


(Bolding mine.)

This is completely inconsistent with my corner of reality. I would feel very fortunate indeed to get over two weeks, and five months (for any tenure of employment) is unheard of. I have seen a number of collective agreements for different professions and different employers, and they tend to hover around one week per year of employment.

So my question for anyone reading this: are these number for severance pay (five months being typical, two weeks being characterized as "as little as") typical/normal in your corner of reality?

Anonymous comments are welcome, you don't have to identify yourself or your profession, but please indicate if you are outside of Canada. (You don't even have to say where, just that you're outside of Canada.)

4 comments:

M@ said...

I've only been laid off once by a company that had the means to offer a severance package. I was there for a year and a half, and they offered me six weeks' pay. (That paid me up to Christmas. Woo! Thanks! Joyeux Noel, bastards!) That was the case for everyone with less than two years' experience IIRC.

Others were offered double that, but they were asked to work for the twelve weeks, in order to help close down the office. Here's a shovel, could you dig a hole six feet long, three feet wide, and three feet deep? Thanks, guy.

I contacted an employment lawyer and he said it was probably an appropriate settlement given my position and time in the company, so I took it.

Anecdotal, I know, but it's data for your survey. 2.6 months per year worked sounds extremely high to me, too.

laura k said...

I only have one relevant experience, from the Toronto law firm I worked for that went out of business.

We were all given 3 months notice, but for anyone employed less than 2 years, it was not to be a payout - just the hole-digging M@ mentions. Continued employment while you had 3 months to find another job.

However, 6 weeks into that 3 months, they ran out of hole and found a way out of their lease, so it turned into a payout for everyone who was left. Too late for me. (Pfft.)

After the minimum of 2 years, they were paying 1 month severance for every year up to 5 years, 1.5 months for 5-10 years, 2 months for more for 10-15 years, etc.

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