Detroit Employment Law Blog

Wrongful termination can happen in numerous different ways. For example, Michigan employees might be wrongfully terminated as a result of racial discrimination or as a result of retaliation for making a complaint about sexual harassment. In other cases, an employee could be wrongfully terminated in a way that violates his or her employment contract.

An employment contract is either a written document signed at the beginning of employment, or an "implied contract" that was based on what was said to the employee, what is written in the employee manual or something else. Terminated employees can evaluate whether they were wrongfully terminated by reviewing the following questions:

• Did you have a working contract? Did your termination fall under the permissible reasons for losing your job? Did your employer follow the written termination procedure?
• Did you have an employee handbook? Did your termination fall under the potential reasons for disciplinary measures and termination under the handbook?
• Did your manager or employer make any unwritten promises to you? Perhaps he or she told you that you had tenure or a guarantee of employment.
• Did your employer or manager promise that you would only lose your job under certain conditions?

Your employment contract governs the terms of the employee-employer relationship. The employment contract should, therefore, cover a wide variety of areas, from the benefits the employee can expect to receive to the terms and conditions by which a termination of employment may occur.

For a more thorough review of the most necessary points to include in an employment contract, take a look at the following list:

• The term or period of employment: How long will the contract last? Will it be indefinite, or does it have a specific period of years that it will endure before it needs to be renegotiated?
• The responsibilities assumed by the employee: This largely refers to work duties and work expectations
• The types of health, life insurance and disability insurance benefits the employee can expect to receive
• Policies that govern sick days and vacation time
• Conditions under which a termination of the employee will occur
• Noncompetition clauses that limit the ability to the employee to compete against the employer after terminating employment
• Nondisclosure agreements that pertain to client lists and company secrets
• Ownership agreements that pertain to the materials that the employee produced. Usually, these clarify that such materials belong to the company
• Directions for how disputes must be resolved -- usually through mediation or arbitration

An invisible disability is a type of disability that isn't readily apparent to the people around you. Someone who is in a wheelchair or needs to use a cane to walk would have a visible disability. Meanwhile, someone who is suffering from chronic back pain, a migraine, depression or ADD might have an "invisible disability" because no one can see it.

Just because a disability is not readily visible, however, does not mean that the disability is any less debilitating. Individuals with invisible disabilities could be suffering from pain, dizziness, fatigue and cognitive impairments that are so severe they can't perform their job duties. Some individuals with invisible disabilities could also find themselves facing hostility by those around them.

In the not too distant past, if you were of a different sexual persuasion, you probably kept a tight lid on it – only revealing this to your closest confidants. This secrecy had a good reason, not only were people of different sexual orientations commonly discriminated against socially, but they might even lose their jobs or have trouble finding jobs. These days, the social climate is quite different, and those who identify as homosexuals can more comfortably be open about it. Nevertheless, state and federal laws have yet to catch up with this social trend of acceptance.

At this time, Federal law does not provide any special protections to homosexual workers. If an employer chooses to fire someone for the discriminatory reason that he or she is homosexual, the employer might not get in trouble for it. Also, even though some states have made independent laws that protect homosexual workers, the state of Michigan has no such laws on the books. In some states and counties in Michigan, however, homosexual workers might be protected from discrimination.