When a PIP needs a lawyer, and what to bring

Do I need a lawyer for a PIP?

Most people do not, and a page that told everyone to lawyer up would be selling fear rather than saying anything.

Three situations are different, and what makes them different is the same in each: something with its own clock is running alongside the employment, and it is not the thing an employment lawyer looks at first. They are where this guide's own files stop and say take this to somebody who practises in it.

They are not a list of every reason to get advice. They are the three this guide can ground in material it has actually read, which is a different claim — the last section says what that leaves out.

Your right to be in the country rests on this job

The plan itself changes nothing here. Nothing is reported, no permit is affected, and no clock starts because you were put on a plan. Every immigration file this guide has read opens with that sentence, and it is the one to hold onto at two in the morning. What every rule below turns on is employment ending.

That is also what makes this the largest of the three. If it does come to an ending, the clock is not yours, and it often does not start when you think it does.

Every route works differently, which is why there is a page for each rather than one number.

• The United States — sixty days, and a proposed rule that would remove them.
• The United Kingdom — an official decision first, and sixty days its guidance directs.
• The Netherlands — a period that starts on the contract's end date, which is a term you can negotiate.
• Germany — no stated period at all, and a European argument about what that means.
• Ireland — the well-known numbers are a redundancy scheme that does not reach a performance dismissal.
• Canada — a permit tied to one employer.

Two things make this a specialist question rather than a reading question. Several of these routes have open questions the official material does not settle: which limb of a rule governs a dismissal, what a directive obliges a national authority to do, whether a period exists at all for your reason for leaving.

And an American green-card application in progress runs on a second set of rules the status clock does not touch, where the news is mostly the reassuring kind.

• An approved I-140 more than 180 days old is not revoked by the employer withdrawing it.
• The priority date it established carries to a later petition.
• Neither route past the six-year limit ties you to the employer that sponsored you.

Being fired is not on the list of things that undo any of that. What the queue survives is the detail. It belongs here because people accept worse exits than they need to believing the queue resets, and because which of those rules is yours turns on dates a specialist reads in minutes.

The role is a regulated one

In UK financial services a performance process can stop being about this job and start being about whether you can hold the function at all.

Regulatory references run backward six years, reach previous employers including unregulated and overseas ones, and cannot be contracted away — a settlement cannot lawfully require a firm to suppress what it is obliged to disclose, and a firm must update a reference already given if something comes to light later. Leaving part-way through an internal investigation does not close it: policy expects firms to consider recording that one was begun and not concluded.

The specialist question is the one a general employment adviser will not ask: whether this is this role, this manager or a competence finding on the record, because fitness and propriety covers competence and capability, and a finding there outlasts the job by years. Deferred compensation sits beside it and is governed by plan documents rather than employment law.

What the finance sector changes is the detail. The reason it belongs on this page is that the characterisation of the exit is worth more than the money, and it is decided early.

You are over forty in the United States and a release is on the table

A release is a contract, and signing one starts clocks that a later change of mind does not stop.

Signing is not losing. In the litigation where two dozen people missed a deadline, the same opinion records other former employees under the same agreement filing in time and arbitrating their claims successfully. What decided those cases was the calendar, not the forum.

The calendar is therefore the part to get right. The right to file an age charge survives a release, but an arbitration deadline does not care; the charge clock is 300 days in a deferral state and 180 days elsewhere, and which of those you are in has to be established before anybody counts. There is no rescue by relying on somebody else's timely charge.

Two periods come with any release of age claims, and one of them is commonly traded away by accident. There are 7 days after signing to revoke, which the parties cannot shorten, and at least 21 days to consider beforehand. The 21 becomes 45, with a written list of the job titles and ages of who was selected and who was not, where the offer is part of a programme put to a group.

A group exit presented to one person as an individual performance exit yields the shorter period and no list. That substitution is worth asking about in writing.

What makes this a lawyer's question rather than a checklist is that the signature is a trade rather than a defeat. The people who did not sign filed charges instead and became a putative group; a waiver of class and collective actions is part of what a signature buys the employer. Which side of that is better turns on facts a page cannot see. What the plan does about age has the mechanics.

What to have with you at the first meeting

Preparation is the half you control, and an hour of it is worth more than the hour you are paying for. None of this needs anybody's permission.

• The plan itself, and anything that arrived with it. A warning issued alongside a plan is a second document with its own clock, and the two are not the same thing.
• Dates, in order. When you were told, when each meeting happened, when each document arrived. The deadlines page is the list of clocks a date can start.
• Your own contract, and any policy the plan names. An employer that publishes a procedure is usually expected to follow it.
• The status documents, where the first section applies. The permit or visa, its expiry date, and the date your current employment began — the expiry is the cap on most of the answers.
• Anything already signed, or offered to sign. Including a draft.
• What you have written down yourself. Contemporaneous notes are evidence in a way that recollection is not, and the reason to keep them is the ordinary one.

Documenting is not an accusation, and bringing a folder is not escalation. It is the same prudence as keeping receipts.

What this page does not cover, and why that is about the guide

Three things readers ask about often are not on the list above: a plan alongside a disability or a health condition, a plan after you reported something, and pregnancy or family leave. Each has a page now, and each answers for one country. That limit is a fact about this guide rather than a judgement about your situation.

Pregnancy and family leave has a page, for the United States. Which of two statutes answers you, and what leave does to a plan is it. The short version is that one statute changes how the work is done and the other buys time away from it, a plan reader usually needs the first, and an employer may not require leave where an adjustment would have worked. Elsewhere the guide has no verified file on it yet.

A plan after you reported something has a page, for the United Kingdom. What makes a disclosure protected, and the seven-day clock is it. Telling your own manager counts, and if it ends in dismissal there is a deadline measured in days rather than months. Elsewhere the guide has no verified file on it yet.

A disability or health condition is the same shape, and in the United States there is something you can do today. What a plan measures, and the question that moves it is the page. Outside the United States the guide has no verified file on it yet.

A fourth situation does belong on the list above, and it is a referral rather than a caveat. If your employer is a government body or a public university in the United States, a plan can sit inside a disciplinary process that carries constitutional due-process rights and appeal routes private employment has nothing like, on timetables that run in days. What a plan is in a US government or university job sets out which rights attach to which kind of post, and it is worth reading before the first meeting rather than after a decision.

The three above are not fourth situations because they do not start with a referral. Where a goal is written as a personal trait — attitude, presence, how you come across in a room — ask in writing which job duty it measures, and how. American law lets an employer hold you to the same amounts as anyone else. A goal written as a personal quality is a different kind of thing, and one you cannot meet because of a condition has to be job-related and consistent with business necessity.

That is not a substitute for advice where a decision looks like it was taken because of the condition. Ask about the timetable early if so: the deadline to complain is short, and it runs from the decision rather than from the day you work out what happened.

This page is about when to ask, not what the answer is

Fairhanded is not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Nothing here tells you what your rights are; it tells you which three situations have a second clock running, and what to carry into the room so the hour is spent on your question rather than on assembling your file.

If you are going to ask, ask early. Every one of the three above has at least one thing that is easier to settle while a document is still being drafted than after it has been signed, and that is as true for the reader working the plan as for the reader who expects it to end badly.