Friday morning, I signed in to start my shift. I noticed we had about 8 new trainee hires, awesome! We have really been needing more staff. 30 minutes into my shift, they notified me of an immediate layoff due to a staff reduction.
A little backstory – this was a remote job, went remote at the beginning of covid and then permanently went remote. The job listing was hiring for Oregon/Washington residents only. A few months ago, the company I was originally hired by was bought out by a bigger company. The past couple months, they've stopped hiring in the US and has been onboarding a lot of new employees from India. They are still operating under PST time zones, where the main business is located.
They are offering me 3 weeks severance pay and told me they will not be appealing unemployment if I sign the separation agreement. Which obviously takes away my rights to take any legal actions against them, etc.
I guess I'm wondering if there is anything I should do before/instead of signing the agreement? They aren't giving me the worst deal, but it is obviously because of the circumstances. But is a company allowed to layoff people and hire even more people (probably at a cheaper rate) for the same exact role within the same week?