My mother (in her 60s) has been with a small company for the past two decades in an “executive” level role with a base salary under $70k and profit sharing for context (of which there was no profit to be shared for multiple years in that timeframe). She’s helped this business grow revenue over 10x in those 20 years, most within the last 5, and recently the company owner/CEO has brought in his daughter (early 30s) with no business/employment experience to start taking it over from him as he wants to retire. The daughter was hired in as the chief HR officer (sole employee in the “department”) with a salary of $150k and I’m sure eventually will be promoted to CEO. The daughter’s only current responsibility involves processing payroll and was instructed to start learning how to do my mother‘s job (payroll was only thing taken so far) to take that over in about 5-7 years as she plans to retire, however has started changing company policies/being a micromanaging authoritarian since taking on her new “job.”
Some of the recent, completely unexaggerated, transgressions include:
1) changing the employee handbook to state that only hours worked between the times of 7am-5pm count as hours worked for all employees.
2) stating in the handbook that discussing pay/compensation with anyone in the company is grounds for termination.
3) docking my mother’s salaried pay (exempt employee) for leaving early by 1.5 hours even though she “made up” the time later that night in accordance with #1. She’s already working well over 50 hours a week as it sits anyways.
4) after my mother brought up legality issues of the handbook changes (trying to protect the company) and the docked pay issue to the CEO (her boss for 17 years) was threatened by him to cut her pay by removing the profit sharing component of her compensation because he doesn’t want to deal with the “drama,” which the profit sharing is the only thing that currently makes her pay livable.
Obviously, she can’t go to HR to file formal complaints on any of this given the circumstances, but has been documenting some of these things and I’ve told her to continue doing so and to seek counsel from an employment attorney mainly to get an employment contract drafted as means to secure the future that she has been promised for the last decade by the CEO.
Unfortunately given how close she is to retirement, my mother is in a very tough spot now and doesn’t have much in terms of options for employment if anything were to happen here. She’s gone from being highly valued and secure to work til retirement to now feeling extremely insecure/unstable within months and it’s taking a huge toll on her. I know some of what has happened already is downright illegal, but am not sure if it is in my mother’s best interest to seek legal counsel to structure an employment contract to guarantee employment/compensation/severance pay to ensure security for her, or to just go ahead and make a legal case for discrimination/retaliation etc.
Does anyone here have any recommendations on best course of action outside of what I’ve already suggested to her?