I'm shook, upset, and pure livid. I work in HR (the irony) at a senior level. I started with my current employer in March 2023. The firm I work for is making money hand over fist. They are an electric engineering firm, with a bunch of engineers in 4+ countries and bloated salaried support staff members.
In my interview, I made it very clear I had minimum empolyee-immigration experience, however, I was very eager to learn. Kay made it clear to me, too, that her immigration knowledge was basic. I was hired by the new CPO (we'll call her Kay) as one of the 2 SR HRBPs, with intention to eventually promote me to HR Manager.
Shortly after starting, I realized how unbearable Kay was to work with. She is your typical micromanager who kisses ass to the executives due to her own insecurities of not knowing her position as well as she should. Furthermore, Kay breeds a very toxic environment. She would gossip to me about my fellow HR staff, has called one of our recruiters an “enigma”, will not give raises to her staff, etc.
My husband and I took a trip a preplanned trip to Vegas in April. We got pregnant. I waited to tell Kay until August because of fear of retaliation. She didn't seem excited or bothered, she stayed neutral. She said even though I hadn't been with the company for a year, she'd still give me the 3 months off (that FMLA would typically grant). Our company also has a separare maternity leave policy (which I wrote, ironically) which makes employees eligible after 6 months of full-time employment. The company will pay your salary in full for 4 weeks, and then STD kicks in.
Fast forward to last Monday and Kay tells me we have hired a SR HRBP in Canada and that due to budget constraints, I'm being let go. That they felt our growth will be more in Canada for 2024 so we dont need 2 USA HRBPs. Plus we were spending too much on immigration attorneys for support. Since September, I have been requesting to take third party training which Kay has ignored my requests for. Today she finally “declined” the training request. I have all of this documented.
The options given to me were to continue working through the end of the year or if I didn't want to, I would still be paid through the end of the year. She also offered company-paid COBRA for the month of January.
Of course, I broke out in tears. I'm losing my income with a baby on the way, my health insurance, paid mat leave/STD, AND my year end bonus (you have to be employed when it's paid out in Q1). This is a women owned company and this is how they treat their staff. I'm at a loss of what to do. I'm the only one being laid off?? So I was the only person in the company who was pushing the budget past it's limit? Or is it because Kay can't stand the fact that one of her employees will be on leave for 3 months and would rather die than me get the benefits the company offers? I have never met someone who lacks more compassion than Kay and I'm confident I am being let go because of my pregnancy. I'm trying to get legal help for pregnancy discrimination.