Do I have a wrongful demotion case?

I’ve work at my current company for almost 5 years as an at will employee.

I was working in a position during year 4 and than was promotion to another position where I’ve been working for about a year. During my last review, my employer stated that we would be re-evaluating that entire department by the end of August 2018 is see if it’s a department worth having.

A few months pass and I share the news that I’m 7 weeks pregnant with my boss because I was running to the bathroom a lot with morning sickness.

1.5 weeks later my boss tells me again that we will be reevaluating the department at the end of August and if does not meet its goal than I will be demoted to my previous position and take a paycut. He also shares that he believes that I was originally being paid too much in my old position compared to what he can currently hire new employees at so I would need to take another paycut from the salary that I was making in my old position. I never received a negative review in this old position and my pay increases were always justified with taking on more work and positive performance.

The company is a 6 year old start up and there is no HR Department. Since my boss is the cofounder he is the closest thing to an HR Department.

It’s pretty apparent that don’t want to fire me so I can collect unemployment, but they’ve put me in a situation where they are forcing my hand it seems due to my pregnancy.

I’m about to start showing soon and it’s going to make it difficult to be a part of the interviewing process for new jobs.

This doesn’t legally seem right, but I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know if this is something that I can pursue.

1 answer  |  asked Aug 16, 2018 02:50 AM [EST]  |  applies to New York

Answers (1)

V Jonas Urba
Maybe. You should gather your performance evaluations and start calling some employment lawyers to discuss.

posted by V Jonas Urba  |  Aug 16, 2018 04:50 AM [EST]

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