Ever come into work one day to find out they’ve hired a new guy to be your boss without telling you? Oh, and they then tell you they want to change the scope of your employment agreement and pay you less? Unfortunately, that happened to me. I work for a tech company and all of the senior leadership at the company and in my group are men. I was the most senior woman at the time and it felt very unfair. It smelled like discrimination but I wasn’t sure I could prove this as there was a lot of organizational change, including new hires, happening in my group.
I had been recently hired and had been on the job for all of three months when I was told this news. I was furious and needed help. I knew that I needed to find a lawyer because I wasn’t sure what my company was doing was even legal but I also needed help navigating and negotiating this new employment agreement.
I spoke with countless lawyers. The first lawyer I spoke with was a man who basically told me I should “stop causing issues, take what compensation they are offering me and hope they don’t offer me less”, which left me feeling hopeless. I spoke with lawyers at big law firms and no one wanted to help me unless I wanted to litigate. Finally and totally by chance, I found a lawyer who had started her own private practice and specialized in employment law. She would work with me on an hourly basis and because she had started her own company, was affordable.
Working with a lawyer saved me. She coached me through what to say to HR and helped me understand critical words and phrases to use when I met with HR to negotiate this new employment agreement. I would prep with me lawyer before every meeting with HR and was able to successfully get my compensation raised back to where I was before. If I didn’t find this lawyer, I don’t know what I would have done but know that I would not have been successful and probably would have had to leave the company with no severance after only a few months on the job.
I chose to share my story with the members of WMN for two reasons:
1) Use a lawyer when dealing with these difficult HR situations (negotiating a raise, negotiating a new agreement, protecting yourself from discrimination, all of that). Women are getting totally screwed over by employers and we need to stand up for ourselves.
2) I wish WMN Legal had been around when I was going through my situation. It would have saved me so much time and would have instantly made me feel like I had a support system to help me. Hopefully something like this never happens to you but if it does, don’t feel like you are alone and have to do this alone. Get help.
~ Contributing WMN Member
Disclaimer: The above article was not written by a lawyer and not intended to be used as legal advice. Talk to a real lawyer! See how WMN Legal can help.
Posted In: Legal Tips