Collaborative Research on Layoffs and Wrongful Termination Litigation

无论对个人还是对公司而言，几乎没有什么事情能像裁员那样令人痛苦。该项目探讨了工人如何看待他们失业的原因，以及他们如何判断自己是否遭受了不公正或歧视性待遇。该项目通过观察与过去雇主有关的索赔决定，扩大了对起诉决定的研究。这项研究将测试一些诉讼行为理论，特别关注前雇主对公平或不公平待遇的感觉如何影响做出错误解雇索赔的决定。通过帮助我们理解索赔决定所涉及的心理和社会过程，这项研究将有助于我们理解公平待遇的日常概念如何影响案件进入法律体系的过程。这项合作研究将包括采访1075名最近被解雇或下岗的工人，这些工人是在州失业办公室招聘的。访谈将探讨各种被认为有助于决定起诉的因素，包括终止前治疗，失业的经济负担，对索赔选择的认识，以及歧视的感觉。与一些工人的后续访谈将用于确定是谁真正提出了错误的解雇索赔。

Few events are as traumatic, in both personal and corporate terms, as layoffs. This project explores how workers view the causes of their job loss and how they decide whether they have suffered wrongful or discriminatory treatment. The project expands the study of decisions about suing by looking at claiming decisions with respect to past employers. The study will test a number of theories of litigation behavior, focusing particularly on how feelings of fair or unfair treatment by the former employer affects the decision to make a wrongful termination claim. By helping us to understand the psychological and social processes involved in claiming decisions, the study will contribute to our understanding of how everyday notions of fair treatment affect the movement of cases into the legal system. This collaborative study will include interviews of 1075 recently fired or laid-off workers recruited at state unemployment offices. The interviews will explore a variety of factors thought to contribute to the decision to sue, including pre-termination treatment, financial burdens of unemployment, awareness of claiming options, and feelings of discrimination. Follow-up interviews with some of the workers will be used to determine who actually initiated wrongful termination claims.