Legal Question in Employment Law in Pennsylvania
Can I terminate an employee?
I am a PA small business owner. I need to terminate an At Will employee who was hired less than 90 days ago. The employee has not attracted the number of customers he stated he could. I did sign the employee to a non-compete at the time of his hiring. Can I lawfully terminate this employee? Because of the non-compete it would be more beneficial if the employee resigned. In a ''cost-cutting move'', can I reduce his hours from 45 to 30 and decrease his pay accordingly in the hopes that he might resign? What other legal measures can an employer utilize to try to get an employee to resign? Thank you.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: Can I terminate an employee?
An employer can at any time hire, fire, promote, not promote, change jobs, change pay and change responsibilities of its employees at any time for any reason unless there is a specific employment contract or a union bargaining agreement. An employer may do all of things lawfully except if the employer bases its decision on a violation of public policy or upon the employee's race, sex, color, creed, religion, age, etc.
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Re: Can I terminate an employee?
Your desire to force your employee to resign rather than fire him so that you can enfoce a non-compete agreement is in a word reprehensible. You have the right to fire him but would probably not be entitled to enforce the no-compete if you did. On the other hand if the employee is not generating sales for you why would you want to stop him from working for a competitor. It sounds like this employee brought customers to you and you would like to fire him and keep his customers for yourself. Shame on you.
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