Laid Off Workers Asked To Return Bonuses

from the ridiculous dept

Talk about treating laid off employees badly... A networking startup in San Jose, Valiant Networks, has laid off about 80% of their staff. Some of those workers they had given signing bonuses to - in order to convince them to join. Now, they're asking them to return portions of the signing bonus. Since the bonus officially was contingent on the employees staying a year, if they hadn't made it to the year mark, Valiant says they have to give the money back. This is ridiculous and mean-spirited. First you lay someone off (with no severance, by the way), and then you require them to pay you back. If they wanted the bonus contingent on staying a year, they shouldn't have paid it out until the end of the year.