Self Representation in the U.S. Oregon District Courts

General Disclaimer: This information was collected from public sources and is not intended to replace professional legal advice, given by a licensed attorney.

In some cases you may find difficulty finding attorney who will commit to taking your case to court. The reason for this situation can be as simple as:

• An attorney is not available to take your case before your filing deadline approaches
• You cannot afford pay your attorney fees and/or retainer out of pocket
• An attorney believes that your case is going to consume too much of their time
• An attorney does not understand the merit of your case and is not interested in spending more time listening to you
• An attorneys office liability insurance does not provide enough coverage to protect them in case that you do not prevail in a civil litigation suit (does not directly apply to employment discrimination suits) .

There are of course other, simple and more complex cases, which we do not intend to discuss here.

in cases where you cannot find a suitable attorney for hire, apparently the courts allow for self-representation (Pro Se in legaleeze).

Click on the link below to discover more details about the process:

Representing Yourself

Among other things there is a special repository of legal forms that you can choose form and fill according to your needs. Click on this link: Pro Se Forms to see the appropriate list of forms.

Here is a sample content, copied from the Representing Yourself web site:

Pro Se Resources

The United States District Court for the District of Oregon uses the federal judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system to support electronic filing, service, and access to court records. The CM/ECF system contains the official court records of proceedings. (See Local Rule [LR] 5-3(a). The Court no longer maintains paper files.

As a self-represented party, non-prisoner, you may (1) apply for a user account which will allow you to file documents electronically with the Court through the CM/ECF system or (2) consent to electronic service of documents upon you via e-mail from the CM/ECF system when documents are filed in your case. Each option is explained on the following pages, and you must mark on the application form on the next page the option for which you are applying. ANY REQUEST MUST BE APPROVED BY THE COURT BEFORE IT BECOMES EFFECTIVE. You will be notified by an order whether your application is approved.

The following tutorials must be completed by pro se parties wishing to apply for registration in CM/ECF:

Preparing Documents for Electronic Filing

Logging in and Changing Your Password in CM/ECF

Filing a Document in CM/ECF

The pro se party (non-prisoner) Application for CM/ECF Registration is available here:

Application for CM/ECF Registration as a Self-Represented Party

Employee Record Request and Dealing With Discrepancies

The main reason for you to ask for your employee records is to insure that the information included in your certified copy of your HR record reflects the true facts of your employment record. If you have documents that have been altered, missing or wrongly included, you must immediately file a complaint with your current/former employer, asking them to amend their records, according to your claims.

It is extremely important to file a complaint with a state and/or U.S. Gov. agency ASAP, in order to force the Employer to put all documents and internal communication associated with your employee ID on Legal Hold. Otherwise, they can purge the documents and claim ignorance, by the time the investigating agency requests access to these documents!

If you find factual discrepancies in the information provided by your employer or if your employer doe not respond to your request for informatin, you must file a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division of Oregon BOLI, (which is not the same as the Civil Rights Division that primarily deals with discrimination cases) and attach a copy of your request for amendment of your HR employee file, to your BOLI complaint.

Note:  If you are located in a state other than Oregon, check with the relevant state agency in charge of Employment Law Enforcement, for the proper procedure needed to follow up on your case. 

Update: For California law covering this issue see: Labor Code Section 1198.5

As usual, we recommend sending your letters via USPS "Priority Mail" service, which will give you delivery tracking through their web site.

Keep all pertinent documents on hand for the when the judgement day arrives...

--Dr. Flywheel

Legal Issues Associated with Employees Layoffs

Every layoff creates a number of critical, and possibly expensive, legal issues for an employer. While from an employer's perspective these issues require development of a defense strategy, every employee must understand where State and Federal laws are protecting them from potential harm, whether facing a potential layoff situation or dealing with the aftermath of being laid off.

Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN). WARN is a federal law requiring employers of more than 100 employees to give written layoff notice at least 60 days before any plant closing or “mass layoff.” A number of states also have WARN acts that may have even stricter requirements and apply to even smaller employers.

Discrimination laws. Federal and state discrimination laws, such as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), prohibit workers in protected classes from suffering unlawful disparate impact or disparate treatment because of a reduction in force (RIF) actions initiated by employers.

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Employees on FMLA leave may be protected against a reduction in force unless it can be shown that they would have lost their positions even if the FMLA leave hadn’t been taken.

COBRA. This federal law requires most employers that sponsor group health plans for their employees to allow certain employees and their dependents who would otherwise lose coverage under the plan because they left their job or certain other events (typically, a layoff) to pay to continue that coverage for a specified period of time.

Other issues employers need to consider during a layoff. Other issues that can get employers in legal trouble when carrying out layoffs:

• Retaliation
• Worker’s compensation claims
• EEOC claims
• Poor documentation
• Inadequate document retention
• Employees protected by whistle-blower laws
• Badly crafted severance agreements and waivers.

Besides the links available in the body of this article, you can find more resources associated with employment related legal issues on this web site. You can start by using the Search Bar (located at the upper-right section of the main page). Simply type "legal" or choose the search term appropriate for your needs.

Your comments or questions are welcome. Use the link below the article to submit your input.

--Dr. Flywheel

Useful diagrams for explaining Intel Corp selection of employees for termination in 2015 and 2016

Note: this article was updated and revised with new information and diagrams on 8/16/2016

Circumventing a program that was originally designed to retain younger and more mobile employees (for reasons of employment market competitiveness) and channeling this program to get rid of experienced and older employees who are compensated at a higher pay grades, seems to be behind the high correlation between an employee age and the probability of such employee to be selected for termination during the 2015 and 2016 layoffs.

Here are useful diagrams for explaining Intel Corp selection of employees for termination, based upon Stock Share Level (SSL) grants, as applied to the 2015 and 2016 layoffs.

The diagram below depicts the Intel Corp "Total Compensation" model that was in effect over many years, including 2016.

(Click on image to enlarge view)

The "Total Compensation" model, which was also available as an application on the Intel Corp. employee web site shows that RSU grants was considered an integral part of an employee compensation. The RSU grant has cash value consequences that materialize whenever the RSUs become vested into the future, enticing employees to remain with the company in order to receive the vested amount of stock. It is clear that the SSL policy was established as a retention tool, pitting future stock grant (RSU) value against the lure of potentially higher salary offers, coming from competing companies. This policy, alongside the underground "no poaching" agreement that Intel Corp. and other Bay Area employers colluded in, kept most Intel Corp. employees on the "inside", for many years.

Intel Corp. also practiced a "Glass Ceiling" policy which was meant to prevent "runaway" employee salary increases, for employees whose "Total Compensation" level was considered, close or above "market value". Of course the guidelines for market value were totally under control of Intel Corp. HR Compensation department. Therefor, the pay modeling depiction that employees were presented with on Intel Corp. HR website, was the picture that Intel Corp. wanted them to see, regardless of any factual job market statistical basis.

(Click on image to enlarge view)

Following the Corporate HR compensation guidelines, as well as budget dictation that came from Corporate/Business Unit financial planners, managers had to exercise the means that were available at their disposal to cap the compensation of employees whose total compensation figures were close to, at, or above HR guidelines.

One of the most common ways that Intel managers used achieve this effect was to grant an employee a lower amount of RSUs (classified at SSL4 or SSL5), in order to cap the "overall compensation" figures of such employees and to avoid being reprimanded for exceeding budgets or breaching compensation policy limits.

Note that the numbers specified for the SSL grant distribution percentages comes from Intel Corp. HR policy that was in effect in 2015 and 2016. The source for this data is Intel Corp. own documents.

Click on the diagrams below to enlarge the detail level.

(Click on image to enlarge view)

 

Note from the right side of the above diagram that Intel Corp. SSL grant rules, excluded employees in grades 2-6 from receiving SSL-4, as well as SSL-2 and SSL-1 grant ratings and only 5% of employees in grades 2-6 were mandated to receive SSL-5 grant rating.

(Click on image to enlarge view)

Once Intel Corp. chose to utilize SSL grant level rating as the selection factor for terminating employees during the 2015 and 2016 layoffs, the company violated the legally mandated principle of applying a neutral factor to the selection process, while at the same time claiming that the company Reduction In Force (RIF) action is based on employee performance level.

 

As the above diagram demonstrates, junior employees (grades 2-6) had only 5% chance to be selected for layoff, based upon being assigned SSL-5 for their annual RSU grant. At the same time Senior employees (grades 7+) had a 15% chance of being selected for termination, due to the possibility of being assigned both SSL-4 (10% chance) and SSL-5 (5% chance). Such non-uniform application of employment rules is legally classified as "Disparate Treatment", in other words, employee discrimination.

While Intel Corp. euphemistically referred to the July 2015 as performance-based mandatory buyout (PMB), and used the SSL grant levels as the selection for termination criteria, the Intel Corp. Employee Handbook (2015 edition), section 17.2.2, specifically states the following contradictory information:

 

It is worthy to note the following key sentences, highlighted in yellow in the above photograph:

• the number of RSUs to be granted, based in part on an employee's expected future contributions
• RSUs are not granted to you for your past service
  

Clearly, as evident from the Employee Handbook language, RSU grant assignments to employees (via SSL grant levels 1-5) were not meant to reflect employee past performance and never were considered a performance indicator, particularly since they were based on future expectations and not past performance.

For clearly manipulative reasons Intel Corp. executive management decided to utilize the SSL grant levels given to employees as an employment termination criteria. By applying SSL4 and SSL5 as the selection criteria for termination, only 5% of employees in grades 2-6 were affected, while 15% of employees in grades 7+ were affected. Since employees in grades 7+ are typically more experienced (and hence older), an employee's age was in fact a significant factor, affecting the demographic profile in Intel Corp. employee layoffs of 2015 and 2016 in a significant way. The charts (see below) published by the OregonianLive web site, demonstrate this fact very clearly.

 

Note: The OregonianLive statistical analysis and resulting charts were performed completely independently of our analysis. The data used for the analysis was based upon the OWBPA, U.S. Gov. mandated reports, originally filed by Intel Corp.

2015 Layoffs Employee Age Correlation- OregonianLive Chart

(Click on image to enlarge view)

2016 Layoffs Employee Age Correlation - OregonianLive Chart

(Click on image to enlarge view)

The chart below shows how Intel Corp. managers fared during the 2015 layoffs, compared to the general employee population that was affected by the mass layoff.

 

Based upon the chart shown below, it seems that being a manager at Intel Corp. bought a person in a managerial position, a "second life"... :) Quite an interesting observation, to say the least.

 

(Click on image to enlarge view)

Your comments are welcome.

--Dr. Flywheel