A Starwood Employee Termination

On January 5, 2005 an I.T. employee working for Starwood Vacation Ownership (SVO) in Orlando Florida was terminated. (SVO is the timeshare division of Starwood,Inc.) Even though this was five plus years ago the circumstances might be relevant to someone who has recently become unemployed.

The employee was called in to his manager's office where he met with the manager and a Human Resources person. The Human Resources person did all the talking while the manager sat quietly across the desk. She gave several reasons for the termination, which I won’t be going in to right now because more blogs on this subject will follow. However two highlights were that the employee should get his COBRA papers in about three weeks and company policy dictated that the employee would be escorted out of the office and was not to stop at his desk to get his personal belongings. She stated that his manager would take care of cleaning out his desk and place the items in a box and then he would receive a phone call telling him that he could pick the box up at the reception area in the next few days.

Here are the results of those two statements. The employee never received the COBRA papers and NOTHING from his desk was ever returned to him. This even after several emails stating that there was an important stamped envelope in his desk that contained copies of tax forms, original 1099 forms, original receipts and other legal documents that needed to be mailed to the employee’s tax attorney ASAP. (None of the emails were answered).

Later in the year the employee hired a lawyer and it was discovered that when copies of the security log were requested, the page for January 6th, 2005 (the day after the termination) was missing! As far as the COBRA, the public documents for this law suit will be posted on later blogs, but as of today, the employee never did get the COBRA papers.

Let this be a warning to all of the people who have been terminated over the recent months. These “mega” corporations play by their own rules even though you do have employment rights. They simply hire the best law firms and give them the power to settle these matters.
My advice to you is if you think your employment rights have been violated get an attorney as soon as possible. Don’t wait!