Retaliatory termination
employment attorney Washington Aug 1, 2026
I was terminated a few months ago. I believe in was in reraliation. There are four managers who run the job and two of them had to do with my termination. My coworker was also terminated the same day. I had only received one formal write up unrelated to my termination. I know for a fact that there are others who had more write ups and formal warnings. I had worked at this job for three years. I would like to note, there is no section of the employee handbook that covers write ups or termination policies. I was in very good standing before and had no reason to believe I would be fired. There had been numerous complaints about the managers that had let me go (let's call them manager A and manager B) manager a (general manager) consistently belittled and bullied employees. Manager B did the same, and even gotten multiple write ups and a formal warning. There was an incident where several employees had come to Manager A to complain about manager B and then manager A turned around and gave Manager B the names of everyone who complained. Manager B then went to those people and questioned them to their faces. This was the most pressing issue that caused me to reach out to owners. I wanted to arrange a meeting with just them and the shift leads (no managers). I had described the incident detailed above. Mere hours after I had sent text to the owner, I received a voicemail firing me for "arranging clandestine meetings" and "making employees uncomfortable with my complaints about management" I had not talked to anyone but the people who were willing to join the meeting. The owner reached back out to me agreeing to the meeting later but I had already been terminated. I requested a termination letter and it conveniently left out the "clandestine meetings". All of my coworkers reached out expressing how upset and confused they were I was fired I have the voicemail, screen shots of texts to the owners, and the termination letter. I have attempted to get unemployment but it is stuck in adjucation. My main goal is to ensure I get unemployment, if that gets rejected I think I need to take legal action. Please advise. TLDR: I got fired for trying to arrange a meeting with the owners to discuss management corruption. I'm at risk of not being eligible for unemployment despite not breaking any actual policies. Location: Washington state
