In Florida, you can be fired at any time. This is a right-to-work state.
And I always tell my clients from up north, “you’ll be sitting here with the “you”, the injured worker, me, your lawyer, and your labor union rep. And your job would be secured no matter how long you’ve been out.” But this isn’t New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Illinois.
We’re the 49th worst state in the country to be injured, because in 2003, the legislator passed the special session to limit your benefits, and it’s very, very difficult. They can let you go no matter – I’ve got clients who’ve been working at a company 20 years. They can let you go because they don’t like your hair or whatever, and all you get is unemployment, all you get is unemployment.
So what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to look closely as whether we can retrain this. One of the things I do is find somebody, like I’ve got a roofer, we try to make him an estimator. A drywall guy carrying heavy stuff, maybe he can be a drywall inspector for the Lake County.
Maybe you can work on a construction site, you can be a nonworking project manager. Maybe you can get your CDL.
We’ve got to think about this on the front end before they fire you.
So that’s kind of a dual process of let’s see what the future holds. I already kind of know what’s going on when I meet the client and figure out what’s going on.
Let’s get a game plan so that we don’t get caught blindsided by somebody getting terminated.